Joshua and Judges: Crossing the Jordan - Obeying God's delegated authority, part 10. Jos 1:16-18; Eph 6:1-4.
length: 59:46 - taught on Aug, 28 2015
Class Outline:
Title: Joshua and Judges: Crossing the Jordan - Obeying God's delegated authority, part 10. JOS 1:16-18; EPH 6:1-4.
Announcementsopening prayer:
"Easier to build strong children than to repair broken men." [Frederick Douglas]
EPH 6:4 And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
"provoke" - parorgi,zw [parorgizo] = to rouse to wrath, to provoke, exasperate, or anger. To make it hard to obey because of injustice and severity.
Like the husband can in love make it easier for his wife to follow him, so the parents can make it easier to obey through the rule of love. Ruling through severity and injustice is tyranny. While the child is still obligated before God to obey such a parent, such a parent cannot claim to love their children in the way that God loves him. God rules and yet sacrifices. The husband has authority over the wife but yet he lays down his life for her. This is only a paradox in the fallen order of man, but it is not in the perfect order of God. The parents rule the children and provide the way that is most easy and congenial to follow and obey. This does not guarantee that the child will obey any more than the amazing grace of God guarantees that every believer will follow Him, but God has provided all in order to make following Him the most obvious, pleasurable, and easy way to life. My yoke is easy, My burden is light.
Fathers, do not exasperate your children, that they may not lose heart.
To the parents the negative command is given first and then the positive.
"bring them up" - evktre,fw [ektrepho] = to nourish up to maturity. The parents have the responsibility to nourish mind, body, soul, and spirit to maturity. This is a great responsibility.
The attack by Satan against this is to transform a society into a generation of immature adults producing children that they have no idea how to nurture to maturity and to then provide the vehicle of the state with the promise of raising the children for them. In this process the state can indoctrinate falsehood into the mind of the child who has no discernment of good and bad and therefore no hope of defending his thoughts against untruth. Through the same process of repetition they indoctrinate the minds of a great majority of a generation with untruths and false histories, bringing that generation into conformity with satanic doctrines of antiestablishment and immorality. This method has proven very successful for Satan in the last two generations in the US.
Satan persuades a small segment of the population that they're smarter and know better than anyone else and therefore it is right that they make decision from the rest of us who are too stupid to run our own lives and communities. By feeding this arrogance Satan produces ministers of his untruths.
In a speech given at Brown University, in Providence, RI, Frank Goodnow, president of John Hopkins University stated:
In a word, man is regarded now throughout Europe, contrary to the view expressed by Rousseau, as primarily a member of society and secondarily as an individual. The rights which he possesses are, it is believed, conferred upon him, not by his Creator, but rather by the society to which he belongs. What they are is to be determined by the legislative authority in view of the needs of that society. Social expediency, rather than natural right, is thus to determine the sphere of individual freedom of action. [The American Conception of Liberty, Frank Goodnow]
Nowhere in the Bible is the training of children assigned to agencies outside the home, no matter how they might assist. God looks to the parents for the kind of training that the children need.
By this action the parents mimic the love of Christ for the church as when the husband agape loves his wife and gives himself up for her. The same word is used in:
for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes [ektrepho] and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,
Here in lies the motivation of the Christian parent. By nourishing their children to maturity they are imitating Christ who nourishes the church, and so glorifying Him. So then, marriage and family become a microcosm and picture of the relationship of Christ to the church. They are both a great responsibility and a great blessing and they both require a great amount of energy. Is it no wonder that Satan has relentlessly attacked them.
"discipline" - paideu,w [paideuo] = the whole training and education of children which relates to the cultivation of mind and morals, and employs for this purpose, now commands and admonitions, now reproof and punishment" (Thayer).
This same word is used of the discipline of the Lord to us in Heb 12.
It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons;
All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
The modern liberal so-called expert states that fast, efficient, effective, and fair discipline will warp the personality of the child and rob them of their potential. God is smarter than the professor.
God has commissioned the parents to raise the children. Every Christian parent should be fully aware of their responsibilities before the Lord before having children.
Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
By pouring their heart and soul into nurturing, disciplining, and instructing their children the parent is communicating to them in the loudest way possible that they care deeply about life, both in themselves and in their children.
Just talking about true life from Christ and living another way is actually a testimony for rejecting the life, by regulating its importance to words only. It projects to the child that talk is enough and that clearly reveals that the parents do not care. This promotes what Christ detested - projecting an image of honoring God while truly honoring yourself. Talking about the life while walking in another life promotes this hypocrisy. The child will likely conclude that if their parents don't care then why should they. Christ instructed us to do what He said and what He did. He led by word and deed.
"The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things, and do not do them.
EPH 6:4 And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
"instruction" - nouqesi,a [nouthesia] = "it is a training by word — by the word of encouragement, when that is sufficient, but also by that of remonstrance, of reproof, of blame, where these may be required, as set over against the training by act and discipline which is paideia. [Trench]
Children do not always appreciate counsel, but that does not remove the obligation to train by word through sharing wise counsel.
The way of a fool is right in his own eyes,
But a wise man is he who listens to counsel.
Listen to counsel and accept discipline,
That you may be wise the rest of your days.
Many are the plans in a man's heart,
But the counsel of the Lord, it will stand.
The book of Proverbs is a long list of wise counsels that a father gave to his child, admonishing him in wisdom. Parents must do the same, without exasperating them.
This includes prayer and Bible instruction in the home.
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
When the Supreme Court handed down its ruling against required prayer in the public schools, the famous editorial cartoonist Herblock published a cartoon in the Washington Post showing an angry father waving a newspaper at his family and shouting, "What do they expect us to do - listen to the kids pray at home?" The answer is: Yes! Home is the place where the children ought to learn about the Lord and the Christian life. Christian parents who keep "passing the buck" to Sunday School teachers need to start nurturing their children in the spiritual life.
As a prep school teacher for 10 years I could easily see the children who received biblical instruction at home and those who did not. The majority did not, even though their parents were in Bible class almost every time.
Every person faces their first authority test in the home under the authority of their parents or legal guardian.
Delegated authority #4 - the government over the citizens.
Finally, the government has authority over the citizens in any nation. God will deal with the evil in governments or in sovereign rulers. If the government demands that a believer commit sin or be a party to the working of sin that believer must obey God rather than man, however, the government still bears the sword and that believer will likely suffer, but undeservedly, in which he can glorify God.
The thirteenth chapter of Romans discusses the relationship between church and state and the relations between the individual Christian and the various functions of government. We are instructed on civil disobedience and revolution as well as the Christian's role as a citizen.
As with so much of the NT, a teaching from Jesus is expanded and expounded upon.
"I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth
"Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."
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