The importance of cultivating a Christ-like attitude within families, drawing from Philippians 2:1-12. It argues that true Christian living, particularly within the family and the church, requires looking to the interests of others rather than one's own, mirroring Jesus' self-emptying humility. The message highlights the practical application of this principle through concepts like compassion, compromise, and the establishment of family devotions and discipline, ultimately aiming to foster loyalty and a secure sense of belonging centered on God.
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to all of the speakers as well as to the rest of us. It's been a real privilege. I think it's easier to preach following special music like we've had these last two days because it puts the speaker's heart at rest before the Lord, ministers to him as well as to the audience. And I think I can say on behalf of my fellow workers that we very much appreciate the musical ministry. The interest magazines I've moved there's still some of them here but some of them been through the courtesy of the book table they've been moved to the back there and I moved the sign up sheet back there so that you if you have to leave early and you haven't signed up for the magazine why you'll find it back there at the table and be sure to put your name and address down West Steffen's letter is also back there with the magazines I want to call your attention today to an article in the September issue the lead article little modern artwork here of a mother and son on the cover.
The lead article is called, Do You Feel the Wind on Your Cheek? It's written by one of the sisters here in the state of Iowa, Ann Rogers from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And I must say that I wish I had this article when my children were young because she really explains how to talk to little children. This is a good article for grandparents, moms and dads, Sunday school teachers. It's a conversation, but it's interesting because she never quotes the child. All she does is quote herself in conversation with a child. And at first you look at it, it seems like, well, it's a two-way conversation. She's only given you half of it. But you don't have to know children very well before you know what the child says or what the child might say. You can just about hear some of the little ones responding in different ways.
And it gives you some very vivid help in knowing how you can really communicate to small children very basic truth about God. And the blurb that I wrote to put with the article says, it's not easy to talk to a rebellious teenager about God, nor to a college-age skeptic. The time to start a conversational relationship with your children is when they are young. Very young is what she said. And I think that some of us never did learn how to really converse with our children. By the time they get in high school, they don't open up to us. because we didn't start talking to them and opening up to them when they were little. So it's a very easy article to read.
Take a copy of the magazine, even if you've got one at home, and pay attention to it or pass it on to someone with little children. It should be a real help. Now, one of the ministries of letters of interest, in addition to publishing the magazine, is the handling of funds of gifts for home field workers. And if some of you are concerned to minister to some of the assembly commended workers in the homeland, in pioneering ministries, or in other ministries, and for some reason you choose not to send that ministry through your local assembly, you may send it to letters of interest, and we will be glad to see that it goes to the person that you recommend. assembly sometimes send us gifts too to be distributed to workers and sometimes people will send us gifts and just simply say send this to pioneer workers or to people who are out in church planning or to people who are working with Latinos or people who are working in the black communities or the inner cities or they'll specify some area and then we will assign the gift to a worker who is in that field we are not involved with foreign missionaries we do sometimes get gifts for foreign missionaries and we usually just send them on to CMML because we're not really equipped to handle the foreign missionaries bank accounts
and all that we are primarily concerned with the home field workers and we invite you to make use of the facilities of letters of interest for that purpose you will of course receive tax deductible receipts for such gifts and we do not take anything out of the gift for office expenses forwarding expenses and all that that's borne by letters of interest now I want to turn to a passage in Philippians chapter two. Philippians the second chapter. Verse one, if there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassion, fulfill ye my joy, that ye may be like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind, let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in
lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus. I think you can see how this passage relates to the subject of families. It talks about consolation or comfort of love, fellowship and the spirit, tender mercies, compassion, being like-minded of one mind, being concerned with the things of other people rather than the things of yourself. And then it gives the example of the Lord Jesus and it's interesting how the Apostle Paul to illustrate very practical down to earth how to live today truth draws on the great truth of the finished work of Christ.
