Dennis Tuuri

As we did last week, when I get to a place where I hear the tape stop, I’ll have to stop and turn it over. So I just ask your indulgence in that.

We return now to Hebrews 12, and hopefully by now we are getting real familiar with Hebrews 12. We’ve gone over this passage. This will be the third time now. And today we want to use it basically as a starting off point to talk about corporal punishment specifically.

Those of you who’ve been here for the last few weeks recognize that what we’ve been doing is we started with Hebrews 12 to look at the model for God’s discipline of us as his sons and look at that as a model for our family. Several weeks ago, we talked specifically about Hebrews 12. However, we pointed out that it’s an encouragement to us to persevere in the race, to run the race with patience, with thanksgiving, and actually with joy, recognizing that God has set various trials in front of us for our benefit because he loves us.

And that’s why he chastens us with trials and with the temptation to sin occasionally as well. We’re to run the race being faithful, to strive to lay aside the sin that so easily besets us, and also to run the race in spite of persecutions or troubles that come upon us from those people that would seek to trouble the people of God. And we remembered then that Hebrews 12 basically—the outline we used was that there’s three methods of encouragement that God gives us.

He gives us a command to run the race. He encourages us with the covenant witness—the witness of Hebrews 11—all those Old Testament saints who witness to the covenant faithfulness of God our father. So that should be an encouragement to us to run the race with patience, staying under whatever God has placed us under at this point in time in terms of trials and tribulations. We’re to run the race with thanksgiving also.

And he gave us the example of our covenant mediator, Jesus Christ, who suffered on the cross as we read this morning and suffered in ways that we’ll never have to suffer. And so we should run the race with not simply patience but thanksgiving, recognizing that our sufferings are limited in relationship to our covenant mediator, Jesus Christ. And then the author of the epistle to the Hebrews gave us the encouragement of the covenant word itself.

And through that covenant word, he taught us—the epistle, the writer of the epistle of Hebrews did that—God’s chastening is not simply something to be withstood and be patiently endured and to be somewhat thankful for, but it’s actually something to rejoice in because we know that by that mechanism, God produces righteousness, peace, and joy within our hearts because he’s doing it out of his love for us.

We went on from there last week then to talk about that model somewhat related to what happens in our families and the way we’re to chasten our children and correct them. Now, we looked specifically at Ephesians 6:1-4 and drew some corollary statements from Ephesians 6 and then going back to Hebrews 12. And Hebrews 6 tells us the children are to do two things with their parents. They’re to obey their parents and they’re to honor their parents.

And fathers are to do two things. They’re not to provoke their parents. That’s the first thing that’s given in the encouragement in Ephesians in terms of what fathers are supposed to do with their children—not provoke them. But secondly, they’re to raise them up. And by means of raising them up, we use two different devices: nurture and admonition. And we talked about the idea of helping our children, disciplining them through the scriptures. But then also that they’re going to sin in spite of that.

And we have to use admonitions, rebukes, and at times corporal punishment. That’s the backdrop for where we’re at in today’s series, today’s talk in this series of talks.

Next week—well, to get to the reason why we’re going through this right now, particularly right now with this congregation. Next week we’ll have a discussion of the new administrative rules that were passed by the state of Oregon first part of October relative to spanking and defining child abuse such that various spankings would be outlawed by that bill, by that new rule.

So we’ll talk specifically to that next week in some detail. But today, having said last week that we are responsible to discipline our children using various techniques, today we want to move on to the specific area that the administrative rule most threatens, and that being corporal punishment or spanking—physical chastisement in other words. And as we get into this, remember that the presupposition of these verses that we just read in Hebrews was that people are prone to sin.

As we said last week, simply educating our children about what’s right and wrong will not produce good children. Children are born—just like the scriptures tell us quite clearly—that when man comes from the womb, he is in the words of Bob Dylan, that he comes from the womb stone cold dead. He comes out of the womb rebelling against the authority of God, actively seeking to suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness.

Now that’s the fallen state of man because of the fall of Adam when he sinned. That’s the sin nature which we all inherit. And because of that, simple education is not enough for children. They must be rebuked. They must have reproofs. They must also suffer corporal punishment. It’s very important to keep that in mind as we look at these passages in Hebrews today.

