Transcript: October 3rd, 2004« Back

Christian Parenting, Part 1

Ephesians 6:4

Jeff Noblit

Christian Parenting

Ephesians 6:4

    

     Well, Ephesians chapter 6, our verse I will preach on today is verse 4.  Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.  What Paul is doing here as he writes this letter to the church at Ephesus is he’s giving a revolutionary new perspective on the social order.  What he’s actually doing is bringing the truth to bear on the social order of man.  Restoring, if you will, what was lost when Adam and Eve in Vance Havner’s words ate us out of house and home in the garden.  We lost something there.  In Christianity we gain it back and began a pilgrimage of implementing those high, divine truths that the world doesn’t understand and scoffs at and mocks and ridicules. 

     So you get to Ephesians chapter 6 and he continues talking about the social order.  But really if you look back at Ephesians chapter 5 verse 22 and you go through, uh, chapter 6 verse 9, you have Paul talking about husbands and wives, then parents and children, rather children and parents.  It’s in that order.  And then slaves and masters, or we could make the parallel today to employers and employees.  So the marriage relationship, parent-child relationship, the management-laborer relationship, the social order. 

But everything in that section of 5:22 through 6:9 is built upon 5:21.  Look at it again.  Ephesians chapter 5 verse 21:  And be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.  Out of our new reverence, your new honoring of Christ, I like Piper’s word, this new treasuring of Christ that’s occurred in our hearts now that we’re converted.  Because of that you now have both that desire and the capacity to be humble and subject yourself to God’s rule and God’s standard.  And that is to be subject to one another.  Let the other persons be more important than yourself.  This isn’t something you grit your teeth and do in the flesh.  It’s the outflow of the new man.  So everything in 5:21 – Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ – is built on 5:18.  Look at 5:18 again.  And do not get drunk with wine, that’s always a good idea, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.  And as I preached on that, remember, I told you it wasn’t necessarily you’re supposed to look for this impersonal force, this power called the Spirit that’s gonna come fill you.  No.  It really means develop a crush on God.  Continually cultivate a crush, like a teenage crush.  A teenager, quote, falls in love like that.  And you know what a teenager does when they really like someone.  They cultivate it.  They keep things, and they have pictures, and they have mementos and they exchange rings or whatever they do.  But they cultivate that crush on that person.  That’s what he’s saying, “Be full of God.  Work at making sure your heart really loves God.”  Now it certainly does at conversion, but you have to work on it also. 

And then Ephesians 5:18 is dependent upon all the glorious truths of the previous chapters, particularly Ephesians chapter 1 and 2 where he talked about how we are saved by grace through faith, that not of ourselves.  It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, lest any man should boast.  So building on all of that, he comes to this new revolutionary perspective on the social order.  AND I say revolutionary because the, the Greco-Roman world of this day was really out of balance as far as how truth is concerned on the social order. 

And so Paul is saying to Christians, “You can get things back right, back the way they’re supposed to be in God’s eyes.”  Now one of the things that is so true is that Christianity was the great liberator.  It liberated people from oppression, under, abusive and oppressive people in authority.  Whether it was government or the marriage relationship or the parent-child relationship.  But the beautiful thing is, Christianity does not liberate one from God’s law because it is God’s law.  It is God’s truth that the husband is the head of the wife.  It is God’s law, God’s truth that parents are to be, are to have children, rather, that obey them.  It is God’s truth, it is God’s law that the employee should work for the employer like working unto the Lord.  So though he, he radically liberated people from oppression he did not throw out the God-ordained structures.  He just showed how they ought to work. 

Jeremiah 31:33 says this.  “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord.  “I will put My law within them.”  Now notice that.  The law’s not just external.  Once you’re converted in this new covenant, the law’s in you.  God gives you a new heart to embrace, love, and cherish His truth.  “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God and they shall be My people.”  So this new revolutionary perspective that God is giving, let me just outline it this way, is that submission to God-ordained authority is still right.  Paul makes that very clear because some Christians got out of balance when they were liberated in Christ and thought, “Well, wives don’t have to honor the authority of their husbands, and children, well, they’re free now. They don’t have to live under the oppression of these parents.  And, and employees, they, they have a new lease on life.  They don’t have to be so beaten down and oppressed.”  Well, Paul does address that, but he says, “No, no, no, the structures of authority remain.  That’s God’s truth.  WE just got to get them functioning right.”  So authority is still right.  Submission to God-ordained authority is expected and required.  And even more so now that we are changed from within by grace so that we have this spark of love for God.  Jonathan Edwards would call it a new affection for God that only true regeneration can produce.  When you’re counseling with someone and you wonder if they’ve really come to Christ, don’t just look for a concern to miss hell.  The flesh has that.  Look for something, at least a spark of affection for God, a desire for God, a love for the things of God.  And since we have that, there should be an even greater zeal in us to honor His law concerning submission to authority.  But also that God requires in the Christian structures of authority that those in authority love and never lord over those under them, and never be oppressive.  We are to lead those under us whether you’re a husband or a parent or an employer for the glory of God and the good of those under you.  So here’s the beautiful balance that is the revolutionary new perspective that God gives to the social order in life. 

