I am going to continue today the subject that I began three weeks ago when I last spoke. But I think that there is no doubt that one of the most important responsibilities that we have had given to us is the rearing of godly children and I believe that it is the most difficult task even under the best of circumstances. And I think that we have as a witness (to that last statement anyway) is the fact of Adam and Eve. They managed somehow to rear a murderer and they did it without any television sets, they did it without any peer pressure, there were no gangs running on the street, there was no drug scene that they had to fight against. But somehow or another, they managed to rear Cain, who murdered his own brother Abel.
I think that ought to give you some sort of an idea of how difficult rearing a child is. You may think that it is the world that has everything to blame for our children turning out the way that they do. But the Bible shows otherwise; that Adam and Eve were able to rear a delinquent without any help from the outside world at all.
What does that mean to you in terms of trying to rear a child here in this 20th century AD? In the United States of America we have just gone through the most sweeping social changes that any nation has ever gone through in such a short period of time. And we do have a drug scene. We do have an awful lot of peer pressure that is not any good at all out there. We do have television and movies that certainly are not a good influence on the minds of our children. We do have things that can impact in a very negative way on our families very, very greatly.
Now, I have mentioned to you before that I believe that the United States has changed so drastically in the last 30 or 35 years that anyone who has lived through it without having some sort of an idea of what it was like before 1950, let us say, or 1955 at the latest, if you had no idea of what it was like by having actually lived up until that period of time, you cannot even begin to appreciate the changes that have taken place in the United States. I am talking about social changes and what I am concerned about is, that once the change becomes ingrained, it becomes the tradition of the people. It becomes something that is just accepted, it just blends right into our way of life and we accept it as the going thing. And indeed it is the going thing.
But what we need to consider is, it the right thing? I am concerned because you and I have come through the 60s and the 70s when a great number of these social changes took place and we have, during that period of time, created a generation of children who did not live before those sweeping changes took place.
I have an article that is in my briefcase (and I neglected to bring it up to bring it up here), but it is entitled "Selfish Eighties: Parents Are Robbing Us of Our Future." It was written in kind of a flamboyant style. I unfortunately do not know the source of it because whenever I clipped it out, I neglected to write it down. It may have come out of Midnight Magazine for all I know, which is really not all that reputable, but the thought behind the author was that we have very largely as a nation, abandoned the rearing of our children to paid groups.
He starts off by saying that he was surprised to find out that there is now already prepackaged, already made up care packages that you can send to your children when they are away at camp. In other words, some entrepreneur has seen that there is a need and he has moved to fill that need so that you do not even have to be involved in the sending of a love package or a care package to your child who happens to be off at camp. And he goes on to say that we progressed from simply warehousing kids during the summer months to paying strangers to send them care packages, tokens of love we are too busy to assemble ourselves. He says parents of the 80s (this is a generalization, of course), do not have time for their children. They are too busy seeking the good life via hot tubs, VCRs, self-discovery sessions, and Club Med vacations.
Evidently he has been looking at a different group of people than then we are. Most of us cannot afford Club Med vacations. You may have a VCR and you may qualify there, but I do not think very many of you are going to self-discovery sessions and if you are, I am wondering why and maybe you need a visit. Maybe we could call this a self-discovery session right here. But he says kids are kept at arm's length, tiny tots are parked in daycare centers while mothers pursue their careers. For older children, there are a variety of after school activities to keep them out of mom's hair. And on those rare occasions when they are home, kids are segregated from their elders in play rooms filled with toys or bedrooms replete with television sets and home computers.
Now, this laissez-faire attitude toward child rearing is an outgrowth of the 60s mentality. Children had to be given the freedom to develop their own personalities, it was maintained. That is important to this sermon because if a child is left to himself, does it not say in the Proverbs that he is going to grow up and bring his mother to shame? No, it is the parents' responsibility to rear their children. And what we saw in Malachi 2:16 is that God wants for marriage godly seed. That means that child rearing is a full time, hands-on responsibility that cannot be given to the care of others. If you give a child to the care of others, then that other is going to impress his personality, his way, his standards and ideals, his sensitivities, his attitudes, or whatever upon that child. And when that child begins to get old enough to really express himself, you are going to see an outbreak of this other person who had the hands-on experience with your child.
He says, previous generations viewed procreation and parenthood as a duty. Having children was the fulfillment of a religious obligation. And then he has in parenthesis (the biblical mandate), as well as a commitment to the future. The 60s/70s generation has an entirely different outlook. They are parents by choice, a noble-sounding designation that usually masks an ambivalent attitude toward parenting. It stands to reason that those who opt for parenthood can also choose the degree of effort they put into it.
Now, you need to think about that. How much effort, how much time, how much energy are you putting into the rearing of your children? When children become a hindrance to self-fulfillment, they can be ignored or consigned to the care of strangers. To a very large degree that is what has happened in the United States. And as I mentioned before, that once a change becomes integrated in society, it becomes the acceptable way of doing things. I do not know whether you realize it, but that is largely how Christmas and Easter got into what is today, Christianity. It came in gradually through the generations until finally it was accepted as part of a way of life, and of course wrongly so.