Now, the first two verses that we read here out of Hebrews 12:5 and 6, and we talked about this before, is a quotation from the Old Testament, the book of Proverbs, and the exhortation there to fathers to discipline their children. And God takes that as in the primary explanation of that verse: that God disciplines us, he chastens us. And then he, after Hebrews 12:5 and 6, he then moves on to the rest of it, or Hebrews 12:5 and 6. He then quotes several verses talking about how fathers discipline their children and saying that fathers try to do the best for their kids. They try to discipline their children the best way they know how.

And God also has that same love and concern that a father has for his son. So he uses that analogy, as it were, of the family to talk about God’s relationship to us. But we stressed last week and you have to keep in mind as you read these verses: that the family is given to us by God to help us to understand the relationship he has to his covenant people. Okay? So the family mirrors God’s relationship to his covenant people.

We, the parents in the family, represent God’s authority to the children. And so then this passage also then serves to teach us many things about the way to discipline our children.

I was thinking of this—the fact that children come forth fallen with a fallen nature, as it were. I know that I thought of one example yesterday with our youngest son Eli. Not our youngest son anymore—our first son, Elijah, who’s now two and a half. You know, he can just be the sweetest little boy I’ve ever seen, and he can be a real good, real encouragement to us and everything. But at the same time, you know, one of the things he’ll do very quickly to his mother these days or to me occasionally. One thing that he’s taken up to doing these days is when we tell him something, he’ll raise his fists up defiantly.

Now, hopefully we’re going to correct that in him and in another couple of weeks he won’t be doing that. But what I’m getting at here is that’s the attitude of children toward their parents. And what we try to do is train them not to do that externally and then teach them not to do that internally either. We teach them to obey us and we teach them to honor us. But you have to recognize that children come out of the womb with raised fists, as it were, against God. And when we represent God’s authority to them, they’ll raise their fists to us.

They’ll be defiant and rebellious. That’s their natural state. And that’s why we’re taught that we have to produce or provide for them, rather, physical chastisement such as spanking.

So today, what we want to do is first of all give some general comments as to corporal punishment or spanking or using the rod. That’s the biblical method of discipline. When we talk about corporal punishment, that’s what it’s talking about—the rod.

Some general comments, and then we’ll move on to a consideration of the use of the rod and its biblical meaning. Why does God in his providence and in his ordination of these things bring to pass the fact that we’re to use a rod to physically spank our children and not our hand and not some other methods? So that’ll be the two things we’ll talk about today. First, some general comments, and then a discussion specifically of the rod itself.

First of all, some general comments. And we’ve made these caveats before, but I want to repeat now, just briefly. First of all, we said several weeks ago and we’ll repeat it now: that we’re going to talk about corporal punishment today in spanking. It’s one tool among many. It’s one tool among many for the parents to use in terms of disciplining or raising up their child. And we, in Hebrews, this passage we just read, we talked about the fact that chastening is the consistent word that’s used throughout Hebrews 12, which means—which comes from the Greek word paideia—or to raise up or to tutor a child.

That’s the overall term used for God’s chastening of us. And that’s what we’re doing with our children. We’re nurturing them. We’re training them. We’re tutoring them in the way, as it were. And one method though—one of those methods out of the many methods that God tells us to use—is corporal punishment. And specifically in verse 6 of Hebrews 12, we see that, quoting from Proverbs 3:11 and 12, he says, “For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”

Now, that’s kind of interesting. If you look back to Proverbs 3 from this quotation in your Old Testament, you won’t see that scourging reference there necessarily. What he’s doing here is quoting from the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Old Testament in use at the time. But that shouldn’t bother us, of course, because now it’s part of the word itself. And now it’s part of the inspired word of God. And so we recognize what he’s telling us there—that in Proverbs 3 and throughout the Old Testament, we read about correction or chastisement of children. It includes this element of scourging or physical punishment.

And scourging here in Hebrews 12:6 specifically refers to inflicting physical pain upon the son whom God receives.

Now, we said we cleared this verse out before. Read it again in Proverbs 29:15. We read that the rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame. And what I want to point out there is it says the rod and reproof—that it’s not the rod by itself that will produce wisdom in a child. It’s the rod connected with reproof. And reproof means to show somebody his fault. And of course, for us Christians, we’re showing them the fault from the scriptures themselves.

