Lesson 44
Juvenile Delinquency in
Deut. 20 dealt with the recruiting of the army. Some of these verses dealt with various
problems of mental attitude. One of the problems that I did not cover lies
behind the provision of Deut. 20:5-8.
That was the passage of Deuteronomy that said for young men who are
going into the service we do not want anyone who has a house and has not
dedicated it; we don’t want anyone who has planted a vineyard and has not eaten
of it; we do not want anyone who has betrothed a wife and who has not taken
her, i.e., he is engaged but has not been married. The reason for this we said is that God did
not ask men to fight for that which they did not personally partake of
first.
There’s also another principle behind this and it has to do with the
principle of a laborer living off of his fruit, found again in 1 Cor. 9 with
respect to the gospel. And the point
briefly is this, and the reason I’m taking you back to Deut. 20 is because
we’re going to summarize this whole section of Scripture when we are finished
at the end of the evening, with the result that you will not understand why we
summarize certain principles unless we go back to this point. The point here is that these men are soldiers
and they are not to live off of their warfare, in other words, this is a
service, they are working for the Lord.
They are to move out there and they are to fight, but God has so
arranged it that their basic provisions are on the civilian economy, you might
say. Translated in terms of the 20th
century, what it means is that God carefully protected
So there’s always this problem and God has provided in these short few
verses that these men who would go into war for Israel would have their
vineyards, would have their homes, would have the base of their economic
support in the civilian economy, so that the tendency would be to get the war
over with as fast as possible and get back to the civilian operation. This is one of the things that you can find
if you compare it with 1 Cor. 9:7 and other passages that the tendency is in
all other areas of Scripture for the laborer to live off of his work with this
one exception. I know of no other
exception in the Word of God where the laborer does not live off of his
produce. The only exception to that is
what you see before you, the soldier of
Now Deut. 21, we come to the section that has to do with the
family. Remember as we go through Deut.
21 and the parallel passages in the rest of the Old Testament and New Testament
that we’re finishing up a section of the Old Testament that touches on the
relationship between family and government.
I don’t think there’s a more dramatic illustration of the balance
between family and government than in verses 18-21. The reason is that government, you remember,
was instituted by God in Gen. 9 after the flood and the government has as its
basic job judgment in place of God. God
is postponing His judgment; this is why after the flood He said I will no
longer send a flood or a judgment upon the human race because I perceive that
the heart of man is desperately wicked.
And he says this and then immediately He says and therefore I set up
government. And how does this follow? Well, as we said, government basically has
the responsibility of executing God’s judgments when God Himself is postponing
His great judgment.
This is why you do not government instituted until Gen. 9. There was no such thing as the divine
institution of government in the world before the fall. You have four divine institutions. Divine institution number one is volition;
volition was instituted before the fall.
Divine institution number two is marriage; marriage was instituted
before the fall. Divine institution
number three is family; family was instituted before the fall. The only divine institution to be instituted
after the fall is government. What is a
divine institution? A divine institution
is an institution that God has designed for the preservation of the human
race. It is bona fide for all people whether they have received Christ or not
and is valid for every race that has ever lived, for every man that has ever
lived. These are great institutions for the entire human race.
Now we obviously come in chapter 21 to the problem that’s inevitably
going to happen, what is the relationship between government and the
family? What is the balance between
government and the family? Why was the
family given? The family was given as a
school or a training ground for bringing up children as unto the Lord. That’s
basically the reason for family. Government
was not instituted to bring anyone up to the Lord; government was instituted to
judge sin in society. Now what do you
do? What about the touchy problem of a
family unit, here’s the family unit and inside that family unit the man, the
husband is the head of the house and he has a problem with discipline inside
the family unit. Now who does the
disciplining? Does the government that
has been instituted from outside, that’s job is basically to discipline and to
judge sin, does the government does to the discipline or does the family itself
do the disciplining? And that’s the
issue before us in verses 18-21, the balance of power between the family and
the government.
Verse 18, “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not
obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and that, when they
have chastened him, will not hearken unto them,” now it’s important as we go
through this to look at the original languages because the original languages
frequently tip us off with the fine shades of meaning that clarify the
interpretation of a passage. If you look
at face value in verse 18 you may say now wait a minute, I remember over in
Luke 15 of the New Testament about the prodigal son and I remember there where
the father let the son go off and when the son came back the father welcomed
him. Doesn’t that clash? Isn’t there a
conflict between the principle of Luke 15 and the principle of Deut. 21? We’ll develop and work on that for a few
minutes.
It begins by looking at the word “stubborn and rebellious.” The word “stubborn” in the Hebrew looks like
this, sarar, and that is the Hebrew
verb which means to be stubborn, and basically it means stubbornness in the
sense of rebellion. Now the next word,
the next word is translated “rebellion” and it doesn’t have that connotation at
all. Sarar
means that I rebel against standards, and so therefore the person who is
stubborn here is the person who is going to set his own standards up. This is the person who is the one who wants
to… you make a rule and I’ll break it. I
dare you to make a rule that I’ll keep.
