Scripture: Hebrews 12:1-17

    The exercise of discipline in the topic refers to Christian parents’ exercising discipline upon their covenant children.

    The discipline of our children is an important aspect of our keeping God’s covenant.  The reason is that God calls believing parents to rear their children. This rearing of their children includes discipline. God uses this rearing, with its discipline, to carry out His covenant purpose of saving the covenant children of believing parents.

    The importance of discipline is shown in Hebrews 12:1-17 , particularly verses 9 and 10: “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.”

    The passage refers to, and gives instruction about, parental discipline. “We have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us.” Even more importantly, the passage makes a comparison between God’s discipline of His children and our discipline of our children. This comparison is the main thought in the passage.

    The Spirit has a practical purpose in Hebrews 12 . This practical purpose is that God’s people will submit to God’s painful chastisements of them. It was necessary that the Spirit encourage the Hebrew Christians along these lines because those Hebrew Christians were becoming wearied and faint in their minds on account of the severity of their chastisement (v. 3). Such discouragement as the Hebrew Christians were experiencing is always a danger for someone who is being chastised by God, as the proverb quoted in Hebrews 12:5 and 6 indicates. The danger is that a discouraged Christian is ready to despise the chastening of the Lord and to faint as he is being rebuked by God.

    In order that the chastised Christian not faint but rather submit to the chastisement, the writer of Hebrews reminds Christians that their troubles are sent them by God and that those troubles serve a good purpose in their life.

    Our troubles are not unfortunate accidents. They are not the result of blind fate. Neither are they punishments inflicted upon us by a wrathful God. Rather, evils in the life of the Christian are chastisements.

    A chastisement is some evil, that is, a painful event, administered by God for our correction from some sin; or for our development unto spiritual maturity; or for our general increase of holiness in view of the corruption of our sinful nature, which we retain.

    God’s motive in this chastisement is love for us, not hatred.  God’s goal with this chastisement is salvation, not damnation. In these ways, chastisement differs radically from punishment. Punishment may be the very same kind of evil in the life of the ungodly, but the punishment is motivated by God’s hatred of that reprobate, ungodly sinner. It is intended to inflict upon him the penalty, in part, of his sin. And it has as its purpose, as indeed eternal hell will have as its purpose, the destruction of the sinner.  God punishes the reprobate ungodly. He chastises the elect believer.

    Evils in the life of the Christian, such is the teaching of Hebrews 12, are an aspect of the wise and good rearing of His beloved children by God in His capacity as their heavenly Father. To drive home this comforting truth, the passage compares God’s dealings with us to an earthly father’s dealings with his children.  The passage does this already in verse 7: “If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons [and here comes the comparison];for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?”  This comparison is made again in verses 9 and 10, quoted above.

    The passage makes a comparison between the heavenly Father and us earthly fathers with regard to one aspect of the activity of fatherhood. The one aspect of fatherhood that is the point of the comparison is chastisement, or what we more commonly call discipline. God disciplines us, and we discipline our sons and daughters.

    This comparison between God and earthly fathers is of the greatest importance practically for our discipline of our children in the Christian, or covenant, family.

    Parents often ask, “What is our calling with regard to the discipline of our children? Must we discipline? If so, how are we to discipline? What is good discipline in a family?”

    In the covenant, parents are helped often, and should be helped, by the example of their own parents. The power of this example ought not to be minimized. Those who study such matters in the world tell us that child abuse is passed on from generation to generation. If one has himself been abused in one way or another, particularly by his own parents, he will likely be abusive to his children. And then his children will be abusive to their children. And this evil runs on in the line of generations. But the opposite is also true. Good discipline is passed on from generation to generation. The example that we set to our sons and daughters bears fruit to generations following.

    Nevertheless, the example of parents, even Christian parents, is not infallible. For Christian parents are imperfect. This imperfection of Christian parents in the discipline of their children is recognized in Hebrews 12 . With reference to parents, the writer of the book says that they discipline “after their own pleasure” (v. 10). We need an infallible guide.

    Scripture alone is this infallible guide for right discipline. Scripture speaks of child rearing, particularly of discipline. Scripture speaks about discipline with infallible wisdom and authority. This, by the way, is comforting to anyone who may have had a father or a mother who set a dreadful example in the discipline of their children. It is by no means necessary that such a one also abuse his own children. This pattern must be broken. This patterncan be broken in the life of one who has been converted to Christ. Then the guide of his own discipline of his children cannot be his own parents, but will be the clear, authoritative teaching of the Word of God.

    The Bible is not a manual of parental discipline, although the book of Proverbs is devoted in large part to child rearing. But instruction concerning discipline is found everywhere in Scripture.  It is found not only in the admonitions but also in the history.  Both the history and the specific admonitions regarding discipline warn against bad discipline and exhort to good discipline.

    One aspect of the Bible’s instruction concerning discipline is often neglected. This is the example, or pattern, of good discipline that God sets by His own fatherly discipline of His children.  How God disciplines is revealed in Scripture. And our discipline of our children must reflect and pattern itself after God’s discipline of His children. This is the importance of Hebrews 12 with regard particularly to its comparison between God’s discipline of His children and our discipline of our children.

    There is still another reason for the importance of Hebrews 12 with regard to the exercise of discipline. Inasmuch as Hebrews 12 compares our discipline of our children to God’s discipline of His children, the passage is useful to those who are not parents. Some are not parents. Some of us here are no longer parents with children at home to be disciplined. Some are never going to be parents. This does not imply that this passage is of no benefit tosuch persons. Inasmuch as the passage is structured as a comparison between God’s discipline of His children and our discipline of our children, the passage is useful to all Christians to instruct us concerning God’s exercise of discipline upon us.

Necessity

    The chastisement of Hebrews 12 is the infliction of some pain upon the child because of the child’s wrong doing. Chastisement in this chapter is discipline, not in the broader sense of the entire rearing of the child, but in the narrower sense of rebuking a child, or spanking a child, or of taking away some privilege from the child. That this is the reference of chastisement in the passage is plain from verses 6 and 11, where the apostle speaks of painfulthings that God has brought upon His Hebrew children. In verse 6 we read of scourging or whipping. Verse 11 states that “no chastening ... seemeth to be joyous, but grievous,” to which every child who has ever received a good spanking says a hearty, “Amen.”

    Such discipline, or chastisement, is necessary. Every believing parent must discipline. He must discipline every one of his children.  Now I am quick to add that, although parents must discipline in the sense of administering painful chastisement, although it is true that parents must discipline every one of their children, it is also the case that parents must not, in an ironclad, inflexible way, discipline every one of their children in the same way, eventhough the offence may be the same. Children are different. Parents must exercise discipline with a wisdom that recognizes the differences in their children. One child may be of such a sensitive nature that a sharp rebuke reduces that child sincerely to tears and brings that child to a heartfelt repentance.  Another child may have quite a different disposition, so that a mere rebuke makes no headway against that child’s sinfulness, but that a spanking is necessary, and a hard spanking at that, that results in the child’s roaring. We had that, I may say, in our own family of nine children.  One child was of such a tender disposition that a rebuke (and not a particularly sharp rebuke) reduced that child to tears.  As a result, that child did not receive so many spankings. The other children noticed that. (This brings up another important aspect of child-rearing: fairness is required in the family. Any unfairness is immediately noted by the children.) To this day, although all of those involved are mature and have their own families, the other children will say to this particular child, “You were the favorite child. Did you ever get a spanking in your life?”  Well, this child did. But this child did not need that type of discipline.  This child needed discipline, to be sure, but not that kind of discipline.

    Nevertheless, discipline is necessary for all the children. The evidence for this lies on the very surface of the passage. The necessity of discipline for every child is the thought of verse 7. It is simply unthinkable that there is a child whom a father does not chasten at all: “what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” Chastisement is simply part of the relationship of father/child. This necessity of discipline for every child is emphasized in verse 8. The only possibility of not disciplining some one is that the person (and the reference is to one who seems to be a child of God in the church) is illegitimate, a bastard. Incidentally, I note that the Holy Spirit teaches that there are two kinds of members of the visible church and two kinds of children among the physical children of believing parents. They are not all children of God.  Some are legitimate children, spiritually begotten by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Others in the visible church may be bastards.  They are illegitimate, they are not children of God at all.