Furthermore, in Proverbs 17:10, we read that a reproof entereth more into a wise man than a hundred stripes into a fool. Now, hopefully we’re raising our children to be wise people. And the older they get, the wiser they’ll be, and the less we’ll have to punish them physically.

And the point I’m trying to get at here is that corporal punishment or spanking is one tool among many. But don’t put all your eggs into that basket. And don’t, when you read a child discipline book, come away thinking that’s the primary method—the only method we’re to use with our children. These verses clearly tell us that reproof is an important method that God has given us to correct our children.

Secondly, in terms of a caveat also in a general comment: the rod is not guaranteed to produce results. And we talked about this before. That in Hebrews 12, verse 11, that we just read, it says that chastening produces the peaceful fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby—not unto everybody, to them that are exercised by it, who are trained by it, who diligently apply themselves to being trained by what God gives us.

And that’s why he encourages us not to faint or to grow weary. Some will, and when they do that, they’ll show their non-electness in terms of God’s eternal decree. And so corporal punishment is not necessarily guaranteed to produce results.

Several weeks ago, we quoted from Jeremiah 2:29 and 30, where God says, “Wherefore will you plead with me? Ye all have transgressed against me, saith the Lord. In vain have I smitten your children. They received no correction. Your own sword hath devoured your prophets like a destroying lion.” In God there’s a recognition there that physical punishment does not always produce results. Spanking will not be guaranteed to be successful. And if you think it will, then you are going to be very frustrated as you attempt to discipline your children.

Third, by way of caveat, there are biblical restraints against the excessive use of spanking. This is all necessary to point out, I think, when we’re going to get into a discussion of corporal punishment. There are restraints.

The first obvious restraint is that there are biblical laws of restitution in terms of a civil magistrate. And if we—those laws will certainly apply to us. If we do permanent damage to our children, if through some physical punishment a child’s arm is broken or something like this occurs, then it’s certainly proper for the civil magistrate rather to exact biblical restitution through the loss of that limb for the period of time the child has it.

It’s important that the biblical principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is maintained in our justice systems, and that would certainly be true also of punishment of our children which goes beyond mere correction and goes into permanent damage of the child.

One of the things that we’ll be proposing—that I have downstairs on top of the piano—is a sheet of some recommended changes in the laws of the state of Oregon to define physical child abuse. And we say in there that one of the problems with the current child abuse laws is that if a person does do that kind of damage to their child at this point in time, they’re not really called to account for it.

We think that people that do actually physically abuse their child but has permanent physical injuries to their children should be brought to a quick justice by the hand of the civil magistrate instead of the psychological counseling that people are bound to come across these days. So that’s a restraint upon excessive use of physical punishment.

Secondly, there’s also the restraint. You remember that several months ago, a year or so ago, we talked about God’s concern for the orphans, for the fatherless in the land. And if you go through the various verses that talk about that, you begin to get the understanding that God has those things specifically pointed out because orphans are in a position of vulnerability to abuse. And we have to remember that same thing about our children. God has placed them into our care, and we have to be very careful the way we discipline them because they’re vulnerable before us.

And God certainly calls us to account if we act unrighteously against a vulnerable orphan. He’ll certainly call us to account if we act unrighteously or unjustly against our children as well.

Third, we have in the scriptures several places in the scriptures it says that God treats us as his children, but he understands our frame, and so he changes his method of dealing with us according to our frames and our limitations. We should understand—we should understand our children. And so that again is some sort of caveat or restraint against excessive physical abuse. We should understand our children’s frame and not be irritated by them but recognize their limitations.

Also, we talked about elder qualifications several weeks ago, and it’s very important to remember those, fathers, because we’re talking about heads of household here—primarily, of course, wives as delegated authorities also, but primarily fathers here. Remember we said those elder qualifications should be sought by every man in the church. And remember that some of those things—some of those qualifications would come into play here.

One of the qualifications for elders: a man become patient, that he be longsuffering, not quick to inflict punishment upon somebody when he’s been wronged by somebody. The same thing should be true of our children. We should be patient toward them.