We're so inclined to do it the other way. We take and talk about the great doctrines of salvation and redemption and the death of the Lord Jesus and the incarnation and the exaltation and then we draw something out of everyday life to illustrate those truths. Paul does just the opposite here. He says, this is the way I want you to live. I want you to be concerned about other people and not about yourselves. Now remember how the Lord Jesus lived that way? Well, he was in the form of God. And he didn't think it's robbery to be called a son of God, but he made himself of no reputation. He took upon him the form of a servant. And he was made in the likeness of men. And then he humbled himself unto death, even the death of a criminal, the death of the cross. And because he did that, God exalted him and gave him a name above every name.
And then Paul says, now work out your own salvation. with fear and trembling right at the end of this passage that's in verse verse twelve work out your own salvation and the King James translation here is more helpful than the modern translations because the King James is but the only translation we have around these days that uses the old grammar and the old grammar the word you is always plural now today we use you for plural or singular but in the King James When you talk to an individual, you always say, thee, or thou, or thy, and whenever the word you appears, you're talking plural. I don't know if you've ever noticed that in the passage in John three.
The Lord Jesus said to Nicodemus, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, singular, ye, plural, must be born again. You, all you Pharisees must be born again, all you people. Here we have, work out your own salvation, plural here, meaning not the individual salvation. We get that through Christ. but the salvation of the group, of the family, of the people of God, the salvation that Paul talked about back in chapter one, the salvation from failing the Lord or dishonoring the Lord. But if we live this life of consideration of other people, instead of exalting ourselves, putting others first, we will work out our salvation. That is, we will not fail the Lord. This is a group matter that's being talked about here, as I understand it.
We've been talking about families yesterday. And we started out talking about two families. Our text for all these messages is Psalm sixty-eight-six. God set us to solitary and families. And we spoke about two different families, the domestic family, dad, mom, and the children. And then the assembly family, the gathering of God's people together. And yesterday we discussed at some length the subject of love and loyalty. In fact, said that loyalty is probably a very close definition of love, the outworking of love in the family. We talked about that in the home, the loyalty of a husband to the wife and the wife to the husband, the loyalty in the assembly. We know that God has called us there and we belong to each other and we're not just there because we like the preacher or we like the minister, but because God has brought us together and so there's a loyalty, a brother-sister relationship.
And then we also talked about headship and submission yesterday and what the headship of the home means and said it's very much like the headship of the assembly. And we pointed out that in the New Testament headship in the home and headship in the assembly has a concept of leading by godliness, not by force, leading by example. leading by a godly life, leading by being looked up to, by living your life in such a way for the husband, that the wife looks up to him, for the elders of the assembly, that the people actually want to follow them, the way we want to follow the Lord Jesus, because we look up to the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus did not force himself on us. He invites us to follow him.
He doesn't force it. And the elders of the assembly don't force their leadership on the people. If the people don't want to follow, it's not enjoined upon the elders to enforce their headship. And the husband is told to love his wife, but he's not told to put his wife in submission. Submission is enjoined upon the wife, not upon the husband. It's her responsibility to be in submission. It's his responsibility to live his life in such a way that the wife wants to be in submission to him. Submission, then, in the New Testament is voluntary. I think there's an exception to this in the parents and the children. I don't think that the submission of children to their parents is voluntary. I think that fathers and mothers are told to control their children and to discipline their children.
But when it comes to husband and wife, when it comes to the people in the assembly and the elders, I think this is a biblical concept. You might think it through. I did hear about a woman who said to her husband, you are going to be the head of this house if I have to break every bone in your body. That's not exactly the way to do it. I want to talk just a little bit about companionship, compassion, concern, compromise, some of the things that make for a family lifestyle, and then we'll go to the matter of devotions and discipline in the home. Compassion, the concern one for another. There was a farmer, let's call him an Iowa farmer, who was very compassionate.
concerned about other people who was visited by a rancher from the state of Texas who had done a good bit of bragging about everything how big everything was in Texas and he was visiting the Iowa farmer and he said to the farmer how big is your farm and the Iowa farmer said well he said I've got four quarter sections here at six hundred and forty acres he said and I got a road around all four sides you know and If you look off to the north there, you can see where the trucks are going by on the highway. That's the north side. And over to the west, maybe you see that line of trees in the distance. Well, it's just a little beyond there. Over the crest of the hill is the end of my farm. And then down to the south, well, you see the windmill way off there in the distance, just about down in there.