That’s the stubborn one. We get a
further hint from it because it’s in the participle form and the participle
form in the Hebrew means action that goes on and on and on and on and on and
on. When the author uses a participle in
the original languges he wants to present a motion picture. If you want to remember something about the
Hebrew language just remember the participle is the motion picture tense and
when the person uses the participle he wants you to see this thing is going on,
going on, going on, going on, going on, going on, no stop to it, it’s
continually going on. So that is the first
characteristic of this son mentioned in verses 18-21. It is one who is continually without break
stubborn, stubborn, stubborn, stubborn, stubborn, stubborn.
“…and rebellious” and the word “rebellious,” marah is the word which was used of the Israelites in the
desert. And it was used in other places
for rebelliousness, but not in the sense of breaking a standard but just being
obnoxious, in the sense of personally just being as obnoxious as you possibly
can. And God said to the people in the
wilderness, you are obnoxious, you stink. That would be a contemporary
translation. So this verb then means to be obnoxious. So here you have a son who is continually,
that’s the force of the participle, who is continually stubborn, who is
continually obnoxious, who will not obey and this again is a qal
participle. Watch this; this is giving
you reams of information about the background of this thing. This is not just one disobedience or ten
different times of disobedience, this is a continual pattern of disobedience,
one who is continually stubborn, who is continually rebellious, one who
continually disobeys the voice of his father or the voice of his mother. The word “obey” here it’s obvious what it
means, it has to do with continuation in the participial form. “Obeying” here is the participle and this
again tells us continuous action, going on, going on, going on, disobey,
disobey, disobey, disobey, disobey.
That’s what it means.
Now putting it all together what do we find? We find the answer to the problem of just
what kind of a person this is in the last phrase of verse 18, beginning with
the word “when,” for the action that is prescribed here is not to occur until
“when,” the verb when, “when” this circumstance has been fulfilled, then the
action proceeds. Let’s look at this
clause, “when they have chastened him,” … “when they have chastened them, he
will not hearken unto them.” Now what
this looks upon is a person who is continually disobedient, continually
disobedient and includes a point when they chasten him. Now what does chasten mean? Saying “now Johnny be a good boy.” That’s not what it’s talking about in the
Hebrew when it uses the word “chasten.”
“Chasten” yatsar, and it means
to scourge or to whip. Pardon the
expression, it means laying your hands on the little cotton-picker and hurting
them—hurting them, this is physical discipline, yatsar. And it is used, by
the way, of God and how He handles us as believers in Hebrews 12. But this means that the family does the first
phase of correcting, not the government.
The government doesn’t get into the process until the last.
I want you to see the development.
First you have what we might say phase one; you have normal correction
within the family unit. And that
obviously has resulted in zero because this son is continually stubborn, in
continuous rebellion, so obviously normal means of handling the situation have
not solved anything. So now we go to
phase two and phase two gets a little more drastic. Phase two the parents take physical action
and they have the right to do so in the Word of God. This fails, in verse 18, he still “will not
hearken unto them”, and “will not hearken” is in the imperfect tense and this
means he has gone up to this point continually, continually, continually disobedient,
they chasten him and it means he still shows no signs of getting with it. So
even after physically lowering the boom nothing happens. And this is as far as the family unit in
Why did the father not have the right?
Because it goes back to the divine institution of government. Family institution, divine institution number
three was not instituted to judge; divine institution number three was
instituted to edify and build up and if certain chastening processes had to be
used in divine institution number three, fine, but divine institution number
three has no judgmental authority given.
Therefore, the head of the family in this situation did not have the
authority under God to take the final step of judgment. He had to, at this point, turn it over to
divine institution number four, which is government and the government would
come in and hold a trial, would hold a hearing.
Let’s look at the hearing, verse 19, “Then shall his father and his
mother lay hold on him,” now I’ve often wondered as I read this passage how old
this kid was. The word “lay hold” here
means to grab, and it means to pick up so obviously this person mentioned here
in verse 18-19 must be pre-adolescent, my guess is that this was going on, say
before the age of 12. I think 12, which
was equivalent in their society to about 15 or 16 in our society. The reason I say that is because the Lord Jesus
Christ in the passage in Luke 2 was 12 and this marked the freedom of a young
Jewish man and at that point he would be considered an adolescent. Therefore translating it in our own society,
the person probably was Jr. High age or younger at this point. This carries a lesson with it, we’ll get to
it in a moment. “His father and his
mother grab him and pick him up and bring him to the elders of his city,”
that’s the local city council, because the father and the mother have gone to
the limit, they have no further authority to handle the thing and so therefore
they bring the whole matter before the government. Now the government has the authority given it
by God in Gen. 19 to move in, conduct a hearing, and judge if necessary. So the parents come dragging down “unto the
gate of his place.” The “gate of the
place” was the market place, here’s where the city council held its
meeting. They just had an open square
and that’s where they held their hearing.