This article is concerned with preparing children for citizenship in the United States of America. Now, our primary concern has to be the preparation of children who are good citizens of the Kingdom of God. And I think that you would agree that if we prepare them with the Kingdom of God in mind then they are also going to be good citizens of the United States of America as well.
Turn with me to Philippians 3, verses 19 and 20 where there is an interesting word that bears on the remainder of the sermon. We are breaking into the middle of a sentence here as we begin.
Philippians 3:19 [Paul says] whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things.
Now you can see from this article (if you would read the entire thing) that that is what he is accusing the 80s parents of doing, of setting their mind on earthly things while they hand over the responsibility of rearing their children to somebody who has been hired to do so. They are parents by choice and therefore they feel that they are at liberty to give as much or as little time to the rearing of those children as they see fit. And so they have set their mind on earthly things. Now that presents a contrast for verse 20 that is important to you and me in regard to the rearing of our children.
Philippians 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
This word translated in my Bible "citizenship" and in your King James, if you happen to have one of them, it will be translated "conversation" or "conduct." It comes from the Greek politeuma and it means citizenship. That is its proper translation. It is the same word from which we get our modern English word "politics." Our politics is in heaven or our citizenship is in heaven. What Paul is saying in this verse is that heaven, or the Kingdom of God in this case, is the focus of all of our operations. Now, the words here in the Greek, the whole sentence here, is very intense and it indicates a withdrawal from all else to the achievement of attaining to the Kingdom of God or the preparation for the return of Jesus Christ, to make it a little bit more accurate. A withdrawal from all else to focus on preparation for Christ's coming.
I mentioned at the end of the last sermon that to love our children is to prepare them for life. That is child rearing's focus, to prepare a child to leave the house, to be a good citizen. Now, our specific focus has to be the preparation of godly seed. God is indicating here the Kingdom of God, not just ordinarily preparing them for citizenship in the United States of America. But God is looking beyond that, that these children might become citizens of the Kingdom of God. So our responsibility, then, is to be their primary teachers from the time they are born, coming into this world knowing nothing, until they leave the house maybe 20, 21 years later. They should be prepared and be as mature as we can possibly make them.
I am going to have to define some terms at this point so please bear with me. You may not want to write everything down. You can look them up in your own dictionary later. But I think it is necessary at this point.
First of all, the word 'citizen.' A citizen is "a person owing allegiance to and entitled to the services of a government." Now, we are concerned about the Kingdom of God. We are also concerned about the family. So a citizen then is a person owing allegiance to a family or owing allegiance to the Kingdom of God and therefore is entitled to the services of that government, the Kingdom of God or the family. Citizenship is defined as "possessing the rights of a citizen." Now, what I thought was so interesting is that the dictionary that I looked these up in went on to say that its quality, that is, citizenship's quality, is measured by the individual's response to the community's government.
Citizenship's quality, that is, being in a family, is measured by the child, the person's response to the community's government. Brethren, the first community that a child comes in contact with is the home.
Now, government. We find that "government is the form by which a community is managed." And so a family has to be managed, businesses have to be managed, nations have to be managed, and we call that government. Another definition would be "the authoritative direction of a community." In other words, there is a power that is guiding or leading a community in a certain direction. If you apply that to a family, that power is primarily in the father and secondarily in the mother and using their authority, an authority that has been given to them by God. It is very clear, right? In the commandment, it says that we are to honor our father and mother. There is power in that and God has given a father and mother power to authoritatively lead their children, not to let the children grow up free to develop their own personality, but to train them. That is what Proverbs 22:6 says.
That word 'train' means to "narrow in," "hedge them in," make them walk the straight and narrow is what God is saying there. Narrow is the way, you see, that leads to the Kingdom of God. Broad is the way that leads to destruction. So, God has given authority to a parent to effectively lead a family in a direction. There is government there.
Now, every government has a leader. We can use the word governor, and a governor is a regulating force or a device. Some of you have driven automobiles or trucks sometime in your life that had a governor on it. And what this governor did is it regulated the amount of speed that you could get out of that particular automobile. Maybe they wanted to keep you under 55 miles an hour so they put some kind of device on the carburetor or whatever and try as you might, you could not get the thing to go over 55 miles an hour because there is a governor authoritatively regulating the speed of that engine and forcing it so that it cannot go any faster than that.
I can remember when I worked in the steel mill, we had two huge steam engines way larger than a locomotive. Each one of those was about the size of two locomotives in tandem. And what those steam engines did is that they produced blasts for the blast furnaces. Well, each one of those steam engines had a governor on it and the governor consisted of nothing more than three iron balls that were circulating on the end of shafts and they were spinning around like this. They were attached to some kind of a gear or camshaft on the steam engine. And as the engines kept going faster and faster, the balls would begin to swing out. When they swung all the way out, they shut off the steam and the engine would shut down.
They did that because in those days, steam engines had a propensity for running away. And every once in a while—this is no kidding—they would run away and they would actually throw the flywheel off and the flywheel, believe it or not, was taller than this room and about this wide. It was solid steel, and when one of those things would take off it did a great deal of destruction. The governor regulated the speed of that steam engine.