And, you know, it's a pretty big farm. Hmm, said the Texans. Didn't seem very impressed. So the farmer said to him, how big is your farm down there in Texas? Well, he said, we don't call them farms. He said, we call them spreads or ranches, you know. And he says, it's a very, very large. He says, I... It just so happens that like your farm here, I have a road on every side. And he says, I go out in the morning. He says, at sunrise, I take my car and I go out in my lane. He said, and I go up the east side of the ranch to the road on the north. He says, and then I turn to the west and I go all along the north side of the ranch. And when I come to the western border, I turn south. And I go all along the west side.
And then I go all along the south side. And then I make the last turn and come back up the east side to my lane again, he says. And when I drive in my lane, he says, the sun is going down. The farmer looked at him, nodded compassionately and said, I know what you mean, he said. I know what you mean. I had a car like that once. Well, that's a rather nice reaction, isn't it? much better than being very competitive and trying to out-distance the other person, you know. And I think that in a family situation, we need to learn this truth that's expressed here in Philippians to be concerned with one another.
Now, let me read verses four and five again as they're stated in the New International Version. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Jesus Christ. Your attitude should be the same as that of Jesus Christ. Now that means there's a yielding. The fact that I'm the head of the house, of my house, doesn't mean I have to have my own way in everything. Maybe I have the right to have my own way, but I don't have to have my own way. And the day comes when my wife and I have a discussion about something and I say, this is the way it should be done. And she says, but Jim, I wonder if you're not mistaken about that.
And then I have a choice. I can demand my own way. I can explain to her why my way is right. Or I can even yield and say, all right, maybe you're right. Maybe I'm wrong. Let's do it your way. The same thing is true in an assembly. You don't have to have your way. And I think that all over this country there are assemblies that are going downhill because they have in their leadership a person or two or three persons who must have their own way, who just insist that it has to be done their way. They have no yield of them whatsoever. You find this sometimes with assemblies where young people have some ambition to do something and a desire to do something and older people who just will not yield one inch to the young people.
Now the old people shouldn't yield to the young people all the way. There ought to be a give and take. But life is like that. There ought to be a give and take. I have a teenage daughter. She's going to be a senior in high school next year. And there's quite a bit of competition in our family about the automobile. And that she doesn't use the automobile as much as she would like to. But she does use it a little more than I would like to ever use it. And so we have a certain give and take there. And I think that that's at the heart of family living. I wrote an editorial earlier this year in Interest Magazine. called Learning to Compromise. And it achieved a sort of an interesting reaction. A lot of people wrote and said, I think you're right, I agree with you.
But I pointed out in the editorial that the word compromise has come down into our evangelical thinking as something that's very bad. We must stand for the Lord Jesus. We must not compromise with the world or with the devil. That's true and that's taught in the Bible. But because we get such a fixation on the word compromise is evil, then you say to people that in the assembly you've got to learn to compromise. In your family you've got to learn to compromise. No, sir, I'm going to stand for the truth. Well, there's a lot of areas where it isn't a matter of truth. It's a matter of the best judgment or the wisest decision. The assembly doesn't belong to its elders, you know. It belongs to the Lord Jesus, but it also belongs to the people of the assembly.
The family doesn't belong to me. It belongs to the Lord Jesus. And in a family relationship, you talk things over. And you don't demand to have your way. That's not what headship and leadership means. And there are times when you have to give in and say, well, brethren, I think, I don't think that's the right way, but I'll be outloaded on that. That's all right. And we don't need to insist on doing it our way. We need to learn to compromise. In that editorial, I suggested that God had compromised in the situation regarding a king and that God had made it very clear through Samuel and through Moses that the people were not to have a king like the other nations. And the people said, we want a king. We want to be like the other nations. All right, God said to Samuel, you go and tell them what they're heading for, but then you let them have the king.