Now let’s go to the particular one we’re talking about today, and I call this, “Christian Parenting.”  And, uh, we may not get through with it this morning, and if so, we’ll leave the practical parts to next time.  But he says here beginning in verse 4, and this will be our first major point.  Roman numeral one, fathers are the ones responsible for their children.  When I mean for their children, the education, the rearing, the development of the children.  Fathers, and that’s why he begins the verse in verse 4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.  Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”  Now I understand the Greek word here can sometimes refer to both parents, and certainly both are included.  But you look at it over and over again, and this verse is, this word’s almost always just translated fathers, and I believe there’s a point that Paul is making here.  And that is that the responsibility lands on dad.  Dad has the chief responsibility.  Fathers are the pastor of the home.  Let that sink in for a moment.  Think of it in those terms.

He’s responsible to oversee and chiefly lead in the education of the children.  Now, he may not be as hands on as mom is because mom may have just more time with the children.  But he’s the one who is responsible.  And I want to say to this, he is the one who will give an account at the judgment bar of God for that home.  You know what that means, guys?  We’re under pressure.  It’s awesome the task we’re called to.  I know I need the God-ordained truth of His Word to help me be the father I’m called to be because He’s holding me responsible to be that.  I know I need it. 

So he says, “Fathers, you do all these things in the discipline and instruction.”  Then he has a little phrase, I’m gonna hit on it many times, “Of the Lord.  Don’t provoke them to anger.  Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”  What it means is that all education and childrearing is to be centered on and founded on the Lord.  It’s not Dr. Spock and the Lord.  It’s the Lord.  And if Spock don’t fit the Lord, Spock gets left out.  It’s of the Lord.  We need God’s truth in our homes.  That’s what we need.  It’s of the Lord.

Now I’m not saying that psychology hasn’t come up with some good ways to describe and understand some things.  But they don’t have the solution to things.  But they don’t have the solution to things because they don’t know who man is.  Man’s made in the image of God with a spiritual nature, and they deny that man even has a spiritual nature.  My goodness, you go to work on a car, you need to know what it is. 

Well, today in our culture we certainly do not have a God-centered view of education.  We have an overwhelmingly, now when I say education, I don’t just mean the school.  I mean all of the instruction of the children.  Church, school, home, etc.  When you just take the whole thing, it’s very man-centered.  This deeply grieves me and it deeply troubles me, and a lot of people don’t get it.  But I’m gonna say it till I die.  We used to have a culture that even though many were pagan and non-Christian, they were basically God-centered.  They viewed God the Creator as the center of all things and everything is of Him and from Him and connected to Him.  Read some of the old, books of a hundred and fifty, two hundred years ago.  Not Christian books, just books, and you’ll see just expression after expression after expression that everybody had something of a God-centered perspective.  Today, brothers and sisters, even in the church, we’re very weak on being God-centered.  It’s all about man, and it’s all about man’s needs, and it’s all about man’s wants, and it’s all about man’s desire.  Listen, brothers and sisters, fallen man is blinded to his real need.  And he’s warped in all of his desires.  We’re to give man God’s truth and watch the Holy Spirit of God turn man’s heart and give him a hunger for God and truth, not trust our creativity and ingenuity to somehow bushwhack or corral him to getting interested in God.  God is not interested in being made into an idol so that fallen, wicked man might appreciate Him.  We must proclaim God as who He is with love and compassion and boldness and trust the Holy Spirit of God to bring the appetite of men toward the true God.  And that’s Jesus building His church. 

Education of our children, the whole education of our children is so man-centered.  You know, the first elementary school textbook for the youngest children in America was built on the catechism, on the protestant catechism?  AS they taught children the ABC’s they taught them the great doctrines of the faith.  Why?  It was God-centered.  It was God-centered.  Today, we are tempted by the world, the flesh, and the devil to segment our lives like a pie.  I mean one part, one slice would be, well, we need the, the public school or schools in general to educate our children in those types of things.  The basics of learning.  And then we need the church to, that’s another piece of the pie, to educate our children on, on spiritual things.  And then in the home we’ll try to take care of social education.  And then if you have all the pieces of the pie, then you’ve got something going, and you’re doing pretty good.  Friends, this is not God’s plan.  It’s not God’s plan.  It’s all to be God-centered.  All training comes within the discipline and instruction of the Lord.  Now I’m not saying it’s not God’s plan to go to church so your children can be trained or send them to school.  That’s not what I’m’ saying.  I’m saying the philosophy behind it, it’s, we’re not to be segmented like a pie, we’re to be more like a wagon wheel.  And the hub of the wagon wheel is God.  And the spokes are all the things that come out of that.  The school and the church and the home.  It’s needs to be God-centered.  And for God’s glory.  And based on God’s wisdom.

