Welcome to the Grace in Focus podcast. Today, Bob Wilkin and David Renfro are answering a question about God disciplining His children. How does He do it and why does He do it? Isn’t child discipline a measure of valuing children? That covers the why, but how does He do it? Have you ever experienced this? We hope you’ll keep on listening and keep Grace in focus!
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SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome to Grace in Focus, the radio broadcast and podcast of the Grace Evangelical Society. We are discussing and answering the questions, how and why does God discipline believers today? So stay tuned. We’d also love you to go to our website, faithalone.org, and get registered for our annual national conference coming up soon. It is at Camp Copas in North Texas. We’d love for you to come May 19th through the 22nd. Find out all the details. Get registered at faithalone.org. By the way, First Timers registration fee is waived. That’s faithalone.org. Now with our question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and David Renfro.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right, the question we’re going to deal with is from Brad. And Brad says, how and why does God discipline believers today? What do you think?
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, that’s a good question. How and why does God discipline believers today? Let’s break that into two parts. The first part is how. Well, how, but I’m going to answer the why first.
SPEAKER 02 :
Oh, okay.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let’s say that you’re dealing with a good parent. I mean, not all parents are good parents. Oh, go on with you. We had good parents. But anyway, assuming we’re dealing with good parents, why would they discipline their children? What value is there to disciplining children? Well, wouldn’t you think from Proverbs that if we don’t discipline our children, that we hurt our children and that we don’t love our children? He who spares the rod spoils the child.
SPEAKER 02 :
And you do not want to spoil a child in a culture like ours that says… Whatever you want to do is fine with me.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. If a parent loves a child, a parent is going to train a child. That was part of the Shema of Israel, right? You’re to train up your children whenever, wherever you’re going with them, whenever you’re with them, you’re training up. The New Testament has the same thing, that fathers aren’t to provoke their children to wrath, but to bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord. Yeah. The idea is parents are to train their children, and part of that training is disciplining them. And telling them, do not do whatever. Right. And if you do whatever, then there are consequences. Now, it used to be when we were growing up that spanking was a thing. Today, spanking still exists, but people are extremely cautious because they don’t want to spank overly aggressively.
SPEAKER 02 :
So they, you know, there’s child abuse issues.
SPEAKER 01 :
Right. Well, especially with child protective services and that sort of thing. So people today spank less than they used to, or if they do spank, they spank very, very gently. I mean, I remember when I was in elementary school, we used to go to the principal’s office and the principal would spank us. Today, oh no, no teacher or principal or anybody else is going to spank children. But the reason that children were spanked when we were growing up and the reason some still spank today is because they love the child. I’m not denying the fact that there are abusive parents that go beyond spanking and they’re actually hurting their child. But normal spanking is a good thing for children. I remember we had a Serbian relative. We used to go over to their house and they had two older children and then they had a surprise boy.
SPEAKER 02 :
Surprise boy.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. There’s a pretty big age gap between the second daughter and their only son. This son was, I don’t know, maybe 10 years younger than the other two. And anyway, this boy was a holy terror. And I’m using holy in the bad way here. He was totally undisciplined. And his parents did not discipline him, and therefore he had no restraint. And when we would go over there, my dad would get furious with this boy. We’ve all seen children who grew up in a home where it was whatever you want to do, do it. Well, if you let a child raise themselves, they’re not going to do a very good job. Let’s just say they lack wisdom to know what to do. So in terms of the why, why does God discipline believers? Why does he discipline his children? The answer is because he loves them.
SPEAKER 02 :
Based on my studies of the Old Testament, and you can apply this, I think, to kids, there’s three things that the Lord did for Israel. Number one, he delivered them. Yes. Then he protected them, and he provided for them. Oh, that’s good. Especially if you read Exodus, you know, he did all three in that one book. To me, discipline, child discipline, and God’s discipline of us is to protect and to provide. When a parent says to the kid, do not ride your bicycle on I-35. Yeah.
SPEAKER 01 :
I-35 is a major freeway here in Dallas. Exactly.
SPEAKER 02 :
And it’s very dangerous. People are driving 80 and 90 miles an hour. Well, the speed limit is a suggestion. And a lot of Texans don’t take to suggestions. No, we don’t take no suggestions. We know better. But like I say, don’t play in the street. What are you trying to do? You’re trying to protect them. So the rules are meant to protect and to provide. And I think that’s what God does with his people. When they decide to go off, you know, way out in the left field somewhere, there’s potential danger. And I think when the Lord says, don’t go there, don’t do that, he’s trying to protect them and to provide the best life possible. And sometimes he has to use pain to get their attention to actually come through and not do what God is telling them to avoid.