    The necessity of discipline is brought out strongly in the passage in a way that may not be so obvious. It is brought out by the word that is used for discipline throughout Hebrews 12 . The word that is used is a word that means “child rearing,” or “education” in the full sense. It is the Greek word from which we get our word “pedagogy.” Parents are to educate their children. But this word is used by the Holy Spirit in Hebrews 12 to refer, as we have seen, to one specific aspect of child rearing, namely, discipline.

    So fundamental a part of the upbringing of our children is discipline that discipline is virtually identified in the passage with child rearing. Certainly there cannot possibly be good child rearing without discipline.

    There is an application of this basic scriptural truth to the training and teaching of children in the schools. Regardless of the wisdom of the learned who govern the state schools of our nations, there can be no effective rearing of children in the schools without chastisement, without discipline. The whole project must be a failure, apart from all other reasons, if there is no discipline in the schools.

    Discipline is necessary. Holy Scripture condemns much modern educational thinking and saves believing parents from the evils of this modern educational thinking. In the world, the theory prevails that children are not to be spanked and are not even to be rebuked. This permissive thinking governs many homes as well as many of the schools. But sometimes this thinking also appears in the churches. A member of the churches will argue that it isenough to teach his children the right way. If this is done, discipline is unnecessary. Another member of the church will simply neglect or ignore the discipline of his children altogether. In reality, this refusal to discipline, or this opposition to discipline, or this neglect of discipline, is a criticism of the wisdom of God. God finds it necessary to discipline His children. To contend that discipline is unnecessary in the rearing of our children is an implicit criticism of the wisdom of God.

    This, of course, is what is at the bottom of the modern educational theory. In every area of life, man knows better than God. In every area of life man deliberately sets aside the will of God and replaces it with his own will. The consequences are obvious for all to see.

Sinfulness of Children

    The reason for the necessity of the discipline of our children is their sinfulness. Our sinfulness is the reason why it is necessary for God to discipline us. The discipline of us by God is part of our great struggle, our great striving, against sin, as the apostle describes it in verse 4. That God’s discipline of us is required and necessary because of our sinfulness is implied when we read in the passage that the purpose of the divine discipline is that wepartake of God’s holiness (v. 10). This is also the reason why discipline is necessary for our children. Even though our children are covenant children, they still have a depraved nature. Their wicked nature expresses itself in wicked speech and behavior. This wicked speech and behavior are then opposed and checked and overcome by the administration of discipline.

    In locating the necessity of discipline in the sinfulness of the children, Scripture condemns the error that is at the root of much educational thinking today. This is the thinking that the children are basically good or, at least, not depraved. To put it in theological terms, the error at the bottom of much educational thinking today, denying the necessity of discipline, is the rejection of the doctrine of total depravity and rejection of the related doctrine of original sin. Christian parents, as much as unbelieving parents, pass on to their children their depraved nature, a nature that is totally corrupt, wholly inclined to all evil, and incapable of any good. In fact, this is the only thing that Christian parents pass on to their children. The new nature in Christ that God promises to give our elect children in His promise to be the God of us and our children is His work, His gift, and His operation of supernatural grace. But when God regenerates our children and converts them, these children retain still, as long as they live, the corrupt nature that they have received from Adam. The world does not know the doctrine of total depravity and the doctrine of original sin. Therefore, the world maintains that children are good.

    Strange to say, we can be attracted to this very same error, namely, that we view our children as good, or, if not good, then, at least, as not very bad. Although we confess total depravity and faithfully apply total depravity to children in general and to the neighbor's children in particular, we sometimes cannot apply the doctrine of total depravity to our own children. Our own children are good. Our own children are always right. Our own children are never wrong. Whenever our children are involved in some trouble, immediately we take the side of our children and go to war against any with whom they may be in conflict. This is foolish behavior, that is contrary to the truth that is at the bottom of the requirement in Hebrews 12 that we discipline our children.  As Oliver Cromwell once said to disputing Puritan ministers in his entourage who were busy dividing what he was trying to unite, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, consider the possibility that you may be wrong.” So also we parents with regard to our children ought to consider the possibility that our children are wrong.

Responsibility

    Discipline is necessary. The question now is, Whose responsibility is it to administer this discipline? According to Hebrews 12 , the responsibility is that of the children’s parents and, specifically, that of the father. It is as the Father of spirits that God chastises His children, and it is fathers of our flesh who corrected us (v. 9). Discipline is a parental duty. Discipline is part of the requirement of parents that they also take upon themselves in the vow of the baptism of their children. When we baptize our children, we vow that we will bring them up in the fear of the Lord, in the doctrine of the church in which they are baptized.  This upbringing very definitely includes disciplining our children.  It is the parents’ responsibility not only to teach their children, to send their children to catechism, and, wherever possible, to send them to the Christian school, but also to chastise the child.

    This implies the authority of the parents over their children.  Parents have a right to inflict pain upon their children. More importantly still, parents have the right to direct their children’s lives. For this, after all, is the reason for inflicting the pain of discipline. There is no sense in exercising discipline in itself. But the application of discipline has as its goal directing that child’s life in a certain way. When the parent disciplines, he says to the child in that powerful language of the rebuke or of the stick, “Not in that way you shall go, but in this way you shall go.” For this, parents have authority. They have authority from God. This is why in Hebrews 12 fathers are mentioned. Fathers are mentioned, for one thing, in order to impress upon us, especially at the beginning of the twenty-first century, that every Christian family ought to have a father in the home. Now God Himself sometimes acts so that this is not a possibility. Then God will care for the Christian mother, with the help especially of the elders and some other male members in the church, so that that mother can be father and mother both. This is the exception, however. The rule is that the Christian home shall have a father. And the rule is as well that that father will be a real father, a father characterized by strength, a father who is the real head of the home, a father who exercisesauthority—wisely, rightly, and in the love of God, but who exercises authority.

    Is it not striking that even the world, which has jettisoned the wisdom of the Word of God, now recognizes the importance, the very great importance, of what they call a “father-figure” in the home. The world itself can see that the results are disastrous in those homes, those many homes (at least in North America) where there is not a father and never will be a father. Not only in the formation of gangs, but also in the psychological and ethical disturbances of children who come from such homes, the importance of the biblical wisdom of the father in the family is made plain.

    Fathers are mentioned because Scripture wants to underscore that parents have authority over their children to direct their lives in discipline. Fathers are mentioned in the passage also because, finally, the responsibility of the discipline of his children is his—even though his wife helps and even though, as a matter of fact, the wife does most of the disciplining. The wife and mother ought to do much of the disciplining, simply because she is there withthe children more than the father is throughout the day. There is something wrong when the mother never administers discipline—partly because the effectiveness of discipline is that it is administered when the offence is committed and not hours or days later, but also because in this case the mother is saying to the children, “Wait till your father gets home,” and the children learn to dread the father and his coming home because all that means for them is that finally they get the spanking that they ought to have had six hours earlier. Nevertheless, though the mother administers much of the discipline, the responsibility for the discipline is the father’s.    God does give the parents authority over their children. Here Scripture strikes at another serious evil in much of educational thinking today. This is the evil that holds that no one has the right to direct the life of another. Not even parents have the right to direct the life of children. Children are autonomous.

    Lively consciousness of their authority is necessary on the part of the parents for the faithful discipline of their children. This authority is implied in the fifth commandment of the law of God.  If children are to honor their parents, parents have the authority that ought to be honored. For the exercise of this authority parents will answer to God in the day of judgment. Not only will husbands and wives answer to God for the keeping of their vow to each other in marriage, but they will also answer to God for the vow, whether explicit or implicit, concerning the discipline of their children.