My point is this.  Fathers, we must lead our families to see that this is the case.  We’re responsible that our children are raised, are instructed, are disciplined, are educated with God as the center, and the purpose of education being God and His glory. 

The importance of instructing in the home and in everyday life cannot be overemphasized.  Let me just emphasize this for a moment.  Would you turn over to Deuteronomy chapter 6 right quick?  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, then Deuteronomy.  In Deuteronomy chapter 6, God is instructing Moses on how the children of Israel are to instruct their families and how they ought to lead their families.  In Deuteronomy 6, beginning in verse 1, he says, “Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the judgments which the Lord your God has commanded me to teach you that you might do them in the land where you are going to possess.”  “I’m giving you a special land.  You will be My special people in that special land.  And you fathers must make sure you’re household knows My truth.”

Verse 2:  “So that you and your son and your grandson might fear the Lord your God to keep all His statutes and His commandments, which I command you all the days of your life that your days may be prolonged.”  Can I add this in here?  He didn’t say the children’s program would do this.  He didn’t say the student ministry would do this.  Those are wonderful and good.  He’s saying, “Fathers, you must so teach your children that they fear God.”  “Brother Jeff, I don’t know that I’m doing very good there.”  I don’t know if any of us are doing very good, but I tell you what you can do in grace.  You can keep striving.  You can keep growing.  You can keep understanding.  You can keep changing.  And we can all keep doing better.  And one day as a church family, maybe we can help the younger couples, one day as a church family, if we keep striving and if we keep growing, and if we keep changing to be more biblical, one day we might get to normal Christianity.  I don’t mean that ugly spirited.  Just where it’s normal that the men of the church take responsibility to teach their children to fear the Lord.  Now I’m not saying you don’t.  And I’m not saying I don’t.  But I’m just saying we all probably need to grow.  A big part of that is bringing your children to a solid church.  That’s a big part of that.  Of course, there’s other parts also. 

Let’s go further.  Verse 3:  O Israel, you should listen and be careful to do it that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly, just as the Lord, the God of your fathers has promised you in the land of milk and honey.  Verse 4:  Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God.  The Lord is one.  Oh, here’s the verse.  You shall love the Lord your God, oh, Dads.  Oh, Dads.  Oh, Dads.  Dads, listen to me.  Do you love Him?  Oh, Dads, if you don’t love Him, everything you do is gonna be hollow and legalistic and browbeating because, listen, if you love Him, you know what it means?  It means you have been changed by His grace.  And as you firmly teach those children, you know what you’re gonna do?  You’re gonna teach them with that humble heart that says, “I’m a wicked sinner too, child.  And my Lord loves me by grace.  And though I have firm rules for you, son, I want you to know Daddy is a sinner that needed God’s grace.”  Oh, that’s the key.  We’ve got to love Him. 

Has God been doing anything in your heart like that?  He’s been doing that in my heart.  He’s been saying, “Jeff, you know, all the stuff really doesn’t matter.  Do you love Me?”  And I want to tell you.  I love my Lord more today than I did a few months ago, than I did a few years ago.  And that makes me a better pastor.  But even more important, God didn’t just call me to be a pastor.  God called me to be a dad.  It makes me a better father.  And I’ve still got a long way to go.  But I’m heading that way.  You want to go with me?  I’m heading that way.  For God’s glory, let’s keep going. 

Well, You shall love the Lord your God, verse 5, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.  These words which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.  That’s basically the scriptures or the Bible.  You could say. 

Verse 7:  You shall teach them diligently to your sons.  Now when he says diligently he doesn’t mean a two hour, formal classroom.  Matter of fact, in the home, I would discourage a lot of real formal sit down study because it needs to be incarnational.  It needs to be in the body.  It needs to be in the lifestyle.  If it’s real, it’ll just come out all along through the day.  That’s what makes it real.  That’ll help you children know and love Him and live for Him because that’s what he says here.  Verse 7:  “You shall teach them diligently to your sons.”  When?  “You shall talk of them when you sit in your house.”  You may be sitting around at mealtime.  Or sit around and turn that one eyed monster off and talk a little bit.  Talk about how this biblical truth applies to this situation and that biblical truth applies to this situation.  “When you sit in your house, when you walk by the way.”  When you’re just going somewhere together, “when you lie down,” in the evening as you’re getting ready to retire, “when you rise up in the morning.”  When they get up in the morning.  Now, moms, we’re not leaving you out.  You are so fundamentally important, but dads must lead that principle in the home.  Certainly it’s a team effort, though.

So homes need the father to take the responsibility for the education, the whole training of the child, including if they go to school or if you home school or if you choose public education.  And that may be a good choice for you.  But you need to know what you’re doing.  Or if you choose private school or whatever you chose, fathers are responsible.  Fathers are responsible in that household to know the scriptures.  Sit under sound preaching and teaching so you can be matured.  The greatest student ministry in the world is a sound pulpit that equips fathers who will love God and teach God’s truth in their everyday life.  Fathers who are weak or homes where the fathers are absent are proven to be prone to failure.  Paul Meier of the Minrith-Meier Clinic said, “A vast majority of neurotics have grown up in homes where there was no father or where the home was dominated by the mother.”  You just can’t improve on God’s design. 