And I suggested that God had compromised with him. And I got one phone call about that editorial, and people agreed with me about the editorial, but it wasn't right to say that God had compromised. No, that wasn't quite right. Well, of course, that's a matter of definition of words, isn't it? Compromise means, in my understanding, giving in, not insisting, not demanding on having your own way, but being concerned about... about the feelings of others and the wishes of others. But all too often we tend to see things in black and white. Assemblies get into discussions about how to do something. Like one of the things that comes up sometimes, as far as I know, you haven't had this matter here and I don't want to try to pass any judgment on your local conditions here.
But I know some people have talked to me from other places about this matter of midweek prayer meetings, whether you should divide up and go into different homes like we did in Bethany in Wheaton. We split up and went into different homes and Wednesday night and other assemblies feel, no, it's better the whole group stays together and prays together. Well, some people think in black and white. It's wrong. You shouldn't do that. Or it's right. You should do this. And the truth of the matter and a thing like that is it's like most things in life. There are advantages doing it this way and there are advantages doing it that way. In Bethany Chapel, we went from a midweek prayer meeting that had gotten down to about ten or fifteen people to four or five home meetings, every one of them that had more than that. So there was an advantage. We had a larger attendance and a larger participation.
But there's also disadvantages. The assembly lacks a place where the whole group comes together and prays together. Now, I think we've got to evaluate situations in the home and in the assembly by realizing that most matters of decision aren't black and white, all this or all that, but they're judgments. And with any judgment or opinion, there are reasons for and there are reasons against, and you have to weigh the reasons and try to pick the best course, and both courses have their advantage. It might be advantage to try both ways at different times. And that way, I think we get along better in our homes and in our assemblies if we try to avoid just straight black and white thinking. And so we must be concerned not only about our own interests and our own viewpoints and our own judgments as to what's best, but also as to the feelings of other people.
And our attitude should be like that of the Lord Jesus that has a little bit of give and take to it. Now let's go to the book of Genesis, chapter twelve. In verses seven and eight. This passage is about Abraham when he came out of Ur of the Chaldees and Heron and went into the promised land. And it says in verse seven, The Lord appeared unto Abram and said unto thy seed will I give this land.
And there built as he an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him. And he removed from there unto a mountain on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent. Having Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, and there he built an altar under the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord. One of the things that characterized Abraham, two of the things that characterized him whenever he was walking with the Lord, was the tent and the altar. And we have both of them here in verse eight. He pitched his tent. Tent is a symbol of our pilgrimage. we do not belong to this world we are separate from it we are pilgrims and strangers traveling through this world our lifestyle is different our society is different we don't belong to the society of this world we belong to the Lord Jesus and we are in a very real sense pilgrims and strangers here the altar speaks of our worship our worship is our separation under the Lord our tent is our pilgrimage our separation from the world and our altar is our separation unto the Lord A vital part of the Christian life is worship, worshiping the Lord.
Now, in the assembly we gathered this morning for worship and had a wonderful time of worshiping the Lord. The family at home also needs to have a time of worshiping the Lord together. And the normal mechanism for doing this is what's called the family altar or the family devotions. And I want to talk about family devotions. And I think it's so important that young families set up early in their marriage, at the beginning of their marriage, a time of family devotions. Now, maybe your marriage is well along and you don't have a time of family worship, family devotions. Well, it's not too late to start it. A very valuable and helpful thing. Let me just explain a little bit about the mechanism of family devotions and then talk a little bit about the benefits and the purposes for it.
You need to have a time, a convenient time. Most people find that meal times is the time when the family can be brought together. Which meal? Well, that will depend on the family schedules. In our home, when the children were growing up, it was the supper meal. Some people read before the meal. That's a little hard on the housewife. Sometimes it's better to read after the meal, which gives you more flexibility in time. morning or evening depending on your family schedules and when you can get the family together how long should the family devotions be keep them short so they don't become a burden but if they're put at a time like after the meal where there's a little bit of flexibility on some occasions the children will start talking and asking questions and they can go on a long while but if you make the the discipline part of it that is if you make the the regulated part the the schedule part fairly short then it doesn't become a burden.