Oversight

    Parental discipline requires parental oversight. This means that parents live with their children, actually live with their children.  Much of the breakdown of discipline today stems from the breakup of family life. Parents are not there in the home to know their children’s weakness, behavior, and needs. Obviously, divorce is one instance, one cause of parents not living with their children.  In Malachi 2 , where the prophet is admonishing the men of Israelfor divorcing their wives and remarrying others, God reminds those men in Judah, as He reminds men in the church today, of one of the great purposes that God had in the beginning when He made Adam and Eve one flesh.  Malachi asks the question, “Wherefore one?” Wherefore did God make the two one?  And he answers his own question, “That he might seek a godly seed”  ( Mal. 2:15 ).   One of the great purposes of God with marriage fromthe very beginning was children, not just children in general, but godly children, children who might rule in the world under Himself, to His glory, so that the creation would be devoted to the glory of God.  The application of this truth by the prophet to his own time makes plain that still today, in the faithful marriages of His people, one of God’s great purposes usually is that He seeks in their marriages a godly seed. Divorce, as even the world recognizes,is one of the main reasons for the destruction of children—the physical and psychological and, we would add, spiritual destruction of the children.

    This is one reason why Christian husbands and wives who are having severe trouble ought to stay together in their marriage. I have had it that a couple came to me, members of the church, who for years and years, as became evident, had grown apart and had learned cordially to hate each other and who were bound and determined to divorce.  Really they came to the church to get the church’s sanction of their purpose to divorce.  After both of them had poured out their litany of woes, which were intended to convince me that they certainly must divorce and that even God Himself would not require two such warriors to live together any longer in marriage, one of them asked, “You wouldn’t expect us to stay together for the sake of the children, would you?” “Ah, yes,” I answered. “Now finally you talk some sense. Here we can make a beginning. Exactly so. If you don’t stay together for any other reason, you selfish people, then stay together for the flesh and blood of your own bodies, who are at the same time to be regarded as the covenant children of God. Sacrifice yourselves.  Sacrifice your own happiness.  Then we will work to see to it whether the Spirit of God won’t bring you to repentance and reconciliation so that you can enjoy living with each other again.  But do not forget the children.” God hates divorce ( Mal. 2:16 ).   And the true church hates divorce. And every genuine Christian ought to hate divorce, among other reasons, because, apart from some extraordinary grace of God, it will destroy all the children. Parents must live together to rear their children rightly and to discipline their children.

    Not only divorce, but also mothers, with children at home, who work outside the home find it very difficult, if not impossible, to discipline the children.   

   There is also the fault of many fathers today who, at the end of the day, rather than come home, to spend the rest of the day with their family, are out on the golf course or amusing themselves with some other entertainment or taking on some other job, not because that is necessary for the support of the family, but because they are intent on amassing wealth.

    For good, on-going, effective discipline the mother must be a worker at home and the father must make time with his family after work and on the weekends.

    Still more, the context of effective covenant discipline is peaceful life together as a family, family-life as fellowship with God and with each other. It is not enough that parents live under the same roof with their children. They must live under the same roof with their children in warm and healthy communion with their children.  They must live with their children as being one with them in Jesus Christ.

    Is it not the case that the nature and real power of God’s effective discipline of us is the context of His warm communion with us in love? The afflictions God sends us are not imposed simply by some almighty sovereign. They are laid upon us by our Father, who loves us and with whom we live in friendship. What is the climate, the atmosphere, the day-to-day quality of our home? Is it fellowship in which, although we are father and they are children,we live with them and in a way share life with them, as our beloved children?

Purpose

    Discipline of children is necessary. The question is: How are parents to exercise this discipline? The answer in Hebrews 12 to our “How?” is implied in the purpose of discipline. The purpose of the discipline of children according to Hebrews 12 is the children's holiness. This is the purpose of God’s discipline of us. So we read in verse 10: “but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his [God’s] holiness.” The purpose of God’s disciplineof His children is the profit of those who are disciplined, our good. This profit consists of our partaking of God’s holiness.  This cannot mean that by chastisement God’s children become holy for the first time. We already are God’s children—elect, redeemed, and born again by the Spirit—before He chastises us.  Our being children is the reason why He chastises us. God does not chastise people to make them His children. God chastises people because they are His children. We are already holy by the sanctifying Spirit before God chastises. But we are only imperfectly holy. As the Heidelberg Catechism says in Question 114, we have only a very small beginning of the new obedience.

    Chastisement of His children by God is the means by which the holiness of God’s children is preserved from the power of sin and by which holiness in them is increased.  By aiming at our holiness with His discipline, God in His chastisement has nothing less than our life as its purpose—our spiritual, eternal life. This is verse 9: we should “be in subjection unto the Father of spirits [in the matter of chastisement, you understand], and live.” Withoutholiness no one will see the Lord (v. 14). And without discipline there will be no holiness.

    God’s purpose in the chastisement of His children establishes what our purpose must be in the chastisement of our children.  Our purpose in chastising our children must be their profit. But their profit is not their pleasure, but their holiness. Thus our purpose in disciplining our children is nothing less than their life. Do we want our children to live? Do we want them to live spiritually?  Do we want them to live eternally? Do we want them to live in the day of Jesus Christ? Then we discipline, because discipline maintains and preserves and increases holiness.

    I note in passing (this was what I was driving at a moment ago when I emphasized that God does not chastise people to make them His children; He chastises them because they are His children), that this implies a fundamental truth about the children of believing parents from their earliest infancy. We are to regard our children as the children of God, elect, redeemed, and regenerated, from their earliest infancy. This is not because all our children are necessarily elect and saved. We know better. Hebrews 12 speaks of an Esau, who was reprobated before he was even born, according to Romans 9 . But it pleases God, as the Puritans said, to cast the lines of election in the generations of believing parents. It pleases God to gather some of His church out of the families of believers. What God means when He says, I will “be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee” ( Gen. 17:7 ), and, on the day of Pentecost, “The promise is ... to your children” (Acts 2:39), is not that God may someday save one or two of our children and be the God of our children when they finally grow up and make a decision for Christ, but that He is the God of our children as children. The promise of God is to us and to our children as children, infant children.

    This is implied by the calling parents have to chastise their children with the same purpose that God has in chastising His children. We do not chastise our children to try to make them holy, children of God. You cannot make people holy children of God by spanking them or rebuking them. If they are not already holy children, spanking and rebuking have the effect of embittering them. But we are to discipline our children because they are children of God. In them God has already worked His holiness.  This makes for the possibility and reality of the effectiveness of discipline in maintaining this holiness and in increasing this holiness.

    What I am saying is this: Parental discipline of children does absolutely no good if the children are not saved. Neither does instruction of the children do any good if the children are not saved. What fruit can there be upon it? What spiritual good can come from it? If I were convinced about my children that they were all unregenerated until such a time as they grew up and might be converted in their teenage years or later, all I would ever say to them is, “Repent, repent, repent,” hoping that God would make that effectual in their salvation.

    God disciplines us because we are His children. He calls covenant parents to discipline their children, who are the children of God.

    Then our discipline is fruitful because the Spirit of God is in their hearts. This is what the covenant promise means: “I will be the God of you and your children.”

    Not all of the children of believing parents are elect, redeemed, and regenerated children of God. One way that those who are reprobate children show their reprobation is by wickedly despising the discipline of their parents and hardening themselves against it. There may also be some elect children who rebel, who even rebel for a long time.  Think of the prodigal son. This is why parents with wayward children must not give up on their children too readily, but at the very least (and this is quite something) pray for them that God will turn them. But there may be reprobate, ungodly children of believers.  Then they refuse the rebuke, they ignore the discipline, and they walk wickedly. They are covenant breakers, not in the sense that God established His covenant with them personally by establishing that bond with them in their hearts or by promising to them personally salvation. But they arecovenant breakers in the sense that they are born and raised in the sphere of the covenant. The duties of the covenant are brought to them and, knowingly and deliberately, they transgress the covenant and the covenant commandments.