Now, all you have to do is feed that back into a family and you begin to see illustrated for you what a leader is supposed to do. A leader gives authoritative direction and it governs not only the direction, the speed, and everything else in which the government is moving the people along.
Government is important to you and me because it is the basic subject of the Bible. Now we are looking at it today in the sense of (this sermon anyway), the development of children and government has to be used in the development of children or they are not going to have much personality that you put into them if you do not use the government.
Now is government subject to analysis? That is, can you break government down into its simple parts and say what government or management consists of? Can government be reduced to a formula? You see, as in chemistry? Well, we shall see.
Analyze is the process of resolving a problem into its first elements or the determination of the presence and nature of a thing's ingredients. I am going to have to give you another definition here and that is of the word chemistry. "Chemistry is the science that deals with the characteristics of elements or simple substances." We are going to try to analyze government. We are trying to analyze management, break it down into simple things, simple principles by which we may be able to govern or manage the rearing of our children a little bit more effectively.
Now, chemistry is the science that deals with the characteristics of elements or simple substances, the changes that take place when they combine, that is, when these simple elements combine to form other substances and the laws of their combinations and behavior under various conditions. We will see this demonstrated as we go along here.
At first, we are confronted with a difficulty because chemistry is precise and government is not, at least it does not seem to be precise. There seems to be a great deal of art involved in government. And indeed, we are going to see that there is a great deal of art that is involved in government.
But is it possible to at least get some kind of a general idea of what are the primary or fundamental or basic elements of government? Well, government is never going to be as precise as chemistry, but I think we can do enough of a job generalizing to help us to see what the main elements are and what kind of reaction we are going to get if we happen to govern by any of these elements. Now, almost everything is subject to analysis. That is, the breaking down into a simple parts. Almost everything can be broken down and we will find that almost everything that we are aware of is actually made of much simpler things.
For example, this Book. I do not know how many words are in there. I do not know how many chapters. I know that there is quite a number of books here and it is an awfully thick one and it is a very difficult book to understand. In fact, the very great multitude of people that have ever lived, billions upon billions of them that have read this Book or read some portion of this Book, have never been able to really figure it out. It is a very complex Book to them. But that Book God has, at least as far as we are able to see, divided into two parts: there is an Old Testament and a New Testament. Now, not only that, He has broken it down a little bit further in order to make it better for you and me so that each book is divided into chapters. See, each time we break it down, it becomes a little bit more precise and understanding it becomes a little bit easier.
Now, not only that, but each chapter can be broken down into subheadings as well. And if you have a modern Bible, you can see that there are sub-topics within chapters. In addition to that, each of those sub-topics can be broken down into paragraphs. And in each paragraph, the subject is more specific than it was in the subtopic or in the chapter. In addition to that, each paragraph can be broken down into a sentence or a number of sentences. And in each sentence, there is more specific understanding than there was in the generality of the paragraph or the subtopic or the chapter or the New Testament or the entire Book. In addition to that, you can break down each sentence into words, individual words. And when we finally get it broken down into its simplest parts, we find that each word is made up of A, B, C, D, and E.
You can do that with any book, you can break it down into very simple parts. And the more specifically you break it down, the clearer the teaching begins to become.
Another example. God has simplified the gigantic and complex field of relationships. Of man with God and man with man to 10 laws, the Ten Commandments. He has additionally broken them down into two great laws, you shall love God above all and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And in addition to that, He has actually broken down into its simplest form how to deal with one another in the one term, love. See, it has been broken down into its simplest form.
The same thing could be said for a symphony. We just heard some beautiful music. I dare say that if most of us would look at the score to that music, we would see a groups of lines across a piece of paper and on those lines are imprinted all kinds of other squiggly lines. Some of them would be hollow. Some of them would be hollow with no flags on them. We would see some of them with several different flags on. But unless you understood the language, why you could not really understand too much about what that music was about. But even beautiful symphonies, beautiful orchestral pieces, choral pieces, or whatever can actually be broken down into very simple things: do re mi fa so la ti do—a scale.
Now, that is the point. It is the understanding of the simplest parts that make the possibility of producing beautiful music or a great literary work or whatever. So why can government not be analyzed? Why can it not be broken down? Why can it not be arranged into a few elementary parts and then those parts rearranged and put in combination with one another? Well, that is what we are going to do today.
Regardless of the seeming complexity of government or of managing, whatever term you want to use, there are three main elements either to governing or allowing oneself to be governed. Now, these are not in order of importance, they are just in the order that I happen to put them down.
Number one is the expectation of reward. That has to be a part of a governmental strategy or a managerial strategy. There has to be a reward, a hope that is held out to those who are governed. Number two, there also has to be the fear of disadvantage or we might put the fear of punishment. And number three, there has to be, I am going to use the term, charisma. Charisma is defined as the qualities of an individual or institution that evoke the voluntary allegiance, dedication, and loyalty of others.
I want to show you at the beginning here that these appear in the Bible; very clearly they appear. We are going to begin in Deuteronomy the 28th chapter and beginning in verse 1. This is the Blessings and Cursings chapter and two of the principles are very clearly stated here.