If you have forty-five minutes of devotions after every meal, the children are going to be very unhappy about it and it's going to be quite a burden and strained. If you have five or six or seven minutes, and then once in a while it goes to forty-five, when it goes to forty-five, it'll be because they're all involved and interested. You have to... Select a Bible for family devotions. What version of the Bible shall you use? Well, one of my rules for family devotions has always been keep changing things. Variety is the spice of life. Don't get locked into one pattern for forty-seven years, but change things around a little bit. By all means, use the King James Version some of the time, because it's very beneficial in teaching children to read.
They ought to be able to handle the King James Version quite well if they're raised on it when they're young. but also at times use some of the modern translations. It's refreshing and it opens up passages. And if a King James Version is right there beside you and you're reading in one of the modern versions and you begin to see things much clearer, then you look back at the King James and lo and behold it was there all the time, but because the wording was unfamiliar or strange to us, we just didn't see it there. So variety is nice. Shall there be a Bible for every one at the table or just one Bible from which the reading is made? Either way, Some families I've been in have a Bible for every person and they start right around the table and everybody reads two verses and they go right on around through the reading.
I always like to take one Bible and read the story and then ask questions. It's very difficult to keep children alert when you're having a Bible reading. The mind goes off in every direction and you ask a question and that sort of brings them back again. what did the little boy have in his bag lunch fishes yeah how many all right we'll read it again and you go back and read it again you know and sometimes when the kids are stuck for an answer you get a very pious answer and who was it said that Jesus never go wrong an answer like that it might not even been the story but it's a nice religious answer you know So that ought to please Dad, but that didn't happen to be the case or whatever it was.
So asking questions helps hold the attention. I always like to read the story to the children and try to keep them alert by asking questions and then try to make Bible stories vivid. What portion of the Bible do you use? Well, sometimes with children, the book of Psalms, it's rather difficult. And some of the other epistles in the New Testament are difficult. But the story books like Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Genesis... judges, parts of Joshua, Samuel, very interesting books with a lot of story content and you don't just pass over the story, you start visualizing the details and make sure when you come to the book of Exodus where the baby Moses is in the basket that the children just visualize this teenage daughter standing there behind some tree waiting till somebody comes along and fishes out the basket and then they want to know that all of a sudden as soon as that basket was opened that baby cry you know And the characteristic of the Bible is that stories are not emotionalized.
They're not dramatized. They're stated in very swift, hard-fact statements, like you'll get a statement about Rebecca or Rachel, that she was a very comely person, which means very beautiful, outstandingly beautiful. But you read right over that and you never even notice it. Or David was a very handsome person. Or Saul was head and shoulders above the others. And the kids, that doesn't register to the kids unless you call them a big basketball player or something like that. Now they visualize them as real tall, you know. So you bring out the little details out of the story and make it come alive to the children. Now, the reason that we can read the Bible over and over again is because it's not dramatized.
When you watch a television program, why somebody's walking down the hall, and how do you know that there's somebody standing just inside that door down at the end that's about to pounce on them? You know it by the music, the crescendo that's building up, and you know they're in danger, and you begin to shiver, and you haven't even seen anybody behind the door yet. If there's nobody there, you're disappointed. The music just fool you. But that's the dramatic way of doing things. When you've seen the program once, that's it. You don't need to see it again because you already know who's behind the door. There's a false alarm committee next week, or whatever it was, you know. And that's the characteristic of dramatized things. You read them once, you see them once on television, that's usually enough. Maybe a second time. But with the Bible, you can go through the Bible stories over and over again because the characteristic of them is that they are not dramatized.