    With regard to such children, whether elect children who for a while are rebellious or with regard to reprobate children, when the children refuse the admonition and discipline of the parents, the parents ought to take their child to the elders of the church.  Keeping the covenant as the people of God means that we are members of a church that has elders. These elders discipline the members of the congregation according to the Word of God. Eldershelp in the discipline of unruly children in the congregation. Parents are never in the position that they throw up their hands and say, “We can’t do anything with our children.” We must never allow ourselves to be put in that position. Sometimes we feel that our backs are put to the wall. But we are never in a position that we can do nothing. We can always do something. When they become of age, we take a rebellious child to the elders of thechurch, for them to work with and for them to discipline in the sense of administering church discipline, so that finally these children are excommunicated from the church. Then the parents themselves refuse fellowship with these children, to drive home the discipline. They have contact with them, they speak to them, telling them to repent and be converted; but they break off fellowship.  Parents, then, will cooperate with the church in the ecclesiastical discipline of their own children.  This is really what Moses called parents in such a position to do in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 .  If they had a son who was a drunkard and rebellious and would not listen to his parents’ admonition, the parents were to take their son to the elders and, in those days, the elders would stone that rebellious son to death. Today, the elders of the church exercise the discipline of excommunication.

    But the purpose of our discipline is to correct the sins in the lives of our children and to direct the children to consecrate themselves to God. We must explain this to our children too. We must say to our child, “I am rebuking you, or I am spanking you, because of your sin. This is what God requires.” When God chastises us, He makes known what it is in our life for which He is chastising us. This means that it is essential in discipline, that we bring our child to the cross, when our child is penitent, for forgiveness.  It is essential that the father of the home, as the servant of Christ, say to the child, “I forgive you in the name of Christ, and Christ forgives you, and you are reconciled to me again.” Father brings the gospel of the grace of the cross of Christ.

    The discipline of children implies a standard of right and wrong, as well as a goal the children must reach. After all, it is an awesome responsibility to direct the life of another human being.  They must know what the standard is: the law of God. They must know what the goal of the direction is: the mature man or woman of Christ.

    If the purpose of our discipline is the children’s profit, our discipline will be consistent. Discipline always suffers from inconsistency.  Day after day a child may be disrespectful, to his mother especially, and is permitted to get away with it. Then one day when we are irritable the child has a big mouth, and we explode in anger and give him a sound spanking. This is inconsistent.  The trouble is that we are not really aiming at the child’s holiness. If we were, we would discipline the child the first time he was disrespectful and every time that he was disrespectful.  The trouble with us is that all too often, as Hebrews 12:10 says, we discipline “after [our] own pleasure.” This is true. I may confess that one of the sorrows of my life, as I now become old, is the imperfections of my own discipline of my children. I am very thankful that there is a cross of Jesus Christ for imperfect Christian fathers. I am very thankful, thankful beyond all telling, that although I recognize that God uses the imperfect discipline of us imperfect fathers to save His people, the work of saving our children is the work of God and not the work of imperfect fathers. It is the work of God alone and not the work of God and us imperfect fathers. That is a painful line in Hebrews 12 , they for a time “chastened us after their own pleasure” (v. 10). We must not discipline after our own  pleasure. Scripture, of course, is not approving of this. It is merely recognizing what all too often is the case. Our discipline is weak and poor. In contrast, God’s discipline is strong and good.

    The argument of Hebrews is this: If we submitted to the imperfect discipline of our parents, all the more we ought to submit to the perfect discipline of our heavenly Father. We must not chasten a child because he bothered us. We must not chasten a child because we want to vent our anger on him for provoking us. We must not discipline our children because they fail to achieve certain selfish ends that we have for them, for example, that they will shine academically and educationally, putting unreasonable demands upon our children. Never must we discipline for those reasons. The goal of discipline is not our profit, but the child’s profit. The standard of discipline is not what seems good to us, but what seems good to God as found in His law. The motive is not self-love—we must watch out for that in our rearing of our children—but the love of our child.

Motive

    Since the purpose of discipline is the child’s holiness, it is implied that the motive of the disciplining parent is love, love for the child for God’s sake. This is expressed in verse 6 of Hebrews 12, the quotation of Proverbs 3:12 , where the motive of God in chastising His children is said to be love: “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” Just as God’s motive in chastening us is love, love for us, so must our motive for chastening our children be love. Then, not just love for them as our flesh and blood—natural love—but love for them as God’s children! Every time a father lays a hand on his child, he ought to look at that hand and see that hand as the hand of God applied to the little child of God, so that in our discipline God is very really disciplining His children.  But our motive must be love. Love seeks the good of the be-loved.  Love acts to achieve this good (in this case, holiness). Since this good comes through discipline, love disciplines. There is no opposition between love and discipline. To say so is to accuse God of being unloving.

    But we parents must see to it that love is our motive in the discipline of our children.  Love is not the motive if we discipline in a rage. Love is not the motive if we strike out with heavy blows and sarcasm to destroy the child. Love is not the motive if we discipline unfairly. Love is not the motive if our oversight of our children is too rigorous.

    Love is not the motive if we are always criticizing our children and never praising them. Some Christian parents are mistaken here. Some have said, “I don’t praise my child because that will tend to make the child proud.” Does God praise His children?  Does God incite godly behavior in His children by praising? What an amazing thing! He works in us to do these good works. Then, when we do the good work in our sinful, imperfect way, He praises us for the good work and thus encourages us. God must be a pattern to us in this respect also.

    What does my child see when I discipline? Does she see love?  Does she know, amidst her tears, that I love her? In twenty-five years as a pastor before I became a teacher in the seminary, I saw in the congregations as many children ruined by unloving harshness as I saw ruined by the laxity of an Eli. There is an urgent warning to fathers in Colossians 3:21 : “Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.” Parents must take pains to assure their children that their motive in discipline is love. Children joke about this, not at the time, but afterwards, “I wish you didn’t love me so much.” Nevertheless, disciplining parents must assure them of their love when they discipline. Love must permeate our entire relationship with them. Love must control the manner of our chastisement of them. Parents must tell the child of their love when they chasten, especially afterwards,taking the child on their lap, speaking of their purpose in the holiness of the child. God does. God takes us on His lap after He chastises us. He says to us (listen to it in Hebrews 12 ): “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth” (v. 6). Oh, we grown-up children of God need to know this, especially in time of painful chastisement. We need to hear Him say in the gospel, by the Spirit in our hearts, “I love you inthis chastisement. Because I loved you, I whipped you. Because you are my beloved child, I discipline you.” So let covenant parents discipline, knowing in addition that we have only a few days.  The author of the epistle to the Hebrews speaks of this, too: “our earthly fathers for a few days” (v. 10)—just a little while we have them at the age and size that we can discipline them. So let us discipline them.

    This is the calling of parents in the covenant.

Receiving Discipline

    There is also a calling to covenant children in this matter of discipline. First of all, the application is to all of us who are children of God, subject to discipline. This is the main practical purpose of Hebrews 12 . The main practical purpose is not the calling of parents to administer discipline, but the calling of children to receive discipline. The great calling to us grown-up children is to receive the discipline of the Lord. Do not despise His chastisement.  Is He chastising you or me? Is it a very painful thing? Is it something altogether unpleasant? Are you roaring because of this chastisement of God, day in and day out? Do not despise it. Do not be embittered by it. Receive this chastening of the Lord as from your heavenly Father, in His love, for your profit and holiness.

    But now to you young people and children: Do not despise or rebel against the discipline of your parents. Receive it submissively.  Reverence your parents even as they are giving you a spanking or rebuking you. Yield to it, so that that discipline does its work in your life: holiness without which you, nor anyone, will see the Lord.

Scripture: Psalm 127

    It is not so easy to make a speech on the subject of the implications of the covenant for the home. I suppose that some of you would say, “How can that be? After all, you have had eight children of your own. You have had lots of experience.” But part of my experience is this: that those who have no children of their own are the experts on bringing up children and establishing a home, while those who have struggled through the years when children were in the home are aware of how difficult the task is.

