Proverbs 13:24 reads, “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.”  Typically, when we go to this verse, we see it as being about corporal punishment.  All the experts in our society tell us that spanking children harms them, but we know better (generally from personal experience), and besides, Proverbs 13:24.  Certainly, I believe that there are times when my children’s backsides listen better than their ears do!

However, we ought to spend as much time in this verse considering the importance of diligence as we do defending a particular method of discipline.  The contrast in the proverb isn’t really between spanking and not spanking.  It’s between being diligent in discipline versus refusing to discipline when appropriate.

There are many reasons why parents, even Christian parents who believe in corporal punishment, can find themselves in the latter category.  I’m here to tell you—it’s HARD to discipline children consistently!  For one thing, parents who work long hours may simply not spend enough time around their children to consistently hold them to a standard.  If you only have a couple hours a day with them, do you really want to spend those few hours making them do stuff and calling them down when they don’t?

Energy is another issue.  I have heard legends of children who only need to be told once and then obey their parents’ wishes.  It is not so with my children. 

Don’t get me wrong; they’re basically good kids.  However, they will gladly expend ten times as much effort evading some instruction as they would in obeying it.  Never mind that simply listening the first time would be easier and less painful for everyone.  They remain as intent on freedom as the plot of a Mel Gibson movie.

As a result, they are exhausting to parent.  Getting them to do anything they don’t want to do requires a massive expenditure of energy, and tomorrow, there will be no evidence that the energy was expended.  If the same situation arises, the same conflict will take place. 

I have been known to observe that trying to train my children is about like banging on a hunk of scrap steel with a hammer.  It makes a lot of noise, but it doesn’t appear to produce much change.  That being the case, why not hand them the remote and let the TV and the Xbox raise them?

To myself, to my wife, and to all parents with children like that, I say, “Do not grow weary and lose heart!”  It may be tempting to walk away from the daily struggle, but that won’t end well.  As Shawn likes to say, if you don’t teach your children to act right, the police will.  Life isn’t kind to people who haven’t learned to control themselves. 

Additionally, I doubt that I am truly as ineffective as I sometimes feel.  My children may be learning at a glacial pace, but they are learning.  These days, they can sit through an hour-long funeral without having to be bribed with books or tablets, and that wouldn’t have been true two years ago.  The signs of progress will be evident to those who look for them.

Diligence matters.  It matters in everything, but it particularly matters in raising children.  The more we apply ourselves to the task now, the less cause we will have to regret it later.

Job 6 is the beginning of Job’s first reply to Eliphaz.  In vs. 1-7, he argues that despite Eliphaz’s insinuations, he is being treated unfairly.  If he were being treated fairly, he wouldn’t be complaining!  In vs. 8-12, he insists that the best thing God could do for him, if God is determined to be unfair to him, would be to destroy him completely.  From there, he turns his critique on Eliphaz.  He complains that Eliphaz is being a faithless friend to him, and he sarcastically insists that if he has done something wrong, Eliphaz should tell him what it is.

Job 7 continues Job’s complaint.  He explains that his days are miserable, and he anticipates that he will die soon.  In those circumstances, he doesn’t see any reason to hold anything back from God.  He complains that God is persecuting him through every hour of the day, and he points out that if God continues to do so, He will kill him.

Job 8 is the first time that Bildad the Shuhite speaks.  He insists that God would never behave unjustly toward Job, that all the bad things that have happened to Job’s children are deserved, and that if Job is righteous, God will surely deliver him.  He says that this has been proven by history.  Furthermore, everyone knows that the wicked will be destroyed, but that God will sustain the righteous.

Job 9 contains the first part of Job’s reply to Bildad.  He begins by pointing out the impossibility of contending with God.  When God is so powerful and has done so many wonderful things, who can call Him to account?  Job then imagines the outcome of a contest between him and God.  If it’s a contest of strength, God will crush him.  If it’s a contest of justice, God is so shrewd that He will make Job look guilty even though he is innocent. He says that God is arbitrary in His dealings with mankind, treating the blameless and the wicked alike.  He is afraid that no matter what he does, God will continue to punish him.

Job 10 is entirely addressed by Job to God.  He wants to know why God is oppressing him so.  He is bewildered that God made him so carefully, only to begin to treat him so badly.  No matter what he does, he is confident that God will continue to persecute him.  Job doesn’t get it.  If this was the purpose that God always had in mind, why go through all the other stuff first?  Why not simply let him die in the womb?  All Job asks from God at this point is to leave him alone so he can die in peace.

Job 1 sketches out both the prosperity and the downfall of the title character.  The first eight verses paint him as a man who has everything in both a physical and spiritual sense.  He is as righteous as he is wealthy.  However, his prosperity and righteousness attract the attention of Satan, who claims that the second is the result of the first.  Satan seeks and receives permission from God to take away all of his blessings without harming his health.  Satan does precisely this, using various means to destroy not only Job’s flocks and herds, but also his children.

Job 2 is more of the same.  God and Satan have another conversation.  God points out that Job, despite having lost his prosperity, has not ceased to be righteous.  Satan promises different results if he is allowed to up the ante, attacking Job’s health as well.  God gives Satan permission, and now Job has a plague of boils to go along with his other problems. 

