Parenting

Pastor Martin expounds the second experiential privilege of adoption — the reality and certainty of God's paternal discipline — from Hebrews 12:1-13. He sets out three principles: the Father's love for his true children constrains him to discipline them (making the mathematical equation Father's love + adoption = discipline), God's discipline aims specifically at conforming us to the family likeness of holiness, and the proper response is to expect, understand, and submit to it. He closes with a sustained exhortation on the goodness of loving parental discipline both in the home and from God's hand.

Continuing the exposition of 'walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,' Pastor Martin identifies the mass media of communication -- television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and advertising -- as a primary channel through which ungodly counsel reaches believers. He exposes four philosophies permeating the mass media: materialism, sensualism, moral relativism, and anti-God intellectualism, and offers practical counsel for guarding oneself and one's family against their subtle influence.

After a nine-week digression, Pastor Martin resumes the Psalm 1 series by identifying secular education as a second major channel through which ungodly counsel reaches believers. He outlines five philosophical pillars of secular education -- the supremacy of man's mind, man's normalcy, a world of chance, man's good as the goal, and this world as the exclusive sphere of concern -- and contrasts each with the corresponding biblical principle. He urges believers to pray for a purgation of secularism from their minds and to saturate themselves and their children with the biblical worldview.

Pastor Martin addresses the first great hindrance to meditation: the indisposition of the flesh. He establishes from Galatians 5 and Romans 7 that the flesh wars against every spiritual activity, and the more spiritual the activity, the more violent the opposition. He then identifies the second hindrance: the competition of the world for the mind of the believer, showing from 'The Hidden Persuaders' and Scripture how advertising, media, and cultural forces deliberately target the mind to inject desires that crowd out meditation. He urges conviction of necessity, systematic exposure to the Word, disciplined time and mind, and reliance on the Holy Spirit.