And so we read last week in Ephesians 6, “Fathers, don’t provoke your children to wrath.” And you find throughout the Proverbs admonitions against the man to keep his anger in check. And frequently those admonitions are placed in the context of corporal punishment as well. And we’ll look at one of those in just a second.

Patience is important in terms of an elder. An elder is not to be a striker—remember, not to be a macho man, somebody who’s out to brawl all the time. And the same thing should be true with our children. We shouldn’t be quick to inflict punishment upon them in a fit of rage. That’s wrong biblically. It’s a restraint against corporal punishment for us.

We’re not to be doing that. In Proverbs 19:18, we read the following. It’s kind of interesting here in relationship to this as a restraint upon excessive physical punishment to our children. “Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying. A man of great wrath shall suffer punishment. For if thou deliver him, yet thou must do it again. Hear counsel and receive instruction.”

Now, why am I reading this? Not quite the verse I was looking for, actually. Let’s see if the context is different here. Well, we’ll have to come back to that later as we go through some of these passages in Proverbs. Well, I guess that’s the wrong verse. I can’t find the right one right now, but it’s important to recognize that God does put limitations upon the physical chastisement we give to our children.

And one of the Proverbs that—the one I’m looking for, and I can’t find it right now—maybe one of you can remind me of it later if I don’t get to it throughout this talk—is there’s one of the Proverbs that says to go ahead and spank your children and don’t desire his death. Okay? And the way that’s commonly interpreted by most people, that Proverb, is that you’re supposed to physically chastise your children and therefore deliver them from the possibility of death that would come upon those who are unjust. So you train your child so that he doesn’t receive death.

However, I think if you look at the context of that Proverb and hopefully we’ll find that specific verse before we get done today—if you look at the context of that Proverb before it and after it, there’s anger of people in authority cited. And I think one possible way to look at that Proverb and study it through and maybe come up to your own conclusions. But one of the possibilities of interpreting that Proverb is that while we’re to physically chastise our child, we’re not to desire his death in so doing.

You’ve heard parents, by way of I suppose of kidding around, say “I can just kill my son today,” you know. And sometimes those fits of anger will flash up into particularly a father’s mind. And yet I think that Proverb is a clear instruction to us to avoid that way of thinking—to not discipline our children to try to hurt them or inflict punishment upon them, but rather to do it restoratively or correctively.

So there are biblical restraints against the improper use or the excessive use rather of corporal punishment.

Having said those three things though—that it’s one of many, that it’s not guaranteed to produce results, that there’s biblical restraints against the excessive use—it’s important that we recognize the scriptures clearly teach us that we have to discipline our children using the method that he has given us, which is the rod.

In Proverbs 23:13 and 14, we read the following: “Withhold not correction from the child. For if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”

Now there’s a specific command given to us by God. It is inspired word to withhold not correction. And specifically it says to go ahead and give corporal punishment or spanking with the rod to the child. Okay? It’s a command of God. “Thou shalt beat him with the rod and shall deliver his soul from hell.” It’s a command of God. And if we’re going to be obeying all the laws of God that he’s given us in the scriptures, that’s one of them we have to obey.

And again, we go back to the text in Hebrews 12 and it says specifically in verse 6 that God causes scourging upon every son we receiveth. He goes on to talk about the natural family. If we’re going to image God in our families, then we have to scourge every son that’s a true son of ours. We have to give him physical corporal punishment. He’s commanded of God.

By way of general comment here: Fifth, by way of general comment, that discipline or corporal punishment rather—the rod itself—is necessary for the health of our child. The rod is healthy for our children. It’s not unhealthy for them.

First of all, it’s healthy for them physically. It’s a lot better to use a spanking spoon or a rod that God has given us, instructed us to use, than our hand. Our hand can inflict far greater damage to a child than a spanking spoon can. So it’s important that we recognize that God’s method is physically better for our child.

Corporal punishment restrains our children from harm. After all, if you have a two-year-old son who is prone to run out in front of cars and prone to become killed, if you correct him with the rod and physically restrain him from going out into that—through the use of the fear instilled in him of the rod of correction—then you’ve produced healthy results from that child because you’ve kept off that danger of the car hitting him.

We talked before about how in the Proverbs it talks about the fool goes to the rod of the stocks. The stocks are a restraint upon the fool. In the same way, the rod of correction is a restraint upon our children to keep them out of situations that would prove damaging to them physically.