I remember reading sometime ago the statistic that men who became involved in the sin of homosexuality were much more likely to become involved in that if the father was absent or if the mother was dominant in the home.  Certainly not always, but that’s what the researchers said they found out.  Fathers must take responsibility in the home. 

Now I, boy, there’s nothing in me that wants to leave you feeling discouraged.  There’s nothing in me that wants to leave you feeling down, because I want to say something.  I know a lot of you dads, and you’re doing a lot of stuff right.  I sense the reality of your Christianity.  And it doesn’t just get turned on when you’re here.  It’s something that’s real in you.  And I just want to affirm you, and I want to encourage you, and I want to exhort you to stay the course because there are a lot of voices out there that are saying things like this, “Just go to a big hotshot church and just get your kids in a good program,” and then we dads can kind of be lazy and we can kind of be indifferent, and we can kind of be uninvolved.  And I want to tell you that is a lie from the enemy.  Fathers, we must keep growing and keep maturing.  And what about sharing stuff together?  What about sharing your ideas and how you do things and how you talk about the things of the Lord?  And mostly how you give advice and counsel on how biblical truths apply in the everyday things of life like Deuteronomy 6:7 said when you walk by the way and when you sit in your house and when you lay down at night and when you rise up in the morning.  Why don’t we dads, and by the way, this goes for granddads and great-granddaddies.  The job, you, you don’t retire and get through and just get to spoil your grandkids.  But, oh, take that grandchild or that great-grandchild in your arms and lift your eyes to heaven and say, “God, would you let me teach them of your glory?  Would you let me show them how wonderful You are?  Would You let me show them the great wisdom of Your word?  And, yes, play ball, and yes, go fishing, and yes, get ice-cream cones.  But God, help me to train my children and my children’s children and my children’s children’s children to fear the Lord.” 

 

 

 

Christian Parenting, Part 2

Ephesians 6:4

 

     Ephesians chapter 6.  If you’re visiting with us, we’re preaching straight through the New Testament epistle, which just means letter, Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus.  We’ve come to the last section of the book where Paul is giving practical marching orders for those who have been transformed by glorious grace.  Grace changes us.  You know salvation is simple, but it is substantial.  I think we miss that sometimes.  Grace is free, but it’s not cheap.  And when we see what Paul tells us here as we get to, especially the end of chapter 5 and beginning in chapter 6 of Ephesians, we see some very substantial and really radical and revolutionary truth for the day in which this was written, and even for our day. 

     Here’s what I want you to get in your mind.  First of all, in, in the Greco-Roman culture of this day that Paul was writing, authority was greatly abused.  Those in authority led with an iron fist.  They beat people into submission.  It was greatly abused.  Whether it was the Caesar of Rome or the father of the household or masters, which would parallel our employer, down to the slave or the employee. 

And so people were coming to faith in Christ, and their hearts were changed and their lives were changed.  And, uh, from church history and from other indications there was probably a movement in the Christian church to get out from under this abusiveness and throw off all structures of authority.  But they were overcompensating.  And so that’s why Paul writes what he has written in Ephesians 5 and the book, the epistle of Romans and in Colossians where we see him saying, “No, wait a minute.  Wait a minute.  You don’t throw off God’s ordained, established systems of authority.  Those are of God.  We just need to rework them so that we function within them both as the one in authority and the one answering to authority the way God would have us to function, not with fleshly, self-centered, abusiveness and certainly not with fleshly, self-centered rebellion against God-ordained authority. So what Paul actually does is revolution.  He cleans up, if you will.  He cleans up these authority structures that God has established to function and work the way they ought to under God. 

All right, in saying all of that he’s already talked about the authority in the marriage relationship.  Uh, the husband is head of the wife, and the wife is to submit to her husband.  Then he gives the balancing truth:  But husbands must genuinely, from their hearts agape their wives.  That’s that God-type of love.  It’s what a beautiful revolutionary idea.  Structure of authority’s still there.  We don’t throw that out even though sin’s messed the whole system up.  As Christians we get it working back the way it ought to work.  Wife submitting, but husbands loving those under their headship.

Then he goes on into the, uh, parent-child relationship.  Ephesians 6:1 through 3, and he says, “Children, by the way, even though in the Roman culture of the day you were, children were greatly abused, dominated, uh, seriously, uh, uh, oppressed by their fathers, that doesn’t mean that God’s thrown out the authority of parents.  Children obey your parents,” he says in Ephesians 6:1.  But then he says, “But parents led by the father must have the kind of love and care for the child so that they are worthy of that kind of obedience and submission.” 

And that’s where we are.  Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4, Christian parenting.  In our day it seems like we have both extremes going on.  We have some domineering, abusive fathers and parents, and then we have far too many very liberal, permissive fathers and parents who don’t have the kind of authority and control and discipline that is needed in the home. And I think scripture gives the beautiful balance that we are to be striving for.