Deuteronomy 28:1 "Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth."
Now, there is the expectation or the hope of reward that, if you will just obey Me, I am going to reward you by making you the great nation on the face of the earth.
Deuteronomy 28:2-4 "And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the Lord your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country. Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground, and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock.
You think there is not the hope of reward there? God says, if you will just obey Me, I will make you wealthy. Well, who is not going to allow himself to be managed with that kind of hope that is held out? Well, you would be surprised.
Deuteronomy 28:9-10 "The Lord will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. Then all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they shall be afraid of you."
Boy, how many times have you wished somebody was afraid of you? But God will add that blessing.
Deuteronomy 28:15-18 "But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, and the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks."
Deuteronomy 28:20 "The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me."
There is the other side of the coin as well. The fear of disadvantage, anxiety, pain, discouragement, and we might just draw that right out to the Lake of Fire, put a spiritual connotation on it. So God is not against putting somebody at a fear of disadvantage. As you can see, it is intended to manage people, to evoke their voluntary allegiance.
Now, what about charisma? Does God evoke our loyalty by the qualities of His personality? Remember what I just give you gave you in the way of a definition? "The qualities of an individual or institution that evoke the voluntary allegiance, dedication, and loyalty of others." Now turn back with me to I John 4. We will not touch on this one very hard at this time, but it says very clearly in verse 19 that we love Him because He first loved us. Because God does evoke in us a voluntary allegiance and loyalty to Him. We love Him because of what He did, because of what He is.
I John 4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Not only that, He intends us to be evoked into loyalty and dedication and kindness and generosity and affection toward other human beings as well because of what He is. Not because of what they are, but because of what He is. But God certainly uses His charismatic powers to influence us in that direction. And so do parents need to use this in the management of their children.
Now, before we get started here, there is one more thing that I want to add and that is that it is possible to achieve sometimes radically different results or effects whenever we combine different elements together. One of the clearest illustrations, let us say in the material world, is in the producing of water. Water consists of two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen—H20. Now hydrogen all by itself is highly inflammable. It is explosive and in the presence of oxygen and all it takes is a little spark to get it started. Boom! Everything that is around it goes up in flame. Those of you who are older remember the Hindenburg crashing. That was a hydrogen filled balloon or dirigible, zeppelin, or whatever we want to call it.
So hydrogen is highly explosive and oxygen supports combustion. But when we put these two items together, one highly explosive and the other forming or supporting combustion, we get something that puts out fires. As long as you put it together in the right mix, you get water which will put out a fire. On the one hand, you can drown in water, but oxygen is the breath of life. So you have one by itself that supports life. You put it together with another thing, it can either be a life-saving element or it can be something in which a person can drown.
So radically differing results or effects can be achieved when you put these elements of reward and fear and charisma together.
Now you also have to bear with me as I go through this, that of necessity I have to speak in generalizations. The reason I have to speak in generalizations is because of what happens in the real world. Nobody will use one of these elements all by its own. But we have to begin with an explanation of the simplest elements and then we will begin to form them together, and when we begin to form them together, join them together in combination, we are going to see types of child rearing practices that are more similar to what we are accustomed to.
I have shortened the elements into reward, fear, and charisma. We are going to look at reward on its own and then reward combined with fear and charisma. That is three of them. Then we are going to look at fear on its own and then that combined with charisma. That is five. And then charisma on its own. That is number six. And then reward, fear, and charisma all combined. That is number seven.
First of all, the chemistry of reward. Now, this is an attempt to get cooperation solely by playing on a person's or a child's desire to get. If we strip away the façade, this is nothing more than management or government by bribery. And what it does is, it produces the shattered character of a spoiled brat. He is rewarded or bribed to go to bed, to get up, to go to school, to do his homework, to feed the dog, to kick out the cat, to shut the door, to make his bed, to clean up his room, to do some shopping, on and on it goes. And always there has to be the appeal of the manager that if you will do this, I will give or do something for you in return. And so what we are doing here is we are bribing this child into reluctant cooperation.
Now, given a decade of this, by the outset of puberty about the age of 13 or 14, the policy begins to turn on the governor, the one who is managing, and begins to produce pregnant daughters, drug addicted sons, self-willed children who seemingly cannot deny themselves anything. Bribery is a gift that is given in order to get something, to get cooperation or to get peace within the house. But what we need to look at is, what does it do to the person who is receiving the gift? That is, the child or the employee. What does it do to the person who is being bribed and who is receiving the gift?
I am going to read to you four verses very quickly. The first is in Ecclesiastes 7 where Solomon writes,
Ecclesiastes 7:7 Surely oppression destroys a wise man's reason, and a bribe debases [or as my margin says, destroys] the heart.
Now what happens to the person who is receiving the bribe? God says that it destroys the heart. Just hang on to that thought.
Proverbs 17:23 A wicked man accepts a bribe behind the back to pervert the ways of justice.
We have seen that a bribe destroys the heart and one of the effects of that is it destroys justice. In other words, what he is saying is that once a bribe is received, then justice, proper judgment, discernment begins to be affected in the person who is receiving the bribe.