    I am thankful that we have the Word of God. The Word is an objective standard that comes to us with authority, to which we are to conform our covenant calling in the home. And obedience to the Word will be blessed.

    God’s Word is replete with information concerning what constitutes a covenant home,  that is, how the principles of the covenant are to be applied to life in the home. I can only call your attention to some of those things. I have chosen to call your attention to the most important.

    I am aware of the fact, of course, that not all of you have children at home. Perhaps you have a home where the children are grown up and now married and the responsibility of bringing up children is no longer yours. I would like to relieve your mind of the thought that you have no responsibility any longer. It was once my hope that when my children finally left the home that at last the responsibility that fathers and mothers have towards their children would be gone. Such is not the case. The responsibilities, in a certain sense, grow, because covenant parents cannot escape a sense of responsibility for their children, for their grandchildren, and, if you live long enough, even for your great grandchildren.  The responsibilities seem to grow heavier rather than lighter.  That means, and this is the point I want to make, that if your children are grown and have homes of their own, your responsibilities towards your children and towards your grandchildren have not ceased. You must, insofar as you are able, and taking into account also the circumstances, still assume the responsibilities of assisting your children and grandchildren in establishing covenant homes.

    Some of you are not yet married. This discussion may be of profit to you. If your desire is to marry and to establish a covenant home, you ought to give serious thought before marrying to what the Bible tells us about a covenant home.

    God established the home as an institution of creation. He did that when He brought Eve to Adam and instituted marriage. This institution of marriage included God’s command: “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” ( Gen. 1:28 ). That was the word of God’s command that established the home.

    You notice that the home is the only institution of society that God established in connection with creation. He established only the home because the other institutions of society, now so familiar to us, grew organically out of the home. It does not make any difference what institution you speak of—whether you speak of the institution of government, the institution of the shop (that is, the place of employment), the institution of the school, or even of the church (although the church, of course, arose and was established by God only after the Fall). Organically, in the history of mankind, all these other institutions arose out of the home and have their roots in the home. They draw their life from the home.  They draw their spiritual, moral character from the spiritual and moral character of the home. This means, of course, that the chaos that is present in all institutions of society today is to be tracedback to the chaos that exists in the home.

    It amuses me that in our own country (although it is also unspeakably sad), the government almost every year, regardless of who occupies the White House, creates “Blue-ribbon Panels” to discuss and come up with reasons why the schools are not functioning as they should. Many of the children are not receiving an adequate education, so that even graduates from college are illiterate.  These committees are composed of high-powered men insociety, professors of prestigious universities and professional educators. Millions of dollars are spent on such studies. Year after year this is repeated. They all come up with learned reasons why the schools are a failure, and with ways in which the schools can be improved. Usually it all comes down to this: the government must spend more money on the schools. Money will solve the problems.  The Christian knows better. But the experts do notconsult the Christians, of course.

    The problem with the schools is simply the home. The home is a shambles. It is a moral wreck. Divorce and remarriage prevail in the land. Homosexuality is on the increase and is approved by government. It is becoming almost a byword that children in most homes are what are called euphemistically “latchkey children” because they carry their own key to the house. Mother and father are both out working. The children have to shift for themselves. Single-parent families contribute immeasurably to the moral decay in the home.

    Because all the institutions of society have their roots in the home, there are no solutions to the moral ills of society without establishing once again the home as Scripture defines it—something that will never happen in the history of our world. We must be prepared for that. It will not happen, I guarantee you. It is impossible in America and the British Isles to stem the tide. When even evangelical and conservative churches approve of divorce and remarriage, how is one ever going to stem the tide and return to solid homes based on the foundation of Scripture? It will not happen.

    That means, however, that the Christian must exert himself with all the effort at his disposal to build and establish a Christian home that is free from the influences and corruption of society.  This must be done not only in order that the Christian home may be a witness, a shining light in a dark and sinful world; it is also for the sake of the church and the cause of our Lord Jesus Christ.

    What is true of society in general is true of the church as well. When the home deteriorates and becomes a moral shambles, the church will lose its strength.   We do well, therefore, to speak of what constitutes a covenanthome.

    First of all, it is necessary to point out to you that a Christian home is also a picture of God’s covenant; and it is proper, therefore, to speak of covenant keeping in the home. Not only is the institution of marriage created and instituted by God as a picture of His covenant, but the home, the family, is also instituted by God as a picture of His covenant.

    The family is a picture of God’s covenant, in the first place, because at the heart of the family is a husband and a wife—a believing husband and a believing wife—who are not only husband and wife but also brother and sister in Christ. I recall well the time when, some fifty-odd years ago, my wife and I were married in First Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The reception that followed the wedding ceremony was closed with prayer by a professor under whom I was studying at the time—Rev. George Ophoff. In the course of his prayer—I vividly remember it—he said something about asking the Lord to bless my wife and me, who were not only husband and wife but also brother and sister in Christ. That was the first time that thought had ever occurred to me. And it struck me so forcibly that I did not hear another word of Rev. Ophoff ’s prayer. I am not sure I even heard the “Amen.” Brother and sister! That is the spiritual relationship of a covenant marriage. In fact, it is that relationship of brother and sister that is the everlasting relationship that endures when marriage fades away and when the church is taken to glory. There are no husbands and wives in heaven—just brothers and sisters.      The fact is that the family, the covenant family, is also, as a family, a picture of God’s covenant. God’s covenant of grace is a revelation of His own covenant life that He lives in Himself. The doctrine of the Trinity is not cold, abstract theology. It is a glorious truth. God, who is three in person—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—but one in essence, lives in Himself the perfect covenant life of a family. And when He reveals that covenant life that He lives in Himself, He does not just simply give us some information about the covenant life that He lives as the one true and living God, but He takes His people into that life. He adopts them as His children. So a covenant family is a revelation of, a picture of, the covenant life that God lives in Himself and the covenant life as we in heaven shall know it perfectly when all the institutions of this world pass away.

    So, when you speak of the implications of the covenant for the home, then you must understand that a covenant home is a home patterned after the relationship of God with His people.

    In that family of God, God—the triune God—is the Father of His people. He begets them to new life, a second birth by regeneration.  He adopts them, signing and filling in the adoption papers with the ink of the blood of the cross of Christ. He makes them His children so that by His Spirit in their hearts (as Paul expresses it in Galatians 4:6 ) they are able to say, “Abba, Father.”

    “Father.” I wonder if you appreciate what that means. You will be hard-pressed to find any place in the Old Testament where the saints called God their Father. It was well-nigh impossible in the Old Testament to do that because the Spirit had not yet been poured out. “But when the fulness of time was come,” Paul says, “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law.”  Christ gives them His Spirit whereby they are able to say, “Abba, Father” ( Gal. 4:4-6 ). There must have been something that was totally startling to the disciples when, as instructed by the Lord in prayer, they were taught to say, “Our Father.”It must have come like a thunder clap.  They had never before heard anything like that. “When ye pray, say, Our Father.”

    That is the family of God. Now in that family of God, Jesus Christ is the First-born, the elder Brother. I do not want to take the time to explore with you that rich concept of the first-born as it was typically in the old dispensation. Let me merely point out to you that the first-born in the families of the Hebrews had dominion over his brethren, received a double portion of the birth-right, and was the heir of the covenant blessing.  Christ is theFirst-born in the family of God. He is the First-born because He is the eternal Son of God in our flesh. And, therefore, He is responsible for and has dominion over all His brethren. He rules by His sovereign power and grace over the family of God. All the family of God belong to that family only because Christ, as the First-born, paved the way, if you will, by opening the womb of God’s counsel in the eternal decree of election in order that all of Hisbrethren might follow.

    But there is more to it than that. The family is also a covenant family because there must be, in the family, if it is a covenant family, a fellowship of life, of love, and of joy and peace. Fellowship!