Look at it there, Ephesians chapter 4, or chapter 6, rather, beginning in verse 4.  And Fathers, do not provoke you children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.  Now we talked about first of all that the father is responsible, uh, for the children.  Now that does not leave out mom.  Moms have certainly a leadership authority role, but she’s, she is to function under the leadership of her husband.  And I believe without any doubt in my mind that it will be the father who will stand at the judgment seat of Christ and give an account for how he pastored his home. 

Fathers, now I want to say this to fathers. Don’t be discouraged.  Be encouraged, because we’re gonna strengthen our backbones around here, and we’re gonna put our feet down, and we’re gonna look at one another eyeball to eyeball and say, “As fathers, we’re gonna all grow together to do better for the glory of God.”  We’ve had a few generations go by that were good men who were not well trained, perhaps in their churches.  I don’t know, but it’s kind of become a passing thing or a thing of the past that fathers really took the initiative and really took responsibility for the headship of the home and the spiritual leadership in the home.  And I really sense God’s doing a neat work here, that He’s restoring that, particularly among the younger couples in our church.  And some of you older fathers, I know what happens when I preach these kind of things.  You feel so beat down and beat up.  Don’t feel that way.  First of all, you did a lot of things right and did a lot of things good.  And so many of you have commented through the years, “We never were trained and taught these things.”  We understand that.  But you can join hands with us and say, “Hey, we live in such a culture and we live in such a world that we, we can’t expect the culture to have Christian values and Christian perspectives and Christian morals anymore.”  That’s over in America.  This is a post-Christian culture.  So the younger fathers are gonna have to just have more artillery, if you will, more training, more understanding of what it means to be the spiritual leader and the one responsible for the training of the children.  When I say responsible I do not mean that he does it all.  Mom usually does more of the instructing because she’s usually there more, but the father is the one that’s responsible.  Well, we talked about that at length. 

Now let’s go to new material, our second major point, and that is the thing fathers must not do.  The thing a father must not do.  Paul makes it very clear here, verse 4 of Ephesians 6.  Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.  The word anger here has the idea of a continual exasperation.  A continual behavior, or activities, words on the part of the father, this includes mom too, the father is just the one responsible, that would embitter that child’s heart, that would build a resentment within that child’s heart that will eventually splash over into angry outbursts and frustration.  Now I like that description because all of us fathers provoke at times.  I mean the best we can do, we’re gonna blow it at times and sort of provoke our children to anger.  But we can envoi, avoid lifestyle patterns in our childrearing that will eventually establish such a churning, hot resentment in that child’s heart that they’re gonna overflow in anger, resentment and rebellion.  So we must not do that.

The word provoke here literally means to push them to anger.  To drive them to extremes.  Charles Hodge said it this way.  “Do not excite the bad passions of your children.”  Your children are fallen sinners.  I know they’re precious and wonderful when they’re in that little crib and you bring them home from the hospital.  But you keep them six or eight months and you’ll see that sin nature.  They’re selfish.  Anger comes naturally to them.  Lying becomes natural to them.  Deception is natural to them.  We fathers must make sure that we don’t do things that will excite and stir up their fallen passions, which include anger.  “Make sure,” Hodge says, “your conduct does not nurture evil in the heart of your child.”  They’ve got enough evil in their heart already without us nurturing it.  Now again this is a revolutionary concept to the families of this day. 

John MacArthur states in his commentary that the families of this day were in shambles.  He said it was such a state that loving fathers would have been a concept almost unheard of in this day.  For example, a father could sell his child as a slave or he could have his child killed at will.  A letter written in 1 B.C. that historians have a copy of a man writing to his wife said this, “Heartiest greetings.  Note that we are still even now even in Alexandria.  Do not worry if when all others return I remain in Alexandria.  I beg and beseech you to take good care of the little child, and as soon as we receive wages, I will send them to you.  If, good luck to you, you have another child, if it’s a boy, let it live.  If it’s a girl, expose it.”  That was common in the Roman culture.  Seneca, a renown statesman in Rome, living at the same time that Paul wrote the letter to the church at Ephesus, said this, and I quote, “We slaughter a fierce ox.  We strangle a mad dog.  We plunge a knife into a sick cow.  Children born weak or deformed we drown.”  Oppression, abuse of authority prominent in this culture.

They said that the custom was that a newborn child was laid at the father’s feet.  If the father picked the child up, it remained in the family, remained in the household.  If he allowed it to lay at his feet, then it would be discarded.  Typically, they would be set out somewhere.  These babies would be gathered up and taken to a forum in the center of town where they would be bought and sold and bartered to be slaves and/or prostitutes.  Bizarre, barbaric practices, about like what we have in America today when we kill about 1.5 million unborn babies every year in this countryWell, this is the context that Paul was writing too, deeply abusive culture.  And in that culture, Paul says this revolutionary, contradictory statement, “Fathers, don’t provoke your children to anger.”  That would’ve been wild, weird, strange for a father in the Roman culture to hear.  So again, once again Paul is also pointing out the beautiful biblical balance.  Children still must obey their fathers, but fathers should not provoke them to rebellion.