Verse 20, “And they shall say unto the elders of the city, This, our
son,” this is a most amusing report, “This son is stubborn and rebellious,”
same words used in verse 18, but then they add a few words, “He will not obey
our voice,” that’s the same as verse 18, but then they add “he is a glutton,
and a drunkard.” What has a glutton and
a drunkard got to do with a disobedient pre-teener? What’s that got to do with it? If you look at the word and how it’s used in
Proverbs and you get this out of it. It
is not necessarily that this little kid was a glutton in the sense of putting
on 200 lbs. from food, that’s not what is meant. The word “glutton” was used in the Old
Testament for someone who would mooch off of people and what the parents are
insinuating here is this clown who thinks he’s going to run his life his own
way forgets something, that we are paying the food bill, and therefore he is a
glutton, he’s borrowing off of our food budget.
And we’re putting food into this thing and nothing is coming out. We’re supplying him with clothes, with water,
everything and no production, zero; a big fat zero is the result. So they label this person as not only
stubborn, rebellious, he will not obey our voice, but he’s a glutton and a
drunkard. In other words he’s a
parasite.
This is a pet peeve I have with a lot of our hippie friends; they always
love to say we drop out. Well I frankly
have no objection to anyone dropping out, you can drop all the way out and I’ll
gladly count the number of seconds it take you to hit bottom. But they never do drop out. Who supports the hippies at Haight
Ashbury? The parents that send the check
to the San Francisco post office, that’s who supplies the hippies. They’re not true rebels. True rebels would really get out of the
family and would support themselves. The
hippie movement is not a self-supporting movement, it’s a parasitic movement,
they live off other people, those nasty people called capitalists that give
them the money they need to buy their food.
So you see what this passage is saying in verse 20 is that if you want
to be a rebel, be one, but don’t stay around and mooch off of daddy and mother,
which would apply to our times, if you want to rebel and leave home, fine, go
ahead. But then figure out… it’s your
responsibility to supply your own needs, don’t expect your parents to send you
a check in the mail.
This is the principle then their son is stubborn, he is rebellious, he
won’t hear our word, result, “he’s a glutton and a drunkard,” he is a spoiled
brat we would say in the 20th century. He’s a spoiled brat, he’s a parasite. Verse 21, “And all the men of his city shall
stone him with stones, that he die. So
shalt thou put evil away from among you, and all Israel shall hear, and
fear.” Now this last phrase gives you a
clue as to why the Old Testament was so hard on young people, and why it
demanded certain standards, because the Old Testament realized that the next
generation is being built right now in the homes of this generation. And unless
this new generation that is growing up is inculcated with the standards of the
nation, the next generation will die out.
And so for the preservation of the nation this process has been
instituted.
For comparative purpose, turn to Luke 15:11, the prodigal son
discourse. It’s always amusing to watch
this parasite principle in operation.
You can see it with communism; the communism are big loud mouths about
how dirty capitalism is. Who financed
the Russian Revolution? Capitalists,
where do you think Lenin got his money from? Germany and Brooklyn. So you see all these loud mouths that are
talking about revolt, revolt, revolt, they revolt just so far; that’s not true
revolt as far as Scripture is concerned.
Luke 15:11, “And he said, A certain man had two sons; [12] And the
younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of the goods
that falls to me. And he divided unto them his living. [13] And not many days
after that, the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a
far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.” So
immediately with verse 13 you do not have the condition described in Deut.
21. This young person left home on his
own and was self-supporting. So to start
with, the prodigal son discourse had nothing to do with Deut. 21 because this
person left home, took everything and spent all.
Verse 14, “And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in the
land; and he began to be in want. [15] And he went and joined himself to a
citizen of that country,” notice he didn’t say hey dad, I need a check, and he
didn’t come back, and he’s not the glutton mentioned back in Deut. 21, this is
an entirely different kind of situation. “…and he sent him into his fields to
feed swine. [16] And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that
the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him. [17] And when he came to himself,
he said, How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare,
and I perish with hunger! [18] I will arise and go to my father, and will say
unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee. [19] And am no
more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.” Incidentally, in the confession here in verse
18 notice he does not say to his father I have sinned against you because sin
is never against any human authority; it is always against God and God
only. You can disobey people, you can
hurt people, you can injure people, you can malign people, etc. but you never
sin against any person. You sin only
against God. This is why David, after
committing adultery and murder was able to say in Psalm 51, “O Lord, against
Thee and Thee only have I sinned,” the word “sinned” is a technical term, it’s
actually chata in the Hebrew and chata means to break God’s will, so
therefore it’s a legal thing directed against God.