They're not emotionalized. You have to bring the dram out of the story. You have to make it come alive by picking out the details that are there, very carefully there. You know how Moses got his wife? Do you know that he beat up a bunch of shepherds that were picking on those girls? Well, you read the passage a dozen times. You probably never saw that it was there. Droll off a bunch of shepherds that were making these poor girls wait to water their flocks until these bullies were gone. Moses came along and drove the whole bunch of them off. And it says that in the Bible in about one sentence. And the girls went home. He watered their flocks for them. And their father said, how come you're home so early today? And they told him, we said, why didn't you invite that fellow for dinner? They went back and got him. He married the girl. Now, it's beautiful.
It's in the Bible. But it's so easy to pass these things by by not watching the details of Bible stories. So when you read the Bible in family devotions, you dramatize it a little bit. You bring it out. You make it come alive. And you don't have to add in details that aren't there. They are there. Watch them with careful reading. So, take a portion of the Bible. Now, a lot of people like to use a daily guide, like Dehan's Daily Bread or Daily Light and Choice Gleanings Calendar, Bible Story Books, Scripture Union Notes, all of them helpful and can be used. But the essential part is to have Bible reading, and my preference has always been to have continued Bible reading and go through a book of the Bible a little section at a time.
And then you have prayer. And there's a lot of ways you can do that, too. A single prayer. By the Father, it's really the best if the Father leads the daily devotions. Or you can ask someone to pray. Or you can have several prayers. You can have sentence prayers. Or you can pray around the table. And we used the Kleenex box method. We used to cut the top out of a Kleenex box. And we would collect missionary prayer cards. And we would just put the cards in the box. Whenever we got a new missionary prayer card, we put it in the box. And then it'd come time to pray at the end of the Bible reading. We'd take the first, there were five of us, the first five cards out of the box and pass them around and each person had a card. And then we would go around the table and each one would pray for the missionary on that card.
And then we would put those five cards at the back of the pile. And sometimes that pile got pretty thick and it was a while to cycle around. And sometimes we had two cards from the same missionary. We saw them twice. But it doesn't matter. What's different? It worked very nice. It got the children involved in praying for missionaries. Use of the Home Workers' Book and the Foreign Workers' Book can be helpful. You have a page for every day of the month and you select one or two names from that page and pray for that person. It gives you little topics for prayer. But the two essentials of devotions are the reading of the Word of God and prayer. And with that bare outline, you can vary it into all kinds of combinations. Go along three months one way, change it to something else.
And you find that it's very beneficial. It's beneficial, Godward, because God receives worship. It's beneficial, worldward, because there's prayer going out for unsaved people, for missionaries, for neighbors. It's beneficial, individually, because there's fellowship with God and knowledge of the Word. It's beneficial, family-wise, because it binds a family together. It gives the father the place of leadership in the home. It gives the children a base of security. They have something. Now, our experience, we lived in Prince Edward Island when the children were young. And I was very worried that if we had Bible reading after supper when the kids wanted to go out and play, that they would get abuse from the neighbor kids or they would be embarrassed.
And one day the doorbell rang just as we were starting Bible reading. So I said, one of the children at the door, and I said, it was a neighbor boy. I said, invite him in, tell him to sit there on the living room floor. There was a little step down to the hallway. Invite him to sit there and just tell him you'll be out in a few minutes. So he sat there. Next night, the doorbell rang at the same time. It was back. And the next night. And we began to realize... that the neighbor children when they discovered this they wanted to get in on it because they didn't have anything like that at home and this was unique and it was when our kids realized that this was something special to their friends that they began to appreciate it a little more they say hey we've got something here they don't have it's wonderful and they like that so it gives children a base of family security and you know if I could risk saying something that could be misinterpreted I'll do it it really wouldn't matter for some of these benefits if you read one of Robert Louis Stevenson's novels instead of the Bible you still have the same effect family-wise you could take a book a good secular book and read to the children every day and you draw the family together and you get many of the family benefits now I wouldn't do it that way I sometimes I
did read stories but I read them in addition to the Bible reading but what I'm saying is that the the thing here family-wise is that you do bring the family together There's a devotional benefit for the children. There's worship. There's an educational benefit. You teach them the Bible. You teach them the principle of honoring God. And you also keep children at the table. You go out to dinner sometimes and there's kids at the table. And it amazes me sometimes how those kids ever disappear from the table. One minute they're there, one minute they're gone. And I never saw them go. It's just like the rapture or something. They're gone. They don't get out from the chair and leave behind the table. They go down under or somewhere. And you look the other way, pass, pass, pass the butter. And when you're back, they're gone. And in homes today, many homes today, there really is no pattern of staying at a meal until the meal is over.