Proverbs 29:4 The king establishes the land by justice, but he who receives bribes overthrows it.
He overthrows justice at the very least and it makes equity and fairness, whether it be in a court case, judgment by public officials. It makes justice impossible.
Let us go back to Exodus 23, verse 8, and this one summarizes. Now remember, this is what the bribe does to the person who receives it.
Exodus 23:8 "You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the discerning and perverts the words of the righteous."
An alternate translation is that the gift makes seeing men blind.
This is what happens in the process of time during the years that we, as a parent, as a manager governing our home, we instill in our child a mindset by which he is unable to discern between that which is right and wrong.
Now remember, Solomon said that it destroys the heart. The heart in the Bible is the center of thought, of the intellect, of the will, of the feelings. It is there from which we get understanding of how to do things. A bribe blurs a person's judgment. It destroys his discernment and perspective and it gives the person receiving the bribe an exaggerated opinion of himself and it makes him the slave of his desires. Actually, what we do is we teach our child to be an extortionist so that duty and responsibility are not words in his vocabulary. It destroys loyalty and attachment to the larger group, that is, to the family, because the bribed one sees himself as the most important person in his relationships.
The chemistry of charisma. Charisma is translated in the Bible as grace or gift. It is something that is endowed, it is something that is imparted, and the connotation is that what is given is attractive and is useful to the person who receives it. So it has good connotations to it. The gifts can be used for good or bad. You will find in the New Testament that in the Corinthian church, there were people who were given gifts, endowments from God, one of which was the speaking in tongues and they were abusing the gift, using it in a wrong way. So gifts can be used in good or bad ways. And when charisma is used in a bad way to manage or to govern, it becomes government by manipulation based upon attraction.
Now, Webster's defines charisma as "a special magnetic charm or appeal, as of an actor. It is a personal magic of leadership, arousing loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure." And so the term today is most frequently used in regard to politicians. This or that person is charismatic, and that was said very frequently of John Kennedy during the the 60s, especially when he was running for president. He had a magnetic charm or appeal.
These people who use this approach in government control by attraction and they selfishly exploit. It is the stock in trade of attractive people usually with huge egos. The hero, the jock who takes advantage of groupies. The person is then used until their usefulness is no longer there and then they are generally summarily dropped. These people control by attraction and they tend to be aggressive and ruthless in the pursuit of personal ambitions. A man has a likelihood to use his reputation or his financial power.
One of the applications of this, and it is the biblical application that I am going to use to illustrate, is that it is the way of the harlot. She has something that a man finds attractive. And so then she exploits and uses the man for her own end. Now, it is the way of harlotry, whether it be an individual person or whether it be an institution.
Let us go to Proverbs 5, verse 3. I want you to see how God approaches this.
Proverbs 5:3 For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil. But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword.
Proverbs 6:23-26 For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light; reproofs of instruction are the way of life, to keep you from the evil woman, from the flattering tongue of a seductress. Do not lust after her beauty in your heart [A warning to young men to not allow that attractiveness to manipulate you or allow you to be managed into falling for her seductions.] nor let her allure you with her eyelids. For by means of a harlot a man is reduced to a crust of bread; and an adulteress will prey upon his precious life.
Proverbs 7:10 And there a woman met him, with the attire of a harlot, and a crafty heart [which is an interesting addition].
See, there is deceit involved in this.
Proverbs 7:21-26 With her enticing speech she caused him to yield [see, God admits that there is an attractiveness there], with her flattering lips she seduced him. Immediately he went after her, as an ox goes to the slaughter, or as a fool to the correction of the stocks, till an arrow struck his liver. As a bird hastens to the snare, he did not know it would take his life. Now therefore, listen to me, my children; pay attention to the words of my mouth: Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways, do not stray into her paths; for she has cast down many wounded.
I mentioned earlier that it is the way of harlotry, be it an individual or an institution. And certainly it is easy to see there that he is talking about a woman. But we need to look beyond that and recognize that what he is really talking there about is the great false church, which he calls a whore. Alluring, magnetic, with the ritual, with the pomp, the music with the lighted tapers, the mystery that is involved within it. Materialistically, it has a great deal going for it.
Now, back in Revelation 17, something is added to this that gives us an indication of what will occur when the manipulated understand that they have been manipulated, that they have been exploited.
Revelation 17:4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication.
Again, there is a deadly attraction there.
Revelation 17:16 And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot [when they come to understand that they have been used, that they have been manipulated, they are going to do something], make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire.
That will tell you what will happen when people wake up and realize that they have been exploited. They turn and rend the manager, the exploiter. It is very interesting by contrast in Isaiah 53:3, that Jesus Christ is described as having no form nor comeliness that we should desire Him. God purposely made sure that He was not an exceptionally attractive man. He was ordinary and indeed today His church consists of very ordinary people. There is no pomp, there is no color, there is no circumstance, there is not the awe-inspiring miracle, the flaming tapers going off here and there.
And the church of God is not a pretty church. It is conformed to the image of the Head. Our doctrines are not attractive. Indeed, if God wanted to come up with doctrines to turn people off, He did a perfect job with the Worldwide Church of God. God's church is not a beautiful church. God does not want you to be focusing on the wrong thing.