But this young person in verse 18 repents, he changes his mind. By the way, the word repent does not
necessarily mean emotion; the word simply means to think in a different way. So
verse 18 shows you a second way the prodigal son discourse has nothing to do
with Deut. 21. First, when the man
rebels he rebels all the way; and two, when he does come back he has changed
his mental attitude and he is willing now to submit to the authority of the
home. So therefore you have genuine
repentance; therefore the prodigal son discourse has nothing to do with Deut. 21.
Turning back to another passage in Luke, Luke 2, we find one of the most
touchy incidents in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ was here as an
adolescent, and this is a classic passage on how the Lord Jesus Christ and His
human parents solved a problem of tension.
And I want you to notice something because sooner or later some
Christian is going to make you feel guilty because you have a few problems in
your family. And they’re going to say
oh, if you lived a real spiritual life your family wouldn’t have all these
problems. Oh yea, well how come in Luke
2 you have a sinless person and they’ve got problems. Problems are normal for this world, so don’t feel
guilty because of this problem; you should never feel guilty because you have
problems, you should feel guilty because you don’t know how to handle the
problems or you won’t handle the problems the Biblical way, but don’t feel bad
because you have a few problems, everybody has them.
Here in Luke 2 you find the perfect family has problems and it begins in
verse 33, this is one of the remarks I want you to see as we lead into the
discourse. This is happening in the
Temple when the Lord Jesus Christ was a baby, and in Luke 2:33, “And Joseph and
his mother marveled at those things which were spoken of him.” Now watch this, here’s going to be a family
trouble situation but I want you to see the background; father and mother, now
Joseph was not the literal physical father of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not just grounded on Isaiah 7 it’s
grounded on Jeremiah, etc. The virgin
birth of Jesus Christ means that Mary and Mary alone is the physical progenitor
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Joseph was the
legal father of Jesus, and this is why the genealogy in Matthew is different
from the genealogy in Luke. Luke is
Mary’s genealogy because Luke was a doctor, and he evidently from what we can
discern in his gospel work actually went back and interviewed the Virgin Mary.
Luke is the only Gospel writer that includes things that only a doctor would
understand, things that only a woman would appreciate about having a child,
etc. and it’s very obvious that Luke went back and talked both, apparently to
Elisabeth and definitely to Mary. So out
of this interview Luke developed Mary’s genealogy and the father’s genealogy,
Joseph’s genealogy, is given in Matthew.
So next time someone tells you there’s a problem between Matthew and
Luke don’t listen to them. There is no problem between Matthew and Luke.
Luke 2:33, “And Joseph and his mother marveled at those thing which were
spoken of him,” this means his father and his mother knew, they had been given
prophetic information about their son and they had been briefed by God through
these prophets in the temple. So part
one of the problem, watch how this problem starts out now. You have the parents plus Bible information
on their son. They had more information
on their son than any of you will ever have on any of your children.
Now let’s go on to a little bit later, down to verse 40, “And the child
grew, and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was
upon him. [41] Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the
Passover. [42] And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem
after the custom of the feast. [43] And when they had fulfilled the days, as
they returned, the child, Jesus, tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and
his mother knew not of it.” You say good
night, what kind of a show was this?
Well, the problem was that Jerusalem was a large city and when these
people moved they moved in large caravans and they usually moved by towns so
you have these people from Nazareth and the Galilean area and they’d all get
together in this big convoy and move and the kids would just pile on. They wouldn’t bother with roll call usually
because they figured the kid would be with an uncle or aunt somewhere,
somewhere down the line the kid would be.
So they go out for a day’s journey and all of a sudden He turns up
missing. And this isn’t highly pleasing, of course, to Joseph and His mother
and they say now we’ve got to go all the way back to Jerusalem. So you can
begin to see problems.
So they come back to Jerusalem, it takes them a whole day; this is one
day, let’s watch the days now, it takes them a whole day to go back to
Jerusalem. Verse 44, “But they,
supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey; and they
sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances. [45] And when they found him
not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. [46] And it came to pass
after three days,” all right, this tells you something, it took them a day to
go back, it took them a day to get up to the point where they finally found He
was missing, and when they went into the city it took them a day to look
around. So here are your three days. So
they left Him alone for three days, one day out, one day back, one day looking
around Jerusalem. So needless to say tempers began to flare here at this point.
Verse 46, “And it came to pass that, after three days they found Him, in
the Temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them, and asking
them questions. [47] And all that heard Him were astonished at His
understanding and answers. [48] And when they saw Him, they were amazed.” Now verses 46-47 tell you the situation in
which they found their young teenage son.