You know if you just throw out the concept of authority because the culture has gotten so out of balance with the use of God-ordained authority, then that in itself becomes an abuse.  If a child is raised without loving, nurturing, discipline, instructions and corrections, then that child does not know how to respond to God or know God or act respectably in the culture. That in itself is abuse.  It’s not one or the other.  The liberals see abuse and they go way over here and remove parental authority.  Aren’t you glad we’ve got the Word of God to give us the perfect balance that God…  Folks, we need to live that balance and be a light to the world that God’s wisdom is greater than man’s wisdom. 

Well, God’s word beautifully brings back to a solid balance parental authority.  But parents must be the kind of parents who care, love, and nurture their children and do not provoke them to rebellion. 

Roman numeral three.  The thing a father must do.  Three points here.  First of all from our text he says, “But bring them up.”  Don’t provoke them to anger, but bring them up.  Now the scholars tell us that that word bring them up means to nurture, to care for.  You bring them up.  Maybe it’s close to what someone would say, “I was reared,” you know here in the south.  “I was reared down in Alabama.”  Well, I’m sorry.  But anyway.  I was reared.  So that might be a concept, but nurture is a beautiful word I like to use here.  And what he’s saying, fathers, instead of provoking them to anger, nurture your children with genuine love.  And see, in the Roman culture, the only father that would have that kind of loving, nurturing spirit would be a father who has been regenerated under the preaching of the gospel and his heart’s been changed, Jesus lives in him, and he could receive that.  So the scripture says we’re to nurture and nourish them, not beat them into submission.

Fathers, we must not have a heavy-handed, army sergeant spirit toward our children.  We’re to be bringing them up, nurturing them in love.  Now there’s a place for firm discipline.  Don’t misunderstand me.  But we should not be marked by firm discipline, but by nurturing in love of our children.  We must have love, sympathy and compassion.  And I don’t know any other way to do this than to make sure we have the time and the interest in them that they need.  Boy, that’s a battle in this day and age. 

Maybe because it will encourage some of you, I have had to really repent of that in my own life.  And I have made some real changes in that.  First ten or twelve years of my pastorate, I gave myself to the ministry.  Sixty, seventy hours a week was nothing.  Totally gave myself to it.  And finally, God got through to my thick head one day, partly because of the gracious promptings of my wife, and God said, “I didn’t just call you to be a pastor.  I called you also to be a father.” 

Some of you men out there maybe are very driven like I am driven and very focused like I can get focused and very committed like I can be committed, and that’s good and that’s a virtue, but there’s a balance.  If we’re gonna bring up our children in the nurture, that love and compassion and care of the Lord, we’re gonna have to make sure we have time and the involvement in their interests.  You see, that little child comes to us helpless.  That little child comes to us in a little package, and we’ve got this little package in our hands. You can fashion it into whatever you’re gonna fashion it into.  It’s like a plate of silver.  You can engrain, engrave, rather on it what you’re gonna engrave on it.  There must be care and there must be control.  The first thing Paul says here, a radical statement to people in this day, but bring them up, which I paraphrase, amplify as nurture them in love.

Now number two, something that must be here is in the discipline of the Lord.  So I call this correct and discipline wrong attitudes and wrong behavior.  Correct and discipline wrong attitudes and behavior.  That must be there.  The word discipline that Paul uses here is the word I think the King James translates “chastening.”  That means correction for wrong doing, wrong attitudes, or wrong behaviors.  It’s the same word God uses in Hebrews chapter 12 verse 7, where in Hebrews 12:7 he says, “It is for discipline that you endure.  God deals with you as with sons, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”  So he says, “God disciplines us just like earthly fathers discipline us.”  Now the key phrase in this is “In the Lord.”  Now see that turned everything upside down.  That turned everything on it’s head.  Or I guess, properly said, turned everything back around on its feet.  That means we are people who fully trust the sufficiency of God’s Word in the way we discipline or correct our children.  Amen?  If Dr. Spock says anything that contradicts God’s Word, we leave off Dr. Spock or anybody else.  “In the Lord,” he says.  You see, once we’re saved we’re not our own.  Once we’re saved He is our Lord.  And under his Lordship, we correct and we discipline the way He says to discipline for the things He says to discipline in the spirit He would do the disciplining.  So it’s in the Lord, according to the superior wisdom of God as revealed in His Word. 