The chemistry of fear. Fear is a strong emotion and to govern by it is like sitting on a powder keg. This is rule by dictatorship. At first, it always seems to be successful. It is an effective means of accomplishing very much in a short period of time. If you are using it with a child, for your family, everyone is subdued, respectful. The children may bow and courtesy, say yes, sir, no, sir; yes, ma'am, no, ma'am; thank you; please.
I am not implying that those things are wrong, but in spite of the stability, under the surface it is simmering and it will erupt at a weak spot sooner or later. Because rule by fear hardens the ruled, because eventually they find that they can take anything you can dish out; that there is no pain that they can inflict upon you that they cannot take. And when they reach that point, it is goodbye John. They are going to do what they good and well please and they are not going to produce very good things.
Turn with me back to the book of I Kings because there is an example in the Bible of this kind of rule. And I think that you will be surprised to find out it was Solomon's rule. We will not go through all of Solomon's reign. We are just going to really come into the tail end of it to see the results of it.
You might remember how Solomon's reign began. Before the first chapter of Solomon's reign is over Adonijah his brother has been put to death; his half brother, Solomon put him to death. Not only that, Joab is dead. He was left an order by David to do that. But it is interesting that Solomon took care of it apparently immediately, got that man out of the way. About two chapters later, Shimei is dead. Shimei was another man who looked as though he might be some kind of a threat. He had been a threat for a short period of time to David, but Solomon had him put to death as well.
Those are just tiny insights into the approach that this man had regarding government. Now, his rule did produce a great deal of stability on the surface and there was a great deal accomplished during his reign. The Temple was built, his palace was built, he built a great number of fortifications all around the country. He organized the army into a very efficient fighting source and seemingly produced all the things that one would want in a community. But you see, underneath things were boiling. And so we find in I Kings 12 that Solomon has just died.
I Kings 12:1-2 And Rehoboam [his son] went to Shechem, for all Israel had gone to Shechem to make him king. So it happened, that when Jeroboam the son of Nebat heard it (for he was still in Egypt, for he had fled from the presence of King Solomon), . . .
I wonder about that. If we followed it through, we will find that even before Solomon's reign was over, that God sent a prophet to tell Jeroboam that he was going to be given the 10 tribes of Israel. We see that God was highly displeased with several things in Solomon's life. Jeroboam had to flee so he came back to see Rehoboam.
I Kings 12:3-4 . . . that they sent and called him. Then Jeroboam and the whole congregation of Israel came and spoke to Rehoboam saying [now look at this], "Your father made our yoke heavy; now therefore, lighten the burdensome service of your father, and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you."
Here is Rehoboam's answer.
I Kings 12:11 "And now, whereas my father laid a heavy yoke on you [that is an admission it was a heavy yoke], I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips [bet you did not know that he did that, kept people in line by fear], but I will chastise you with scourges!"
You can label this one the most dangerous of all. That any parent who uses this to any great degree is virtually driving his child into rebellion.
Ephesians 6:4 [Paul says to the church to] Do not provoke not your children to wrath.
And he says it specifically to the fathers.
So label this one highly explosive, the most volatile of all.
Now let us put together charisma and fear. You will see as we begin to combine the elements, the potential for better government becomes more possible. Now, this particular one, the chemistry of charisma and fear, is generally government by monarchy. This one has the potential to be a very good one but it all depends on whose hand it is. Remember God said, if the king reigns in righteousness, then the nation is established in righteousness.
We have the modern day example of Great Britain where there is all the pomp, color, and heraldry of the crown. And this has a tendency to evoke strong emotion, strong emotional ties in the people. And I think that you are aware that that is there. Although they have their detractors, there is no doubt that the monarchy, the crown in Britain, is held in pretty high regard overall. And the last time there was any kind of a test at all of whether or not they should continue to exist, why it was very roundly and soundly defeated. The people do, despite their reservations about it, still want to have it. So there is a magnetic appeal there and they like it to be that way.
On the other hand, the government is able to intervene with a strong hand. That is very clearly seen with England's history. A very small number of people on a small island ruled an empire of millions, hundreds of millions of people, more than their own population. Many, many of those countries that they ruled over could have probably wiped them out, like India, 4-500 million people and just a very small handful of British kept them under their rule. Now why? They were afraid of what the British would do. That is a long and short of it. There was a power there that they respected and so that kind of government is able to produce an enduring and stable society.
However, it has its shortcomings too.
Turn with me back to I Samuel 8 and we will see what God says about the shortcomings of a monarchial system, rule by charisma and fear. The people had just requested of Samuel that they be given a king and Samuel did not like what they had requested, but he appealed to God and God told him that go ahead with it, that they were not rejecting Samuel, they were rejecting God.
I Samuel 8:9 "Now therefore, heed their voice. However, you shall solemnly forewarn them, and show them the behavior of the king who will reign over them."
In verse 11, Samuel begins to tell them.