He was in the Temple having a doctrinal examination with the PhD’s of
his time. And you can imagine, to people
of a peasant type background in Galilee, for their son to be down in Jerusalem,
which was considered the cultural, intellectual center of their country, and
He’s taking on the best people, the best
people, and having a discussion, asking them questions and answering their questions. You can imagine the shock, what’s their son
doing there. This is why Mary says what
she says in verse 48, “Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy
father and I have sought thee, sorrowing. [49] And He said unto them,” now it’s
verse 49 I want to explain because if you read verse 49 quickly you get the
impression the Lord Jesus Christ was quite snotty to His parents [blank spot]
at this point, until you realize what He really said.
Verse 49, “How is it that ye sought me? Do you know,” w-i-s-t in the
King James means know, “know you know that I must be about My Father’s
business?” [50] And they understood not
the saying which He spoke unto them.”
Now there are several things I want you to notice about verse 49. First of all, His first question. “How is it that you sought me?” In other words, what Jesus is saying is that
you should have known enough about My character, you have been briefed back
here at the Temple, you know who I am, you know My mission in life, why is it
that you don’t know enough about Me to realize where I would naturally be in
this city? Why spend a day looking
around Jerusalem when you know where I would have been? I would have been here in the Temple. And obviously we are to infer from this that
it was by accident that the Lord Jesus Christ was left behind; He did not
deliberately stay behind in defiance of His parents, it was an accident. So He says it was an accident, I stayed here
and I stayed in one place and don’t you know Me enough to know where I would
naturally gravitate to. And in this way
it is a subtle rebuke; it’s a subtle rebuke to His parents for not
understanding their child.
And then He says something else, “Know you know that I must be about My
Father’s business?” and this tips you off to one of the most fantastic things
about the childhood of the Lord Jesus Christ, for when He uses the word
“Father’s business” it tells us that at this point of twelve years the Lord
Jesus knew He was the Messiah. Now
obviously you say well He was God-man; yes, but in His humanity the Lord Jesus
Christ learned, and in His humanity as He developed He became aware of who He
was and the mission He had to perform.
In the human level the Lord Jesus understood His mission from studying
the Word of God. I highly doubt, and you
can read great works on Christology, that the Lord Jesus Christ got His mission
because an angel spoke to Him one day.
Scholars believe it was a far more mundane type of thing. The Lord Jesus Christ slowly came to an
awareness of who He was and what He was to do in life from studying the Word of
God. And as He studied the Word of God
He suddenly realized, that’s Me, that’s where I belong. So therefore He came to
an awareness of His Messianic office by a study of the Word.
So He said in verse 49, “My Father’s business,” and here He is using the
word “Father” in the Messianic sense of the word, calling Himself the Son of
God, which is a Messianic title. So at
this point, at twelve years old the Lord Jesus knows He is the Messiah, and
since He knows that He is the Messiah, He also knows that He is God, for the
Messiah predicted in the Old Testament had to be God on the basis of Isaiah 9,
He shall be called a Mighty God, a Father of eternity. So therefore we are to discern from this
point that at the age of twelve years old the Lord Jesus realized not only that
He was the Messiah, but He was God Himself.
]
Now watch what happens, verse 50, “And they understood not the saying
which He spoke unto them.” But verse 51,
“And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them,”
now isn’t that interesting. Here is a
teenager who knew His mission in life, knew more about Himself than His parents
did, know He was God, and yet at the same time He respected the authority of
the home and went back and was subject to them.
And verse 52 tells you why, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature,
and in favor with God and man.” And the
final conclusion is that when the Lord Jesus Christ came into this world, God’s
plan of salvation depended upon a God-man.
It goes back to the fact that at the cross we had to have a perfect
sacrifice. Examine the essence box of God.
God is sovereign, God is righteous, God is justice, one of the
attributes is God is eternal and another attribute is immutability. Eternity plus immutability means God cannot
die. If God cannot die then who is to
pay the price on the cross? To pay the
price on the cross you have to have something, someone that can die. Therefore
God has to become man in order to die on the cross, and so therefore the Lord
Jesus Christ has to have humanity. So He has a human nature and He has a divine
nature.
So when God says in the councils of the divine decrees, the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit get together and formulate the plan of salvation, the
Son says I will go and I will take upon Myself the form of a man, and so the
Lord Jesus Christ is begotten of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was
made man. And at this point in history we have the virgin birth, and at that point
God took upon Himself a human nature and limited Himself down to a human
nature. So one of the great mysteries is
how can you take an infinite God and contract Him down to the size of a woman’s
womb. That is the miracle. The virgin
birth is where you have an infinite God taking upon Himself human form, and He
is born and He grows, and verse 52 tells you the means God used to develop His
own Son. Now isn’t this interesting, He
used divine institution number three.