Job’s calamities begin to draw notice from others.  His wife tells him to curse God and die.  Job righteously refuses.  Then, three of Job’s friends, named Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, show up.  They sit in mourning with him for a week, saying nothing.

Job 3 contains the first of Job’s poetic speeches.  He begins it by calling a curse down on the day of his birth and the night of his conception.  In Job’s view, both the day and the night have betrayed him because they allowed him to exist.  He would have been far better off if he had never been born.  He considers the dead with longing because they no longer have to suffer.

Instead, he wants to know why he continues to exist.  For him, there is no joy in life, only suffering.  The key question appears in v. 23, in which Job asks why life continues to be granted to him when God clearly is set against him.

Job 4 is the beginning of Eliphaz’s first speech.  Eliphaz accuses Job of being ready to dish out spiritual correction but not so ready to take it.  He then maintains that the innocent are never oppressed by God.  Instead, God only makes the wicked suffer.  Eliphaz then relates a vision that he saw.  In this vision, a fearsome specter points out that it is impossible for man to be right in the sight of God.  Even angels transgress, and we’re nothing next to them!  People perish because of their sins.

Job 5 continues Eliphaz’s narrative.  He points out that in his experience, it is the wicked and foolish who suffer.  They bring it on themselves.  He encourages Job to turn to God, who rescues the poor and needy while bringing down the proud.  He thinks that Job needs to accept God’s rebuke, implying, though not saying, that he thinks that Job’s problems are sin problems.  Once Job is willing to do that, all of his difficulties will clear up.  Repent, Job.  It’s for your own good.

Psalm 11 is David’s appeal to God in a time when he fears that God has abandoned him.  He feels that even if he flees like a bird to the mountain of God (which is where the hymn “Flee as a Bird” comes from), the wicked will shoot him down.  He is helpless and powerless. 

However, despite his powerlessness, he still trusts in the ultimate justice of God.  He appeals to God to punish his wicked enemies according to their wickedness.  He concludes by expressing the contrasting hope that the Lord will reward the righteous in His presence.

Psalm 12 sets out the spiritual struggle of David with people who are lying about him.  In vs.1-2, he sets out the problem:  flattering and double-tongued people who trust in the power of their lies.  Vs. 3-4 appeal to God to judge those who sin with the tongue.  In vs. 5-6, David predicts God’s rescue of the poor and needy from the liars who oppress them.  He also contrasts the lies of the wicked with the pure speech of God.  The psalm concludes in vs. 7-8 with an expression of hope in the protection of God and a condemnation of the wicked whose continuing presence makes God’s help necessary.

Psalm 13 is another psalm of lamentation from David in a time when God seems absent and his enemies are all too present.  He wonders is God is going to forget and abandon him forever, giving glory to David’s enemies by default.  David predicts that if things keep going in the same direction, his enemies will kill him and boast in his death.  However, in the conclusion of the psalm, he remembers the graciousness of God’s past dealings and expresses the confidence that God will give him reason to rejoice this time too.

Psalm 14, also by David, presents a pessimistic perspective on the foolishness and wickedness of humankind.  People everywhere doubt God’s existence and give themselves over to sin.  God looks down from heaven, searching for one righteous man, but He can’t find even one.  It’s enough to make one wonder if David was writing this in 2019!

However, David points out a problem with the wicked.  In their oppression of the poor, they aren’t reckoning with God, who protects the poor.  Sooner or later, God is going to make things right.  The final verse of the psalm expresses the hope that He will do so soon.

Psalm 15 presents David’s take on a much more optimistic subject:  what it takes to dwell in the presence of God.  He tells us that God favors those who a) live righteous lives, b) are honest with themselves, c) don’t betray others, d) love the righteous and despise the wicked, e) keep their word under all circumstances, and f) don’t oppress the poor.  Do these things, and God will sustain you.

Unlike many of its neighbors in the early part of Psalms, Psalm 8 is an apparently straightforward song of praise to God.  In vs. 1-2, it points out His power, revealed both in the glories of creation and in His exaltation of the lowly over the wicked.

The key question of the psalm appears in vs. 3-4.  Given that God is so great, why does He have any regard for mankind ("the son of man" in v. 4), which is much less important than He is?  The rest of the psalm points out that God's regard is evident in His blessings.  He has made mankind the most exalted of the earthly beings, crowning us with glory and honor, and given us dominion over all other earthly creatures.

Makes sense, right?  However, in Hebrews 2, the writer reveals that the psalm has a hidden meaning.  It isn't only about the lower-case-s son of man, us.  It's about the capital-s Son of Man, Jesus.  Even though Jesus was not originally lower than the angels, He was made to be so.  

Like us, He tasted mortality, but after His death, He was crowned with glory and honor and given dominion not only over the creatures of the earth, but over all of God's creation.  However, we still await the time when everything will be put under His feet.  Death has yet to be subjected to Him.

All of this might seem like a subversion of Psalm 8's original point, but in truth it confirms it.  It is ultimately Jesus' death on our behalf, not our earthly preeminence, that proves how much God cares for us.  In Hebrews 2:10, the writer observes that Jesus brought many sons to glory.  Our salvation is the greatest way that God crowns us with glory and honor, all by causing His Son to become one of us and die for us.

In response to this, we can only echo Psalm 8's closing thoughts:  "O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!"