Sometime ago there was a student that went to school and this student had an article of clothing on that’s closely associated with rebellion or maybe even gangs.  And the principal of this school told the child that they, this was an older child, student, that they could not wear that at the school.  It was against policy.  Do you know what that child’s father did?  In arrogant, unchristian foolishness, he put the same article of clothing on himself and went to lunch one day daring the principal to address him about it.  That father ought to be taken out behind the barn and beaten somewhere.  He ought to set his child down and said, “Son, even if the rule is unreasonable, in this household we respect authority.  And I love you.  I’ll defend you if you’re right.  But, son, we won’t wear that in the school any longer.  And furthermore, I may call the principal and thank him for enforcing good standards in this school.”  You raise your children in the discipline of the Lord not in the discipline of your small, human, fleshly, fallen reasoning.  Whatever else you teach your children you teach your children to honor God-ordained authority or you will wreck and ruin their lives.  In the Lord.  We say, “God’s Word is superior, not my feelings, not my attitude, not my silly little…”  And some of you men, can I say this lovingly?  But I want to say it strongly.  Some of you men got the emotions of a silly little girl.  Your little emotions get over here and you get over here.  Little emotions get over here and you, little emotions, woo, woo, woo.  Be a man of God!  Stand like a rock!  Get a backbone!  Look at the Word of God!  Lovingly lead your family, but firmly lead your family on the Word of God.  “In the Lord,” he says.  Is that too strong preaching?  “IN the Lord.”  Well, you know what that means?  That means we’re gonna have to study the Bible.  But I can help you a whole lot if you just come hear me preach.  And that’s why God calls preachers, to help fathers lead their families.  And preachers will answer for the fathers.  Did they really preach them the truth or tickle their ears?  And then fathers will answer for their children and their wives, “Did I put my family in a church that really preached the truth and helped me to lead them in the Lord?”  Now I can tell you, that’s not just something I’m interested in.  I am bulldog manic committed to teach you the things of the Lord in this church because I want to tell you something.  It’s fun.  It’s liberating.  It’s joyous.  The greatest pleasure is knowing Him and His truth.  It’s not this burdened down drudgery.  It’s joy.  God’s Word liberates.  It’s a blessing.  The, the psalmist said, “It’s sweeter than honey and it’s more desirable than gold.”  I love God’s truth.

Well, “in the Lord.”  Don’t be like Eli.  Remember Eli.  First Samuel 3:13 says this.  “For I have told him that I am about to judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knew because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them.”  His sons needed correction according to the Word of God, and Eli did not.  And so God brought a curse on the whole family and the family line.  So Paul says, “Nurture them in love balanced with correct them and discipline them according to God’s truth.”  The one thing we hold to as our final authority is God’s truth.  And so let’s strive to discipline and correct our children according to the Word of God. 

Thirdly, the thing a father must do, he says, is instruct with words.  That’s what it means when he says, “In the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”  Instruct with words.  That instruction means just to appeal with words.  That means we use the verbal communication and talking time to teach the things of the Lord.  Folks, listen, listen, listen.  We have got to become God-centered in the totality of our lives.  We are not people who say, “Well, I’ve got this Christian area over here and this social area over here.  Family life over here and school and education over here, and something…”  No.  It’s all like the, a wheel and God in Christ Jesus is the hub of the wheel and everything connects to Him.  Everything we are and everything we do as husbands, wives, children, parents, uh, employer, employee, etc. is in the Lord, now.  It’s all about Him.  You know what?  The world’s waiting to see a church that will model this and show the truth.  That’s what the world’s waiting for.  We instruct them based on the truths of the Word of God.  AS we go through everyday life, we be, we slowly learn as fathers how biblical truths and biblical principles and biblical insights apply to all these different aspects as everyday life and we instruct in those.  Not in a brow-beating, not in an arrogant, know-it-all fashion, but in a humble sense that we’re of the Lord and this is what our Lord teaches and says.  Are you ever gonna arrive, fathers?  No.  Can we all keep striving and growing together?  Yes. 

Listen to Deuteronomy 6:6 and 7 again.  And these words, that was the commandments, the Ten Commandments, specifically, which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.  That means, fathers, first get them on your heart.  And you shall teach them diligently to your sons, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.  In everyday life you teach these things.

 Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.”  We were coming home from the mountains this past week and I had one of my daughters in the car with me.  And we were listening to some Christian music and a doctrinal truth came up.  So we spent about twenty minutes talking about how conversion and true salvation includes justification but also sanctification.  It was just a time to instruct with words.  I’m not saying it’s always that theologically heavy.  And, guys, that’s not very heavy.  I’ve taught those truths over and over again.  These are kind of times and the kind of things that your children need to hear father verbalizing.  And when we instruct them right, they will repay us with rich blessings of insights and truths that will be of encouragement to us that we worked through the fears and the insecurities and instructed our children I the things of the Lord.

And let me say this, fathers, as we’re giving them instructions, verbal communication about God’s truth.  It’s not so much the collection of facts and information but the right attitudes and principles behind the facts and the information.  About two years ago we looked at our Sunday School literature for our children and we found it seemed to be just too heavy on learning Bible stories, learning Bible stories.  Now that’s not bad.  But we switched literature so that you don’t just learn the story, you learn the truth of God that’s behind the story, the applicable principles concerning the Christian life behind the story.  I don’t want my kids just to know the facts and figures of the Bible.  I want them to know the truths behind the facts and the figures of the Bible. 