SPEAKER 03 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
And sometimes he has to use pain to get their attention to actually come through and not do what God is telling them to avoid.
SPEAKER 01 :
That’s a good point. I remember when I was in the doctoral program, I got to take a course from the Old Testament department because they let us pick and take a certain amount of electives in the doctoral program. And I took Leviticus by Alan Ross. Mm-hmm. And because it was a doctoral program, we had to write bigger papers than the THM students would. So I did all of Leviticus 26, which is this seven cycles of judgment with increasing judgment. But it starts out with obedience. The first 14 verses are, if you obey me, I’m going to bless you. And it talks about all these blessings God was going to give his people Israel. But then it gets into, if you don’t hear my voice, if you don’t obey me, then I’m going to bring curses. And there’s one first level of curses, and then they get worse, and two, three, four, five, six, seven. And then the chapter ends with, but Israel will eventually repent. And when it does, I’m going to return to her, and I’m going to love her again. And that chapter, as well as Deuteronomy 28, are key chapters in the Old Testament regarding this motif of blessings and cursings. That’s the point. God’s discipline not only includes the curses, doesn’t it also include the blessings?
SPEAKER 02 :
Absolutely. In fact, I think it goes even further than that. Of course, this is a paraphrase on my part. But so many times in the Old Testament, the Lord simply tells his children, Israel, just do what I tell you and I will take care of the rest. I’ll protect you from your enemies.
SPEAKER 01 :
Nike Israelites, just do what I tell you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Just do it.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. But, you know, I think God is telling them that just do what I tell you to do. I’ll protect you from your enemies. I’ll give you a wonderful, prosperous lifestyle in the land that I promised to you. I’ll take care of all that. All they had to do was depend on him rather than say, and this is what I call the battle cry of the sinful human. I have a better idea.
SPEAKER 01 :
Better than the creator. Better than the creator, yeah. Better than the one who’s all-knowing. Right. He doesn’t understand, right?
SPEAKER 02 :
I have a better plan. His plan doesn’t sound like fun, but I’ve got a better plan.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right, now let’s hit part two. How does God discipline believers? How does he discipline his children? Well, we’ve already touched on this. One way he does it is by bringing about various curses in the life of the believer. And these could start with being very small things, like just your conscience bothers you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Sleepless nights.
SPEAKER 01 :
Sleepless nights. But it could be just not even whole nights. It’s just you do something, you feel guilty about it, you confess it, you move on. But it could be longer, right? Like you say, it could go on for days or whatever. But the other thing is it could be all kinds of things like illness. 1 Corinthians 11.30, because of this, some of you are sick and some sleep. So sickness can be a result of sin in the life of a believer. And there can be financial reversals. There can be accidents. There can be family issues that occur, all kinds of things. But then the other part of it is God also blesses the believer as part of his discipline and training process. When we do the right thing, he brings about blessings in our life, which sometimes might be material, but for the most part are things like the fruit of the Spirit.
SPEAKER 02 :
So, yeah, you know, peace of mind or something. I’m reminded of something C.S. Lewis said in The Problem of Pain. Yeah. And I love this. He says, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience. And shouts to us in our pain. Yes. Pain is God’s megaphone to a deaf world. Wow. And I love that. That is good. And I think that’s appropriate here. He’s got to get our attention in order to protect and to provide.
SPEAKER 01 :
It’s certainly true in all aspects of athletics. No pain, no gain. No gain. Absolutely. Like I do race walking and even marathons, half marathons. And in order to be able to do 26.2 miles or 13.1 miles to walk for six hours or three hours, I’ve got to train. And a lot of that’s painful. It’s not easy. It’s long hours out there walking. I mean, I enjoy it, but still it’s effort. In fact, right now I’ve got… I’ve got an ice pack on my ankle because yesterday I was out walking and I tripped over. I was going over some railroad tracks and stepped on a rock and kind of sprained my ankle. So it’s not too bad. But, you know, it’s just part of the experience. If you’re going to even walk, you’re going to have a certain amount of pain. Sure. But in any regard, I love your question, Brad. How and why does God discipline? Why? Because he loves us. He loves us. How does he discipline us? There’s a variety of ways. Some are painful. Some are very blessed. But either way, God is moving us toward holiness. He wants us to share in his holiness because that’s good for us in this life. Mm-hmm. And it’s going to be good for us in the life to come because the more we serve him faithfully now, the more faithfully we’ll be able to serve him then. Those who are faithful will rule with Christ. And how faithful we are will depend on how much we rule. Right. So great question, Brad. And in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus. Yes.
SPEAKER 03 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
The preceding has been a listener supported ministry from the Grace Evangelical Society.