    Now I am going to get a little bit ahead of myself here. One of the highest expressions of fellowship in the life of a family is mealtime.  That is the time when the family is together, is able to pray together, and can talk together. But, above all, there is something about eating and drinking together that constitutes in itself fellowship. When I was pastor of a congregation in the western part of America, I frequently had to go on what in our churches are called classical appointments, sometimes thousands of miles from home. I had to leave my poor wife with four naughty boys while I was off on preaching assignments in distant parts of the United States. Of course, I had to eat alone. That was the worst time of the day—when I had to sit there at the table and eat alone. It was barely tolerable. The only way I could stand it was to bury my head in a book. And, of course, when one buries his head in a book, he soon forgets the food on his plate and it gets cold and tasteless (which it was to begin with because I did not know how to cook). So, finally, one of the members of the congregation said, “We think you are lonely, so we brought you a television set.”  Television set!? I said to him, “You really did not have to do this. I have better comedies at home.”

    Eating and drinking constitutes in itself fellowship. It is exactly for that reason that the Scriptures (in Revelation 19 , speaking of the final glory of the covenant) describe the covenant in terms of a feast. Revelation 19:9 calls the blessedness of heaven the wedding feast of the Lamb. That is because of the fact that in glory, although in a profoundly wonderful and spiritual way, we will be with Christ to eat and to drink and to have fellowship— the fellowship of laughter and fun—about the heavenly table where we are fed forever with heavenly food. That also constitutes part of the figure of the covenant in family life.

    Having said those things, there are some things that, to me, are the essential ideas in Scripture as to what constitutes a covenant home. I have five or six points to make. I am not necessarily going to give these points in any order of importance. They are points that seem to me to constitute the essence and heart of a covenant home.

    In the first place, a covenant home is a home where every member of the family has his or her own place. I think you have to have children to experience that fully, or you have to have been brought up in a family with many children. Each child that God puts in the home is different. Husband and wife are two different people. Sometimes when I stand before a couple that are being married I marvel at the miracle of God—that two people who are so different can live together in a most intimate relationship of life. But each child also has his or her own place. So true is that, that if, for example, in a home with children, God should take from that home a child in its infancy or early youth, we even say to each other, “His place is empty.” No one else can take that place, even if God should bless that home with additional children. Each additional child occupies his or her own distinct place in the family and cannot ever take the place of the child whom God has taken away.

    That is true of father, of mother, and of each child. And that is the way it is in the family of God. When God from all eternity, according to the decree of election, chooses His family, each member of the family has his or her own important place. With such precision, with such exquisite perfection, does God accomplish this that the family, as it is finally brought to glory in heaven where Christ has prepared for the family a home of many mansions, thefamily is perfect and is complete. There is no possibility of having any more in that family. It is ordained by God with each in his own place. No place is empty.

    Now I want to talk about that for just a few moments. The place of the father in the home is the place of prophet, priest, and king. That is a responsible position. That means that he represents in the home Christ Himself, who is the officebearer in the family of God. As prophet, he is responsible for bringing the Word to his family. As priest, he is responsible for being the intercessor of his family. Perhaps we forget that sometimes. I think of Job. Before disaster struck under the sovereign control of God and by the instrumentality of Satan, we are told that Job was an upright man, perfect in all his ways, who feared God and eschewed evil.  One of the things that he did was pray for his family. His sons and his daughters were wont to feast on their own because they had, apparently, grown up. Every day Job made sacrifices for his family and said, “Lest they have sinned and cursed God.” He prayed for them. He prayed not only in general for them. He prayed as their intercessor, bringing their sins before the throne of God’s grace ( Job 1:5 ). By his prayer the family was sanctified. That is the responsibility of one who is a priest in a covenant home.

    As king, the father rules. He does not rule as a tyrant or as a dictator. He does not rule with an iron rod harshly and cruelly.  But he represents the rule of Christ in all of Christ’s compassion and love, and yet sovereign authority, in the home. He represents Christ because it is through him that Christ rules the family. I do not want to make light of that, or minimize its importance. I am not at all sure how to emphasize it except by personal experience.  When we had children in the home, little children in the early years of our marriage, there were times when I would get up in the morning in a way that could only be described as grumpy and out of sorts. And frequently, at the breakfast table, that grumpiness would immediately show through. Not much time elapsed at the breakfast table before the children were squabbling with each other, fighting and kicking each other under thetable, and arguing about each piece of toast that came out of the toaster. As I pondered that, and the reason for that, it dawned on me that although my children were totally depraved as well as I, nevertheless, a lot was to be laid at my feet because I came to the table grumpy; my grumpiness soon spread to the other members of the family—sometimes, sad to say, even to my wife. What I am saying is this: So important is that idea of headship, that the father is ultimately responsible before God for determining the entire atmosphere (spiritual and moral) of the home. How he conducts himself, how he lives with his wife, how he shows her his love, how he deals with his children, what is his mood, what is his attitude—all this determines, in large measure, the attitude that prevails in the home. God wants it that way. God has so ordained that the father is the responsible head of the home. 

    The mother has her place in the home. You notice that I say her place is in the home.   Let us assume that. One of the curses of our modern times is the curse of mothers working when they should be at home. I have heard all the excuses—we can’t pay the mortgage on the house, we can’t pay the Christian school tuition, it’s so outrageously expensive to have a large family educated in the Christian school that the mother has to work in order to pay the bills. I do not believe that. I went to a Christian school during the depression when my father was making five hundred dollars a year, which at today’s rate of exchange comes to three hundred pounds a year. He paid the Christian school tuition. It had to be paid every week. We did not always eat what we wanted to eat.  We did not have any new clothes. All our clothes were given to us (although it never bothered us as children). But the Christian school tuition had to be paid. That was all there was about it.  Whatever my father may have earned, out of the money he received came first of all the budget for the church and the Christian school tuition. The rest was used for food and clothing.

    Mothers in the home are so important that, if you read the Old Testament, you discover, perhaps to your surprise, that at those crucial times in Israel’s history when everything was going wrong, apostasy was setting in and the worship of Baal or some other god or goddess of the heathen was prevalent, godly mothers were the ones who kept the flame of the hope of Israel burning.  Godly mothers, when fathers were apostate, were the strength of the home. Godly mothers kept the home. Think only of Rebekah, and of Hannah, who had a spiritual nothing for a husband, one who could not even understand why she wanted children so badly because of her longing for the hope of the promise. Have you ever read the song of Hannah when Samuel was born and compared it with the song of Mary in the gospel of Luke, chapter 2?  They are almost the same. She wanted a child because in her burned brightly the hope of Israel that out of them would come the Christ. I think of Jehosheba, the wife of Jehoiada, who took the infant Josiah and hid him seven years, until the time when he could be crowned king and Athaliah overthrown. There are many such women. The Old Testament is replete with them.

    Surprisingly enough, the same thing is true of the new dispensation.  You cannot read the biographies of saints without being struck by the fact that the most godly of men in the history of the church of Jesus Christ were men of whom history says almost nothing about their fathers but speaks in glowing terms of their mothers. Think of Chrysostom, the golden-tongued orator whose mother led such a life of piety in the godless city of Antioch in Syria that even the heathen said, “What mothers these Christians have.”  Think of Monica, the mother of Augustine. Think of the mother of Thomas Aquinas. While you may not want to consider him a saint, he emerged as the powerful theologian that he was because of the influence of a godly mother. It certainly is true that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

    A mother’s place is important because the father has to go out and earn his daily bread. Mother’s place is important because if the father is a prophet, the mother is a prophetess. If the father is a priest, the mother is a priestess. If the father is a king, the mother is a queen. She has to take care of the family. Frequently the burden of the instruction of the children falls upon her. She has to provide for the needs of her husband. She has to support her husband and be a help to him in his own place and calling in the kingdom of God. If he is an elder, his wife has to be his support and his help. If he is a minister of the gospel, his wife has to be sure that in her busy life and the heavy demands that are placed on her by the children, she can help him in his calling to serve the kingdom of heaven.