Just think of it, God could have taken upon Himself the form of a man,
gone out into the desert and lived there until He was ready. But how come the Lord Jesus Christ was put
into a family, had to be submissive to a family? It’s because God’s design for society is the
family; His will is even for His own Son, the God-man, to be brought up inside
a family unit. So verse 52 is important
that the Lord Jesus Christ recognized that He must submit to His parents, in
this case even though His parents did not understand. They did not understand. You read this passage over again and again,
you get the idea that here Mary and Joseph are and they are absolutely
bewildered by this thing, absolutely bewildered! They’ve been given this information, they
can’t understand it. Why they can’t we
don’t know, we can’t put ourselves back in Mary’s shoes and say Mary, how dumb
can you be, don’t you remember the angel coming and telling you what your son
would be. But evidently Mary couldn’t fathom this and it wasn’t until later…
and that’s why Luke has these little notices kind of hidden away in his Gospel,
you see one there at the end of verse 51, “but his mother kept al these sayings
in her heart.” See, she didn’t
understand, but she kept these things in her heart, she kept it away. And then finally one day she understood, one
day she finally put it all together and it finally gelled as to who her son
was. But she didn’t understand this all
along. But the interesting thing is the
authority of divine institution number three, respected by Jesus Christ even
though at this point His parents were ignorant; they were wrong, they did not
understand Him, did not understand who He was and what He was to do.
Back to the Old Testament, to Proverbs.
Since we have found in the New Testament that the divine institution of
family, divine institution three, is always respected, since it’s so important
to God that even the God-man Savior grows up inside the family unit, it would
appear that the Bible should give some controls, some principles that define
family authority, and sure enough, it does in the book of Proverbs. In fact, that’s the whole book of
Proverbs. I’ll just cite some of them.
Prov. 1:1, “The proverbs of Solomon, the son of David, king of Israel:
[2] To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding; [3]
To receive the instruction of wisdom, justice, judgment and equity; [4] To give
prudence to the simple,” that’s not simple-minded. The word “simple” here is the word for a
young man or a young woman, this is a child who has not yet been educated. Therefore the proverbs of the Word of God are
passages designed “to give prudence to the simple, to the young man knowledge
and discretion.” Therefore what are you
to conclude immediately about divine institution number three? As you look at it in the Word of God divine
institution number three was to be a place where what happened? Where the Word
of God was taught. Now do you see why I
harp on men who have the attitude, and I’ve seen this again and again, you can
see it every Sunday morning at 11:00 o’clock, this guy is supposed to be the
head of the home sit there half asleep and saying well, I’ll let my wife learn
it, I don’t need the Bible, it’s good enough for my life, I let her take care
of those things. That is the attitude of
an ignoramus. A man who thinks this way
is forsaking his leadership responsibility, or he doesn’t care how his home is
run. I can’t see any other logical
alternative to this. It seems to me a
man who thinks that way is saying essentially let my wife do it. The main decisions are the role of the
husband as given in the Word of God, so therefore it’s the father that does the
teaching.
Verse 5, “A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of
understanding shall attain unto wise counsels,” etc. Verse 7, “The fear of the LORD is the
beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. Verse 8, “My son, hear the instruction of thy
father, and forsake not the law of thy mother,” indicates both father and
mother were involved in the educational process of their children. Prov. 2:1, “My son, if thou wilt receive my
words, and lay up my commandments with thee, [2] So that thou incline thine ear
unto wisdom,” who’s doing the teaching?
Again the parents. What are they
teaching? The Word of God. Prov. 3:1, “My son, forget not my law, but
let thine heart keep my commandments; [2] For length of days, and long life,
and peace, shall they add to thee. [3] Let not mercy and truth forsake thee,”
and then the famous promise of verse 5, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart
and lean not unto thine own understanding,” that was a promise that a father
gave his children.
Let’s look further, verse 11, “My son, despise not the chastening of the
LORD, neither be weary of his correction, [12] For whom the LORD loves He
corrects, even as a father the son in whom he delights.” There he was telling his son about the
doctrine of divine discipline as a believer.
Prov. 4:1, ‘Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend
to know understanding, [2] For I give you good doctrine; forsake ye not my law.
[3] For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my
mother. [4] He taught me also,” Solomon’s father was David and David taught
him. Prov. 5:1, “My son, attend unto my
wisdom, and bow thine ear to my understanding.”
I don’t think we have to go any further for you to get the idea that the
major emphasis on the divine institution number three in Israel was the Word of
God, the Word of God, the Word of God, doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, and a
person was not considered educated until they knew doctrine.
Let’s look at some other passages that deal with discipline inside the
family. I want to cite two passages;
there are many, many other passages but I want to show you that the book of
Proverbs has other principles in it.