People eat and run. Off to the television, off to the sports, off to something else. And there is a lot of benefit to the family to have a system that says to the children, you stay here till we're all dismissed. And that's one of the benefits of a family devotional period. It keeps the children at the table, keeps them together with the family. So it's part of our altar, our family altar. Now let me say a word about discipline. Time is almost gone. I just want to say a little bit about discipline in the home. The purpose of discipline in the home is to deal with rebellion. Rebellion is normal for a child. It's a part of growing up.
Every child needs to have a certain amount of rebellion. Rebellion is when you become an adult, when you say, I'm going to do things my own way. I'm not going to do everything my mom and dad says. I'm going to make my own decisions. That's a normal growing up process. And the purpose of discipline is not to break the will, but to channel it into submission to Jesus Christ. To turn that will around to the place where it follows the Lord Jesus. The purpose of discipline is to deal with rebellion and not so much to produce submission as to produce loyalty. It's to bring the children to the place where they're loyal to the home and loyal to the family and loyal to the Bible and loyal to the Lord.
Family devotions is a very vital part of family discipline. It teaches the family unit. If it's not overdone, if it's not too heavy a load, it creates this loyalty, it creates this sense of security, it teaches family responsibility, and I might say it's a mistake to gear everything in family devotions to the littlest child of the family. And I've been in homes. where the family devotions is a process of lowering the intellectual level of the family to the intellectual level of the youngest child, and everything is explained at the child's level, and everything is read at the child's level, and I'm telling you, it's awfully tedious for an adult to sit through things that are put everything on the child's level.
There's nothing in it for the adult. Now, the trouble with that for the child is that it makes the child self-centered, pampered. Everything is for him. I'm the center of attention in this home, and that's obvious from the family devotions that little me, five years old, I'm the center of everything. And that's wrong. You see, God is the center of attention in family devotions. And the child needs to understand some of the devotions, but not all of the devotions. The spiritual needs of mom and dad are important. And there's a give and take again. It's a family at worship. And there ought to be something in the devotional period for the child. And there ought to be something in the devotional period for the adult during which the child sits quietly. Which brings me to the subject of the discipline of the Lord's table.
And the same principle applies. The Lord's table is a wonderful discipline for children. Now, I personally believe that it's good to start children at the Lord's table when they are young. I realize that some families feel differently about this, and discipline in different homes will be different, and you may not do it the way we did it, that's fine. The important thing is there be discipline there in one form or another. Our youngest daughter started at the Lord's table when she was six days old. You've got to be born on a Monday to do that, of course, and if you're born on a Friday, your mother can't very well have you there two days later, so it's a combination that's hard to beat. but that's what we have done in our family right from the beginning and you go through the stages where they have to be carried out because they cry and they get a little older then and then noise they can be dealt with about noise and you go through the stage where they have to be taken out and spanked and brought back if you don't bring them back well then they have achieved their purpose even at the cost of a spanking so you bring them back and of course I know there are some very strong willed children that some of these little things I'm talking about don't work very well for I had one of those strong will children and all the rules and regulations fall apart with some of them but it is a good discipline for a child
to sit quietly at the Lord's table I was sitting over in this section this morning and noticing that that there were some well-disciplined children there. Active, full of life, moving around a little bit, you know, but responding to mom or dad when they were spoken to and pretty well behaved. And I thought, I think to myself, you know, that's why the Lord's table and the meeting is a discipline. You can overdo it. It's where it becomes a drudgery to the child. But it's a good thing for a child to sit at a meeting when the meeting is way over the head of the child because then the child realizes life is not centered around me. It's centered around God. And when I grow up, I'll be like my mom and dad and I'll worship the Lord and I'll understand it all too.