    What would a covenant home be without a mother? It would not exist. No wonder Scripture sings the song of a godly mother and wife who is more precious than rubies (Prov. 31:10-31 )! A covenant home is a home where a mother occupies an important place in the life of the family.

    The elder brother also occupies a unique place, because the covenant family is a reflection of the family of God. I wonder sometimes how much we are aware of that. I knew a family where I used to stay quite frequently when I preached in that congregation, a family of nine boys—no girls. How that mother ever coped with nine boys I will never know. But they had a keen sense of the importance of the first-born of the family. The father, who had his own chair in the living room, which was, of course, the best chair, had the second best chair next to him at his right hand, which was the chair for the eldest of the sons at home. No one else might sit there. And if someone did happen to be sitting there and the elder brother came into the room, the one occupying his chair immediately got up and vacated that chair so that the elder brother could sit in it. That was not only a symbolic thing in that family. The elder brother was responsible, because the mother was unbelievably busy, for the good behavior of his brothers in the home. He was responsible to see to it that they did their chores every day. He was responsible to see to it that they all got off to school on time and dressed properly. He was responsible, by his conduct, to be an example to his brothers in their lives. He even was responsible, when he became old enough to do that, to admonish his brothers. Now, I know, he did not always do that faithfully. Families have a great deal of sin. But, nevertheless, the family insisted upon that. And that position of elder brother in the family remains a responsible position till that elder brother leaves the home, when that responsibility devolves on the next in line.

    It is part of the experience of my life that that responsibility of an elder brother never ceases. And when the family has a very aged father or mother, then the tables are almost turned. While all our lives my father was responsible for us, and continues to be, suddenly in his old age the eldest becomes responsible for him—the decisions that have to be made for his care and for the years of his declining age.

    So it is with all the children. Somehow or another, in a covenant family, it is the eldest upon whom devolves the final responsibility that has to be borne for the welfare of the family—even when everyone is married. If you are intent on establishing a covenant home, you must teach your elder son that that is part of his responsibilities in the home.

    So each has his or her own place. An important place it is, a place in a covenant family that is a picture of the family of God.

    In the second place, a covenant home is a home that has the Word of God at its centre. Now I want to speak about the importance of family devotions. Family devotions have fallen on hard times. Partly the reason is that everyone is so frantically busy that no one has any time for devotions. The father goes to work early. The children stagger out of bed an hour or two later, run about getting their clothes on and books together, packed away in their backpacks so they can dash off for school, perhaps grabbing a piece of toast as they make their way out of the door. And when the evening comes, mother is scheduled to go here and father is scheduled to go there; this child is working at this place and that child has to go to practice soccer. In the busy and sometimes hectic life of the family no time is available to have devotions together.            The best practice is that a family have devotions at the beginning of the day at the breakfast table and at the end of the day at the dinner table. My father tells me that his own father, who was a painter and who had to work hard for a living, left for work at six o’clock in the morning. The children were all out of bed by five-thirty because my grandfather insisted that all the family be together at the table for devotions and for breakfast. The same thing was true in the evening. If he had to finish a job and it kept him at his work until seven or eight o’clock, no one ate until he was home and until the family together could have its devotions.

    As far as the devotions themselves are concerned, there are families that have devotions, but they are of such a hit-and-miss character that they amount to almost nothing. The father reads a passage from the Scripture in a voice conducive to putting the children to sleep, and his prayers are mumbled, if he prays at all, so that one can hardly make them out. And at the moment they faintly hear an “Amen,” everyone dashes off in different directions.

    I suggest to you that you must make an effort in your home, if you want to follow the biblical pattern of making the Word of God and prayer the centre of family life, that you take time with your devotions; that you begin the meal with prayer, asking God’s blessing; that you end the meal with prayer by thanking the Lord for His goodness; and that Scripture reading be meaningful.

    You ought to have a Bible dictionary sitting on the shelf by the table so that you can look up the word “Mizar” when you come to it in the Psalms. I doubt whether ten of you here know what the word Mizar means. You ought to have a good commentary, so that when you come across a difficult passage where you say, “I’m not sure what this means,” you can look it up. I suggest that if you want a good commentary, you cannot do any better thanCalvin. Calvin, to this day, is the commentary that I use the most.  He is the best. You do not have to read the commentary every time. But at those points where father, mother, and the children are puzzled by the meaning of the text, read Calvin. He is almost always right. He had an insight into the Scriptures from which we can profit all our lives. It is much better to read three verses from the Bible and know what they mean than it is to read Psalm 119 when no one is paying attention.

    Take the time to explain the passage to your children. Take the time before you read to tell them about this passage. And, by all means, do not skip about from place to place in the Scriptures in your Bible reading, but start with Genesis 1 and read through the Bible from beginning to end, including the laws. If you will take the time to explain them and the reason for them, you will find that your children can even be interested in the laws; but you must point them to the reason for the laws in Israel’s history and to their fulfillment in our Lord Jesus Christ—something not all that difficult to do if you will only take the time to understand them just a bit. Get the children involved in discussing the meaning of the passages, and you will be surprised what questions they ask and what knowledge they gain from taking the time to make Scripture reading important.

    And when you pray, bring the needs of the family to God—not your own. You must have your own private devotions for that.  But the family has all kinds of needs. Pray for your wife, who needs the grace of God in the difficult and trying task that God has laid upon her. Pray for your children. Pray for your family in times of deepest woe and trouble. Pour out your soul to the Lord on behalf of your family in these difficult times. And when theLord’s blessings rain upon your family, be thankful and let the family with you shout for joy in your prayers to God who deals so graciously with you. You are praying for the family. And you must pray in that way.

    Because my father insisted on Christian education for us, I was forced to travel two thousand miles from home in my junior and senior year in high school to attend a Christian high school.  I had to stay with an uncle who was a godly man and the home was a godly home. But my uncle had one very irksome habit.  When he would come home from work, his wife would have to report to him all the peccadilloes of which we were guilty during the day. And in the prayer at the beginning of the meal, he would start with the oldest and he would bring to the throne of grace the sins of so-and-so and what so-and-so had done. If you were near the bottom of the list, you spent a lot of time squirming in your seat. He used his prayers to reprimand us.

    Now, do not get me wrong. We needed the reprimand. If he had taken us aside at a proper time and showed us why what we did was wrong and called us to repentance, we could have taken that. That was our due. But to wait one’s turn in prayer-time at the table to receive his reprimands (which were sharp) was a very, very trying experience.  Do not ever do that! There may be times when, perhaps, a sin of a child in the home is so great and has affected the family so much that you must mention it in prayer at family devotions. But do not use prayers to escape your responsibility to talk with your children about their sins. Make your devotions important in the life of the family.

    A covenant family is a family where covenant instruction is fundamentally important. If I were creating this list in order of importance, I would probably make this first. The Bible keeps emphasizing this all the time. When God came to visit Abraham in the plains of Mamre and He and His companions walked with Abraham in the direction of Sodom and Gomorrah, along the way God stopped and consulted with His companions. He asked them the question: “Shall I reveal to Abraham the counsel of my will with respect to Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot and, really with respect to the church of all ages, as it is called to live in a world that is ripe for judgment? Shall I do that?” And the answer that He Himself gave is this: “Yes, I will tell Abraham what I am going to do.”  Why? Because I have known him, “that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he has spoken of him” (Gen. 18:19). That is, “I am going to make known to Abraham the mysteries of My counsel because he will instruct his children. And by means of that instruction, I will bring upon Abraham that which it is My purpose to do.”

    In the book of Judges, you have only to read into chapter two to discover the reason for the unspeakably sad history of the people of Israel in those days. What is that reason? A generation arose that knew not the Lord, neither the wonders that He had performed for Israel ( Judg. 2:10 ). Instruction had fallen in bad repute. The children of Israel did not know the wonderful works of the Lord. That is why the sad history of the judges is a part ofOld Testament history. Psalm 78 drives home the point that covenant parents must instruct their children from generation to generation (vv. 1-8).  And the wise king of Israel in the book of Proverbs speaks of the fact that one must train up his child in the way that he should go, and when the child is old, he will not depart from it ( Prov. 22:6 ).