Prov. 19:18, “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul
spare for his crying.” Now there’s a
principle in verse 18 that you want to understand with regard to Deuteronomy
21. Do you remember I said isn’t it
interesting that when the parents went out they grabbed hold of this person and
picked him up, and I said inferring from this the person must not be a full
grown person yet, therefore he must be close to 12 in that society or 15-16 in
our society, in other words, adolescent or pre-adolescent, basically
pre-adolescent. Now in verse 18 the
principle is underscored again. “Chasten
thy son while there is hope,” that implies there is going to be a time when
there is no hope and all the chastening in the world isn’t going to do any
good. Why? Because you get up to a point in the
development of a teenager and their patterns are established and there is
nothing you can do about it. The time to
build is back here, not wait until up here.
Sometimes things can happen, like Solomon; Solomon had the best training
of all and he turned out to be a clod, but we have cases where the teenager
gets up to this stage and his patterns of thinking, his patterns of values, his
patterns of reaction have all been established and it’s hard even for him to
change if he wants to, leave alone if you want to do something about it. So that’s why the book of Proverbs in 18 says
do the chastening before this time is reached.
That’s why in Deut. 21 you have the passage, because it says if the kid
comes down to these years and he does not respond to this training, then get
rid of him; that’s the principle of Deut. 21.
The parents were to wait until they got to this point after they’ve
tried and tried and tried and tried to bring this child up and he still rejects
up to this point, he was eliminated from the nation. That’s kind of a cruel way of doing it but in
the Old Testament they recognized that there had to be a point of no
return. A point is reached where you
can’t do anything about it, and at that point you just have to do something and
in Deut. 21 they did something. I was
talking to a police officer this week about this and he told me that basically
the only thing the police department can do is wait until they get to be 17 and
let them in good hot trouble and chuck them in jail, and preferably they get in
trouble where they get beaten up a little bit and he said we’ve had cases where
this has straightened them out, and in some cases where it’s turned them into a
life of crime; they’ll go one way or the other.
They’ll go positive or negative but they’re going to go one way or the
other and there’s not much we can do about it; it gets pretty violent if you
wait that long.
So verse 18 means “Chasten thy son while there is hope, let not thy soul
spare for his crying,” this means don’t be sentimental about it. Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it takes it
out of you to punish but you have to go ahead and do it because God has given
you that responsibility.
One more verse, Prov. 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go
and, when he is old, he will not depart from it.” In the original language there’s a tremendous
word study here, we can only summarize it but it gives you the thrust of what
verse 6 is talking about. “Train up a
child” is a word which is used in the Arabic, and still is, for a mother who
would take the infant and take a date and stroke the infant’s gums with a date,
before the infant could even eat solid food and she does this, and Bedouins do
it even today. And the objective is to
develop a taste for the food before the infant can eat it. So this verb means give him a taste, a
positive, this is not just negative discipline, discipline, discipline,
discipline, that’s not what it’s talking about.
Give him a positive taste of spirituality, translated in Christian
lingo; just let Arab mother would give her infant son a taste to develop a
taste, so that when he grew up he’d want this, he’d respond to this taste. So
similarly then the objective in divine institution number three goes back to
spirituality.
Here you have divine institution number three in the family. What is it that gives young people a
taste? It is the filling of the Holy
Spirit; it means there is generally a relaxed atmosphere and not a legalistic
one. There are certain principles, but
nevertheless the child is exposed to interesting things in the Word of God. He’s exposed to personal witnessing; he’s
exposed to different things which gives him a taste of Bible Christianity and
then when he is old this will have a tremendous influence on him. That’s the point. I wanted to show verse 6 because often times
verse 6 is used in a negative sense. It
includes negative things but it’s more positive than that. Think back to this Arab mother who would give
her infant a taste, that’s something positive.
She’s not saying no, no, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t; she’s saying look,
this is what life is all about, get a taste for it, it’s exciting.
One concluding passage before we return to Deuteronomy. The New Testament takes the same principle of
divine institution number three and balances it. Eph. 6:1-4, “Children, obey your parents in
the Lord; for this is right. [2] Honor thy father and mother (which is the
first commandment with promise),” what is the promise? The promise means that honoring the father
and the mother the child receives training.
He cannot be trained unless he honors; he cannot be trained unless he
submits. And when he submits the promise
is blessing in his life. It includes
physical things. It includes
psychological things. It includes peace,
some of the most miserable people you have ever ran across are people who have
never been disciplined in their life, whose parents were the mealy-mouth type,
the sentimental type that never gave their children and principles and their
children might have despised them for their principles but when they got to be
an adult they turned them around and called them blessed because they realized
that their parents over the years had given them principles and now they go out
into the world and they suddenly discover that they are competing with people
that have no principles. They’re in the
business world and they succeed and the other man fails. Why? Because he has
principles, attitude towards work, etc. that the other guy doesn’t have because
his parents never gave him solid principles.