All right. The rod is also necessary for the health of our children because, as we read here in Hebrews verse 11, the chastening produces righteousness and holiness into them which are exercised by it. And we know that righteousness is accompanied by physical blessings from God and unrighteousness is accompanied by physical cursings from God.

We have a real God who is really active in our world bringing forth physical blessings and physical punishments as well. And so if we use the rod of correction that God has told us to use, and our children thereby are exercised by it and that produces righteousness in them, they’re spared physical punishment from God himself. So the rod is good for our children physically.

The rod is good for our children’s mental health as well. Now in Proverbs 29:15, we read the following: “The rod of reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” We read that earlier, but it’s important to recognize there the end result of the rod is to produce wisdom in a child.

The Proverbs talks about two kinds of people basically—the wise man and the foolish man. And the wise man is the one who is satisfied with good things, who is in a position of rest and peace before God. And the fool is one who is never satisfied with anything, whose whole life is filled with all kinds of problems. It’s mental health to be wise in this world. And the rod of correction produces—is one of the devices whereby God produces wisdom in his children. And so the rod of correction is important for the mental health of our children.

Proverbs 22:15, “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” I said that there are two kinds of people in the Proverbs—fools and wise people. The Proverbs assume in this statement that our children when they’re born are foolish men. And they’re going to have foolishness as part of their makeup. They’re part of the covenant community, but they have foolishness bound up in their hearts and as part of their way of being. And the rod of correction drives that foolishness away.

So it produces physical and mental health for our children.

Reverend Rushdoony, as most of you know, is a missionary among the Indians, American, a certain tribe of American Indians. And it’s interesting to note some of his comments about the Indian tribes that he ministered to. Listen to what he has to say here. He said, “I never saw a frustrated Indian child. I found the Indians a lovable people of real ability and more than a little charm, but the permissiveness of their society guaranteed their continuing unhappy and low state.

An unfrusted child is inescapably in for trouble. It is impossible to live in a fallen world where conflict of wills is a daily problem and a minor one in the face of our major world and local problems without having frustrations. Discipline in childhood is a schooling in frustration and a training in patience and work. Discipline not only prepares us for frustration but gives us the character to work towards overcoming frustration.

Permissiveness in child rearing thus avoids frustrating the child only to ensure continual frustration for the adult.”

Now there’s some real words of wisdom there for us as we look at our children. Our children are foolish, and if we don’t produce physical restraints upon them, they’ll grow up undisciplined and they’ll grow up very frustrated in a world that places all kinds of limitations upon them when they’re adults.

Perhaps they can get by with being not frustrated when they’re children, but it’s a great disservice to our children to do that to them. It produces mental unhealth for them in the future. And if we bring God’s rod of correction into our households and unto our children when necessary, and we’ll produce wisdom in them and mental health. They’ll learn to live and cope with a world that is a fallen world and as a result is a limiting and frustrating world as well.

And of course, the Proverbs tell us that the rod of correction is good for their physical health, mental health, and then it combines those things together, of course, in Proverbs 23:14 by telling us that “thou shalt beat the child with the rod God and shall deliver his soul from hell.” Hell is the place that God can cast both body and soul into. And the rod then is the corrective against the punishments of body and soul thought in hell.

And therefore, the rod is healthy for our children both physically and mentally and then eternally as well. That’s important to recognize that one of the remain reasons why we discipline our children the way that God has told us to do.

However, I don’t think that’s good enough. I think it’s important to recognize those things—that those are some of the reasons why we discipline our children with some good reasons for physical, mental, and eternal health.

But, you know, that’s not quite a good enough reason for the particular method that God has chosen. If we go to the state official after all and try to convince him we’re using the spanking spoon because it’s better than our hand for our child physically, then what’s he going to do? He’s going to say, “Well, yeah, but I know something even better than the rod. Why don’t you just take away his allowance? Why don’t you produce some other method of discipline that isn’t physical in nature?”

If we argue the case at that level—that the rod is better than hand because the hand is more physically damaging—they’re going to try to go with one better. They can always do it yourself. When you think about it, there are other methods of physical discipline rather that don’t involve physical pain at all.