    Concerning that covenant instruction, much could be said. 

    In the first place, it ought to be clear to you by this time that covenant instruction is based on the principle that God saves His children in the line of generations and gathers the members of His own family in the families of believers. He does that by way of covenant instruction. That is the means He uses. So important is that means that a failure to bring up our children in the ways of God’s covenant results in our being cut off in our generations.

    Now, I am aware of the fact, of course, that part of covenant instruction is the establishment of Christian schools. That is another reason why God’s people, when they are scattered hither and yon, ought to come together so that, if at all possible, they can establish Christian schools where their children can be taught in the truths of God’s Word in creation and history from the viewpoint of the Scriptures and the Reformed faith. Nevertheless, thehome is the fundamental institution of society, and the school can never rise in its moral character or in the quality of its instruction, from a spiritual and confessional point of view, higher than the level of the home. The home is important for covenant instruction.

    The instruction of the home is unique. The power and beauty of the instruction in the home is this, as Deuteronomy 6 points out in such an eloquent way, that the parents are so diligent in their covenantal walk in every part of family life that by their very example they teach the children how to walk in the world as covenant children and how, finally, to establish their own covenant homes. Example does not exclude verbal instruction. Of course not. But example is the character of the home. In times of great grief, great trouble in the home, the attitude of the parents towards these afflictions and chastisements that God is pleased to send will determine how the children will learn to deal with them when they grow older. When the parents are prosperous and there are seemingly few clouds on the pathway of life, their attitude towards the things of this world, their thanksgiving in times of prosperity, and their right use of material things will teach the children that material things are not ends in themselves but are to be used for the kingdom of God. The normal, God-ordained life of a covenant family is the most powerful tool of instruction there is.

    Daughters will learn how to take care of their husbands when they marry by watching mother. They will even learn how to cook and sew. Sons will learn how to be the head of the house because they have a father who took that position as head of the house.  To  this day, when I am confronted with a difficult question on what to do in the family, I frequently ask myself, what would my father have done? That is the kind of impact that covenant parents have on their children. When a mother devotes herself to the difficult (I would almost say, boring and unappreciated) task of bringing up her children—putting bandages on their skinned knees, comforting them when they come home from school crying because they have been teased, showing them that the favor of God is the thing that counts, feeding them, loving them —in all these ways she makes a lasting, indelible impression on her daughters and on her sons.

    It is a striking thing (it was true in our family and, I suppose, it is true in every family) that when the children are home the sons are closest to their mothers and the daughters are closest to their fathers.  The daughters always came to me when they wanted advice on something. My sons always went to my wife. And then they were married and it turned around. Now my daughters always go to her and my sons come to me. That is a peculiar thing. I have no explanation for that. But it is part of covenant instruction. And it is a part of the lasting influence that parents have on their children and part of that truth that God continues His covenant in the line of generations through the power of covenant instruction.

    Part of that covenant instruction is that we teach our children the ways of God’s covenant. We tell them, “You must walk as a child of the covenant. You must learn to do that now. You must learn to do that as you grow up, as you take your place in the church, when you establish your own home. You must walk as a child of the covenant.”  When a child refuses to walk in the ways of God’s covenant that child must be rebuked, admonished, andchastised, as God does with us when we sin. They must be told, “If you do not walk in the ways of God’s covenant and you refuse to turn from your evil ways, you show by that that you are not a true child of the covenant at all.” Covenant parents know that not all their children have the promise of God that God will save them. The lines of election and reprobation cut right through covenant homes, as they did in Israel and in the family of Isaac and Rebekah. Parents have an obligation in that regard. Tough love? I’m not sure what that means. But the obligation of covenant parents is to warn their children of sin and its consequences. 

    Another curse that plagues the church and covenant homes is permissive parents. The consequences are evident in the schools.  The teacher sends a note home: “Johnny did this in school.” And the parent rushes to the phone and dials the teacher’s number: “My Johnny would never, never, do a thing like that. Something’s wrong. Maybe he was driven to it by unkind classmates,” or whatever.  So the parents hold a hand over Johnny’s head and Johnny chuckles to himself: “I can do as I please and I can always hide behind mum’s skirts.” Permissive parents are a curse on covenant homes and ultimately destroy them.

    There are two things in the home that are curses of our modern generation. One is the television set. I do not know if as an adult you can handle a television set, but it is a curse on a home with children. My wife and I told the children when they first began to realize what was going on about them: “No television in this house. You can have all the books you want. You can go the library every week if necessary to get your books, but no television. And no watching television by the neighbor. We will not have you watching that stuff.” Now, I am not saying that the television set is wrong in itself. But it is an unbelievable power for evil in the home. And I am not talking now about the pornography on the television, about the comedies that destroy everything sacred in a humorous way, that exalt the henpecked husband and the disobedient child, and make a joke of adultery and fornication. I am not talking about that. I am talking about all aspects of TV.

    Malcolm Muggeridge wrote a book quite a few years ago: The Fourth Temptation. It was a book that contained the speeches that he delivered to religious television broadcasters. Among the many things he said in the speeches was this: “Television by its very nature is incapable of bringing anyone reality.” You cannot learn the truth about anything from television. It is impossible.

    But even that is not the worst. You can listen to the BBC or ITV, I suppose, and pick up some of the news, and they might be right on the weather, although for two weeks now, I am told, they predicted rain and gusty winds every day and we have had marvelous weather (with an occasional shower), so I am not even sure about that. But I am talking about the advertisements. Now I know that here you do not have so much of that. But in America the advertisements constitute about a half of every program. Sex is the one thing that is used to sell cars and almost everything else.  If a woman, dressed like the women in those ads and speaking the language that they speak on television, would come to the door of my house and say, “I would like to come in and talk to your children;” I would say to her, “Get out of here, you whore. I won’t let you in this house.” But we let her in through the television set and nobody thinks anything of it. There she is, spewing her filth and acting in the most outrageous, immoral way, dressed in the most immodest fashion. But, because it is an advertisement, we do not seem to mind. There she is in the home, for all of that.

    The second instrument of destruction in the home is the computer.  And, once again, I am not against computers. I use one myself all the time. I am not even against the Internet so much, although I prefer myself to use it only for e-mail. But I know marriages that have been broken up because of pornography on the Internet. These pornographers are unbelievably bold. There was a time, until I got a filter on my computer that filters out the “spam,” when the e-mail that came in was such utter filth that it was almost impossible to believe that that stuff was going on in the world.    

     Now it just so happens that my children and my grandchildren know a whole lot more about computers than I do. When something goes wrong with my computer and I cannot get my son to come over to help me at the time, I can usually get some help from my eight or nine year old grandchild because he knows more about it than I do. It is that very knowledge of computers with which our children are growing up that makes those things suchinstruments of evil if our children are not taught the terrible, frightening evil of that sewer of filth that pours into the homes.

    I suggest to you that you be aware of this and guard against this and by your own example, if you have children in the home and a television set, be careful! It would be better to throw the thing on an ash heap than fill the souls of your children with the moral rot that is found in this modern invention.

    But I must end. This, then, in conclusion.

    The home is composed of a covenant father, a covenant mother, and covenant children. They are all sinners. Planted in the very heart of the home must be the cross of Jesus Christ. That is the only place for all to go. The children have to be taught by the example of their parents at the foot of the cross. The children have to be taught that repentance means to seek forgiveness in the cross, and that in the cross of Jesus Christ alone is to be foundthe power of a godly and holy walk. There is nowhere else to get it. The cross is the place. And so the family must find itself frequently together at the foot of the cross beseeching the Lord of all mercies that He will have compassion on them in their struggle, their difficult struggle, in a Christian home; that He will be merciful and forgive sins; and that He will do His work, though He is pleased to use us as weak and frail instruments, and give to us grace that our homes may be shining lights in the darkness and evil of our present time.