I Samuel 8:11-17 "This will be the behavior of the king who will reign over you: He will take your sons and appoint them for his own chariots and to be his horsemen, and some will run before his chariot. He will appoint captains over his thousands and captains over his fifties, will set some to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and some to make his weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers, cooks, and bakers. And he will take the best of your fields, your vineyards, and your olive groves, and give them to his servants. He will take a tenth of your grain and your vintage, and give it to his officers and his servants. And he will take your male servants and your female servants, your finest young men, and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take a tenth of your sheep. And you will be his servants."
What he shows here is this: that the standard of living of the people under a monarchy is systematically reduced because wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of the few. And so for the great bulk of people living under that form of government, there is no expectation or hope of reward. And so what is created is a vast servant class. Again, we can look to England. What has occurred has been a mass exodus of people from England looking for greener pastures. When I first put together this sermon, the great "brain drain" was on and Britain was losing its best and its brightest to the United States.
Well, it is this mode of rule in a family situation that expects loyalty and obedience simply because the rule is there. But what it will produce is children who feel oppressed, unloved, and used. There is no reason to stay around because circumstances will not change. And I do believe that this is a cause for many runaways.
The chemistry of reward and fear. Now this is the one that you are going to be most familiar with once I tell you that this is the American system, the American system of government, the American system of business. It is the policy of business. Hold out the hope of unlimited reward for hard work. And if you just do the hard work, there is going to be a great reward for anyone who does that.
The main fear here is of being demoted or suffering a financial loss or the fear of embarrassment because one does something dumb in business. Now, there is much incentive in this particular system because it plays on human nature's lust and it does tend to produce wealth, but it also tends to produce something that is not so good.
Incidentally, I read something interesting (you can be turning to Deuteronomy 8.) just this past week in American Heritage magazine. It was a pretty long article entitled "101 Things That Every College Graduate Should Know About the United States." And among this 101 things were who the American Heritage magazine felt were our five best historians. Now, one of them was a man named Beard and one of the things that made him famous as a historian is he showed that our Constitution was produced by men with selfish interests, that is, that they produced the Constitution in order to benefit themselves.
Now who were these men? Most of them were businessmen, they were planters, plantation owners, they were traders, warehouse men. And so they produced a law, a whole book of law, a body of law that would make it possible for them to become even wealthier. Now, it was beneficial to a large number of people because it also tended to benefit anybody else who had a somewhat entrepreneurial spirit and therefore it tended to produce a large stable middle class. And as far as it goes materially, it is all right.
I mentioned something to the AM church this morning that I think I will just pass along to you. It is Ritenbaugh's thought. But nonetheless, we in the United States have a tendency to equate American capitalism with the Bible or with the World Tomorrow. And somehow or another, we have gotten the idea that in the World Tomorrow, when the Kingdom of God is ruling on earth, that American capitalism is going to be the economic system that everybody all over the world is going to use. You better not believe that or you are in for a shock.
Deuteronomy 8:10-14 "When you have eaten and are full, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you. Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage."
Deuteronomy 8:17 "then you say in your heart, 'My power and the might of my hand have gained me this.'"
There is a principle that is involved here. For the lack of time I will give you other scriptures you can go to later: Isaiah 1:3-4 and Deuteronomy 32:15. But I want to take you to Proverbs 30, verses 7 through 9. Now those three scriptures that I have already given you are just a tiny number of a principle that God shows throughout the entirety of the Bible. And that is, that very few people can handle the rewards of success. They cannot manage it. And so what do they do? They become disloyal to God who made it possible for them to have that wealth. Now notice the wisdom that is contained here, just as kind of a summary statement.
Proverbs 30:7-9 Two things I request of You (Deprive me not before I die): Remove falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches—feed me with the food allotted to me; lest I be full and deny You, and say, "Who is the Lord?" Or lest I be poor and steal, and profane the name of my God.
This system produces great material prosperity, but also very little loyalty or allegiance to a cause because, by its very nature, it promotes self-interest. When acquisition for the self and protection of the self reign supreme, then spiritual values—"lest you forget Me," God says—and legal standards are shattered and justice, equity, and fairness become virtually impossible. And our judicial system is becoming more and more jammed with many things that, if people had the right mind, could be worked out without ever going to court. But this self-interest that is produced by the overall force of this kind of management produces even manipulation within the courts. You can read Isaiah 59. God really comes down on Israel for their court system.
Now in a family, with the material prosperity and where the rewards of accomplishment are glorified, along with the fear of being lowly-esteemed, it tends to produce a family in which each does too much separately. Because everybody has the wherewithal to go in their own direction and to do their own thing and so family ties become severed. There are no deep loyalties.
The chemistry of charisma and reward. Just very briefly, I believe that this was the kind of relationship that King David had with his sons. He loved his children very much, but there was not much discipline over so many skirts. Certainly those children had the magnetism of a charismatic father, singer, poet, warrior, good looking; oh, he had everything going for him. "Hey, that's my dad!" And because of whom their dad was, they also had the opportunity for tremendous rewards, financial rewards, power within the nation. And so it says in I Chronicles 18:17, that David's children were his chief ministers as they grew up.