If we try to tell the state and if we try to think through our own minds, the reason we’re using a rod is to restrain them from harm, there are certainly other methods to use to restrain children from running out in front of cars—fences among one, keep them in the house among another, and many state officials would see that far preferable than to using a spanking spoon to try our child’s behind.

If we try to convince the state official that the reason we’re using the rod is so that they’ll be right acting, righteous, that they’ll have good consecrated lives to a proper purpose, holiness, and that we want eternal salvation for them, their answer will be that they have a system that produces those things—that produces right action and produces a state of consecration and produces a state of salvation. They’ll try to convince us that it’s education itself.

After all, this country believes that education is the Messiah that’s going to bring about the true kingdom of God. A modern sociologist in one of his quotes said that the teacher is the true prophet of the future. Through his actions will bring about the true kingdom of God.

So if we try to argue out here in terms of the goals that we’re trying to strive for—it’s good and it’s proper to think that way—but I think that God’s scripture gives us more reasons why he has us use the rod of correction as opposed to our hand, as opposed to just taking away the allowance, as opposed to grounding children or other things like this. God has more reasons than that for us.

Ultimately, of course, the reason why we spank our children with the rod is because God commands it. And that’s all we need really, isn’t it? In spite of all these reasons that we can think of as to why corporal punishment is good, ultimately God commands it. And that’s enough for us, isn’t it?

But God is more gracious than that. He’s more gracious than we are with each other frequently. Instead of just giving us commands, he does give us understanding. He does give us motivations for applying those commands. You saw that with Hebrews 12. Hebrews 12 says to run that race. Let it produce the fruit in you of righteousness and holiness and not bitterness. And then he gives us all those encouragements that we talked about two weeks ago in terms of running that race.

And I think with corporal punishment, with using God’s rod, if we understand why he chose that method and some of the things is to—it’s to teach us in our household—we’ll be in a much better position of obeying him in all these things.

I think we have to understand what’s behind the use of the rod. What is God teaching us with it? Why are we using a rod of correction instead of some other method of corporal punishment even? What’s behind it? Why are we so insistent upon a rigid interpretation that some would call of the scriptures in terms of the method of discipline itself? There’s some very good reasons why.

And I think if we look at these reasons, we’ll recognize that the rod of discipline in our families—the rod of correction, a spanking rod—is an important tool to teach the children about the gospel of Jesus Christ, about the very core of our faith itself. All many things containing the core of our faith are transmitted to our children when we use the rod of correction.

We’ll look at some scriptures now in terms of the use of the rod and the way it’s used in scripture. And we’ll see three things as we go through these scriptures. We’ll see that the rod of correction is a tool to remind us about God’s delegated authority in the family and of Christ’s present rule over the kingdom, over the whole world. The rod is a reminder to us of God’s authority.

The rod will see, through various scriptures, a reminder to us of God’s justice in the world. And then we’ll see that the rod is also a reminder in our families of God’s love for us and of our love for our children. Those things are at the heart of the gospel after all. Jesus Christ, coming—whose birth we celebrate at this time of the year—to establish his kingdom in justice and holiness and thereby to provide blessings for those people who are brought into covenant relationship with him.

That’s what the rod of correction Scripture teaches in our families. And now let’s look at some of the word studies that I did this last week and see how these things are taught throughout the scriptures.

For those of you who are taking notes, there’s three Hebrew words and one Greek word that are translated rod in the scriptures that we’re going to deal with this morning. Those of you taking notes, I’ll give you the Strong’s reference number. Okay, the first Hebrew number is 2415. That’s a Strong’s reference number. 2415. That Hebrew word is shevet. Okay. It’s only used in a couple of places, but it’s going to be very instructive to look at those places in just a second.

The bulk of the verses in the Old Testament where the word rod is found are two Hebrew words. The Strong’s reference numbers are 4294—mateh—and also 7626—shebet. Those are the reference numbers from the Strong’s concordance referencing system: 4294 and 7626.

In the Greek, the Greek word that’s translated rod in various places and we’ll look at those in just a second is the Strong’s concordance reference number 4464. So if you’re going to be doing some personal study, fathers, and it’s a very good idea because this is a central area of your controlling your family—after all, we’re called as elders to rule over our family, to preside over them, and the rod of authority is one of those mechanisms. Those are some good versus to begin.