Rules and regulations in the family are a part of discipline. There's two good ways to generate juvenile delinquency and that's to have too many rules or too few rules. And I look back in my childhood, I was not raised in an evangelical home. I was raised in a home that had some evangelical things in the background and my folks didn't drink or smoke. They did play bridge. They did go to movies and think anything about going to movies where evangelical people in those days didn't go to movies. But I remember that in our family, we didn't go to movies on Sundays. I went every Saturday afternoon to watch the cowboy picture in the local theater, but we never went on Sundays. And whenever I'd asked my father, why don't we go to movies on Sundays, the answer was always, well, in our family, we don't go to movies on Sundays.
Because the only answer I ever got. And as I look back on it, it seems to me that that was a very satisfying explanation. That when kids would say to me, why don't you go to movies on Sundays? Well, in my family, we don't go to movies on Sunday. What do you got to show in your family like that, huh? See, there's a bit of security in a thing like that. There's a family distinctiveness there. There's a sense of having something that is distinctive of this family. So the type of rules and regulations you make in your family, just exactly what the rules are are not all that important. Your rules may be different than the next Christian's rules, but it's important to have some standards.
It's important to have some things that belong to your family. It's important in some cases to explain. When I asked my father why he didn't smoke, he explained that to me. And he explained that to me so carefully that I never wanted to smoke. I never smoked in my life. Because he explained it out to me. But when it came to why we didn't go to movies on Sunday, that's all I told him. In our family, we don't go to movies on Sunday. We need any more than that now. So, you see, security for a child... is hinged on the concept that I have parents that care, that care about what I do. I pity the young girl who is raised up with a dad who doesn't care who she goes out with, where she goes, when she comes in at night, who doesn't care at all.
It's the opposite extreme from living under the rule of a tyrant and that the right path is somewhere in the middle. Well, I have talked about discipline and I haven't even mentioned punishment. Punishment is only a part of discipline. There's a lot of discipline besides spankings and punishment. We've spoken about a child-centered home and the danger of that. There is a tragedy, of course, in homes where there is a failure to punish. There has to be some punishment. Psychologically it's bad for a child if there's no punishment because they think nobody cares what I do. Worse than that, you lie to your children about God if you never give them a spanking or never give them any punishment because you represent God to your children.
And don't misrepresent Him. God punishes sinners. God sends sinners to hell. And if you raise your children up with the concept that there is no punishment, you're lying about God. You're lying about life in life. Actions bring consequences and wrongdoing brings punishment. So we do have to punish children. We have to punish them with reason and with care, of course. Concluding thoughts then on family discipline. Its purpose is to prepare a child for life, to teach him what life is like. If you give him whatever he wants, you harm him. Life is not like that. It's to enable him to discipline himself and exercise self-control. A relationship to God is in the long run the most important aspect of life.
And the discipline of the Lord's table and the discipline of family devotions is part of that relationship to God. The key to discipline is the balance. To keep the balance of what God is. God is love, but God also gave the Ten Commandments. So there's a balance between love and rules. God punishes, but God also forgives, and there's a balance between those things. And parents must stand to their children as God, not vice versa. We must not misrepresent God by being too hard or by being too soft. If the assembly is important to the Lord, then it's got to be important to us. And we teach our children the importance of faithfulness. by bringing them to the assembly meetings regularly.
And sometimes, mom, that means getting clothes ready on Friday and getting chores done on Saturday and early to bed Saturday night. You have to plan ahead for some of those things, but you teach children their priorities by what your priorities are. Well, I'm going to stop at that point. Shall we bow in prayer? Father, we thank you for the opportunity to bring into our homes the discipline of daily devotions, the discipline of the Lord's table. of guidance for the children.