But it also says something very interesting in I Kings 1, verses 5 and 6. It is using Adonijah as an illustration and it says there that David had never said to Adonijah, "Why are you doing that? What are you doing? When are you doing?" He never called his sons into account for what they were doing! So they never felt the sting of David's discipline. And so what happened to David's family? Absalom rebelled against his father. Adonijah could hardly wait until his father died so that he could go to bed with one of David's last feminine companions, Abishag. Amnon raped his half sister, Tamar. Absalom killed Amnon.
The same qualities that Absalom and Adonijah seem to detest in their father evoked tremendous loyalty in David's men, where they would actually risk their lives to get that man a drink of water! But, you see, those men had also felt the sting of David's discipline. So there are many good attributes there, but rebellion is tempting to minds which have not felt the sting of punishment. And so they do not fear the power of the manager.
Now the final one, the chemistry of charisma, reward, and fear is the only one that will work. All three elements have to be used together. God reveals to you and me really, if we will understand this, He reveals the correct chemistry of all three elements. But we need to ask ourselves, what is the correct balance that each should be used in? Well, this is where you come in because not every child is exactly the same and so there is no precise formula that one can come up and say, well, you need one part of reward, one part of fear, and eight or 10 parts of charisma or whatever. But rather, you are to use your judgment and discernment to study that child so that you can understand how much of this, that, or the other is needed. It is going to take some experimentation and thought, and prayer and meditation so that you govern or rule each child in the way that they are supposed to be, where they need to be in order for them to turn out right.
But I will give you some scriptures here first in regard to fear. Proverbs 3:11-12, where actually correction is called in the Hebrew, the school of Yahweh. Proverbs 13:24 and Job 5:17-18. Again, these are just a few summary scriptures.
With God, a person is not continually terrified and usually fear only comes to mind in ratio to one's thoughts of transgression. In other words, you know that you are guilty and then you fear the punishment that is going to come. But pain or fear are intended by God to be beneficient because they can bring about change, and of the three elements this is the one that will work the most quickly. That is why it always seems to produce stability. Pain is a warning that something is wrong.
Now, when God is dealing with us, we tend to think of pain as punishment for sin. Indeed, it might be. However, even if it is, it is not the end of the matter. Pain, punishment with God is always intended to produce wisdom, to produce healing, to produce correction in your life. The fear of punishment with God is positively afflicted. God does not want us to resent His chastening, but rather to look for the profit in it, the reward. In Revelation 11:18, I Corinthians 3:14, and again, Deuteronomy 28, the Bible is very clear that righteousness pays, that unrighteousness does not. But it does not present this as something that is overbearing. It is not a pie-in-the-sky approach, but rather it is presented by God without oversell, but with as much to it to give us a sense of anticipation that there is good in going the way of God. Not something that He wants us to be continually thinking of so that we can point and say, "Well, I'm loyal to God because He blesses me." That is a very poor basis for a relationship with Him.
These two are used like salt and pepper. The most important controlling factor, the most important managing skill in a family is charisma. In Proverbs 1:7; Proverbs 9:10; Proverbs 8:13. What they say is that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." The next one says "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." The one says (Proverbs 8:13), "the fear of the Lord is to depart from evil."
Charisma is what the Bible calls the fear of the Lord. It is a deep and abiding respect in the governed that flows from the totality of the governor's personality. It is a magnetism that is there because of what the manager or the governor is. Not a terrified fear of what he can do or a sense that, if I just obey him, he is going to bless me with all kinds of things. God governs with all three of these elements. But the one that He uses the most and is the most effective over the long haul is the example, it is the knowledge of what He is. It flows from His love.
I remember Mr. Armstrong saying that he began practically every prayer prayer by thanking God that He was God. He was thanking Him for what He is! From the example of one's love, one's humor, one's self-control, intelligence, common sense, balance, affection, on and on it goes. The totality of what a person is, is his personality. And it is respect for what the person is that makes a person manageable.
Think about that. I do not mean it is respect for what the governor is or the manager is that makes you and me manageable. Because it invokes in us a willingness to be governed and it inspires loyalty and allegiance and submission. You know, what is God's outstanding personality trait? It is love. He is love. It is the only personality trait by which He identifies Himself. He does not say He is joy or He is peace or He is self-control. Certainly He has all of those things, but His outstanding characteristic is love.
People respond to charisma. That is easily seen in the political world. It is easily seen in the entertainment world. Now, what you and I have to do is see it in the world of managing our families. It has a powerful influence, even animals respond to it, even plants respond to charisma. You have heard the stories about the people who go up and talk very nicely to their plants. And the first thing you know, the plants are doing a lot better.
Do you know what made it possible for your conversion so that you would submit to God? He impacts our mind by His Spirit to enable us to see what He is. And we respond. That is why He says that we love Him because He first loved us. We love Him because of what He is.
That is what parents need to work toward in the managing of their family. I am not saying here that an unconverted adult will respond to what you are, but I am saying that a child will. So you can see where I am coming from. The way to be a good child-rearer is to change yourself first.
So as parents, we have to try to duplicate what God is. That is our responsibility. We will continue this subject the next time I speak, which will be in two weeks.
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