All of a sudden it dawns on him, this principle business pays off.
So here’s the result of the promise, verse 3, “That it may be well with
thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. [4] And ye fathers,” now I
include verse 4 to show you there’s always balance in the Word of God, what we
have said is in no way a recommendation for a family dictatorship, in one sense
of the word, the family is to be run according to the Word, for verse 4 says,
“fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture
and admonition of the Lord.” There you
have your positive and negative.
Nurture, that’s your positive.
Admonition is the word fear and there’s your negative. Positive and negative, not just negative but
positives. The nurture means to build in
the Word of God attractively into the child’s life. And admonition, you warn
them about the don’ts and there are certain boundaries that if you step over
you get burned. So here’s the balance in
verse 4 between the authority of the father and the Word of God. The father is to be positive and negative,
it’s part of Prov. 22:6, “Train a child up in the way in which he should go,
and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
It’s talking about the positive as well as the negative.
Back to Deut. 21, once again Deut. 21:18-21, what has happened here?
What you see in verses 18-21 is when the family unit has broken down, when
either because of a mistake on the parents part or what is more likely the case
on the basis of the language in verse 18 and 20 is that the child has just flat
gone out on negative volition and there’s just times when this is going to
happen, we see it happen again and again in Scripture, and it’s a mystery, you
wonder how it can happen, how you can have a man like Samuel and he turns out
he’s got a bunch of clucks for sons. How
you can have a man like David and he pokes out Solomon. Solomon goes to the end of his life and who
is Solomon’s son? Rehoboam, he gets on the throne and blows it, first thing,
first thing he does, the nation has a civil war, real smart guy and he had the
benefit of all the training in the book of Proverbs. So sometimes no matter what you do you can’t
win. This is the kind of situation that
too often happens.
So verses 18-21 is a situation that has happened after the family has
gone through Ephesian 6 principles, through Proverbs 22, after they’ve gone
with Proverbs 19, after it has gone through Proverbs chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4,
and so on. After all these things, and
still the son is stubborn and rebellious, then verse 21, that son was
eliminated from the community. They got
rid of the troublemakers early, and the principle that we have stated here
tonight is this: the Word of God recognizes that in the development of a young
person there is a time when they’re impressed with values, there is a time when
they are pliable and can be changed, and then there’s a hardening that occurs
and from that point on it’s almost impossible to change them because you’ve
basically structured already the basis in their life. And from that point you can change them a
little bit but not too much because the patterns are there, the patterns are
developed and they’re inculcated.
And this is why verse 21 is there, so you’ll understand why capital
punishment was authorized. It was
authorized after the child got to the point of no return and they couldn’t do
anything more about it, then he was eliminated.
This leads us to the end of this section of Deuteronomy and next time
we’ll begin with Deut. 22. We have
finished the section on the righteousness in the land. Chapters 17-21 have
dealt with the problem of God’s righteous standard for the nation. We have seen
God’s righteous standards for the civilian offices, we’ve studied the judge,
we’ve studied the priest, we’ve studied the prophet, we’ve studied the judicial
system, we’ve studied their foreign policy, we’ve studied some of the domestic
policy. Beginning next week in chapter
22 and following we’re going to study the concept of civil rights and freedom,
the basis of freedom, the basis of individual personal rights for we have gone
in a logical progression. First we began
in chapters 12-16 and we said the unity of the nation is grounded on a common
religious viewpoint. Then we moved from
chapters 17-21 to the fact that out of this common religious viewpoint you get
a set of common righteous standards.
Next week we’re going to progress further, out of this common religious
unity, out of the common standards we now have common civil rights and there we
are going to base our study on chapters 22-25.
In this section there are going to be some passage which some of you who
come from a prissy background may not appreciate, but I don’t intend not to go
over them. So be prepared, I’m telling you ahead of time, if you don’t want to
hear me preach on certain things in this book, just don’t bother to come to
evening service, spare yourself embarrassment, but I don’t intend to avoid any
issue in the Word of God. Some of these,
remember this whole sermon was given to a mixed audience. They obviously
weren’t embarrassed so I don’t know why you should be embarrassed but it’s
going to go through some of the nitty gritty of life and you might as well get
used to it. The Bible is not prissy and
it lets you in on all the terms. You
have prissy people that are legalist and they can’t stand to talk about it,
we’re going to talk a little bit about sex even, nasty subject to talk about…
but nevertheless the Bible gives you tremendous information about it, and it
just isn’t embarrassed about it. God
created it and it’s to be used according to certain things and it’s not used in
certain ways or you have trouble, and the Bible is not at all embarrassed to
tell you what the trouble is going to be.
I just want to warn you that you look ahead and figure out what night
you can be absent.