Well, Roman numeral four, Paul tells us here the father must function as a parent under God.  As a parent under God, when he says there, “Bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord,” emphasizes that, and here’s the major point. I want to repeat this several times.  That we as fathers and as parents do not present ourselves to our children that we are the final authority.  We must be humble, transparent and honest that we are men under God’s authority and we fail and we struggle and we’re gonna teach them and guide them because we are men who answer to One greater than us.  So we parent under God’s authority.  So it’s of the Lord, as the Lord approves, and as His Spirit dictates.  WE want to communicate, as we raise our children, that we are teaching them, correcting them, nurturing them in love for the Lord’s glory, by the Lord’s Word, and through the Lord’s power.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said to my girls, “Honey, you’ve got to love God from your heart.  It’s got to be in your heart to know Him and to love Him.  It’s can’t just be a collection of facts in your head.  It’s got to penetrate your heart.  And if you love Him from your heart, you’ll start connecting to and receiving and wanting these teachings.  And it’ll become a part of your life, and God will be pleased and glorified.” 

So Paul said in earlier verses here, he said, “Children, you obey in the Lord.  You obey because you’re under a higher authority.  Your Lord said, ‘Obey your parents.’  And then parents are to discipline and instruct their children in the Lord because you answer to a higher authority.”  Now we must keep telling them, “The buck doesn’t stop with daddy.”  We answer to God.  We are Christians.  He’s our higher authority.  He’s the reason, He’s the center, and He’s the source of the training of our children.  And some years ago, I don’t think it’s so prominent now.  But some years ago the liberals got out this concept that you don’t want to prejudice a child.  You just want to be neutral and let them make their own choices.  That is ridiculous.  It’s awful.  I want to tell you something.  That’s like saying I’m gonna plant a flower bed, but I’m not gonna deal with the weeds.  I don’t want to prejudice the flowerbed in favor of the weeds or the flowers.  If you don’t do it, somebody else will.  If you remain neutral, nobody else is going to remain neutral.  If you fathers are just sort of neutral and think somebody else is gonna instill in your child the truths of God, it’s not really gonna happen.  I mean their friends are not gonna be neutral.  They’re gonna have friends come around that’ll teach them error and sin and rebellion and ungodly things. 

The infidels that some of your children will sit under at the university are not gonna be neutral.  They’re gonna pour into your children everything that they can that’s not of God.  The drug pusher, the immoral, the bookie, the prostitute, whatever else is out there, they’re not gonna be neutral, and we certainly shouldn’t be neutral.  Dr. Criswell said in his, uh, commentary, “The streets of the city offer no diploma and no degree, but they educate with terrible precision.”  Don’t be neutral.   Be aggressive.  Be purposeful.  Be diligent in instructing them in the Lord.

I found this little poem that says, “You ask me why I go to church, I give my mind a careful search.  Because I need to breathe the air where there’s an atmosphere of prayer.  I need, now notice the word need in this poem.  It’s not “I feel.”  I need.  I need the hymns that churches sing.  They set my faith and hope on wing.  They keep old truths and memory green, reveal the work of things unseen.  Because my boy is watching me to know whatever he can see that tells him what his father thinks, and with his eager soul he drinks the things I do in daily walks, the things I say in daily talks.  If I with him the church will share my son will make his friendship there. 

A key part, fathers, to instructing your children is making sure they’re in a solid, Bible-believing, Bible-preaching, and here’s the key, Bible-practicing church.  That’s a great asset to your work in instructing your children.  Since God is God and Christ His Son is Lord, then the only possible means of profitable education is in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Do any of y’all remember ole Lester Rolloff, the old Independent Baptist preacher?  I love to listen to Lester Rolloff.  They said he was legalistic, but I liked him.  I just, I just got to be careful.  I can tell you some Lester Rolloff stories.  Lester Rolloff used to say that education without regeneration is an abomination.  That’s what Paul is saying.  If, for it to have really any quality it needs to be in the Lord, of the Lord, by His truths.  I’m not saying that you’re in rebellion if your children go to a non-Christian school because some of the Christian schools are non-Christian in a lot of ways.  But I’m saying that you have the responsibility to offset and make sure the teaching they’re receiving is of the Lord and to make sure they learn to take a pitchfork and a rake to their classes.  They can rake some in and pitch some back out because a lot that they get in those classes is not of the Lord. 

So the point is, the parent must not, the father must not present himself as the ultimate end.  We must not present ourselves as the source and possessor of authority to determine truth and duty.  We, we don’t know truth and we don’t know what’s proper duty, rather.  Our God shows us from His Word.  And so, fathers, carry that air of humility that you are a man, now listen to this, who looks to your God in one sense with great security in the love of Jesus Christ.  But let’s bring back that old Biblical balance of also with a holy fear and trembling of the wisdom and the awesomeness and the wonder and the glory of our God and parent letting our children know we’re under that authority, “And we’re gonna instruct you and train you best we can according to what He says.”  It’s the greatest folly to assume to be wiser than God or to attempt to accomplish an end by a means other than those which He has appointed. 

Can I quickly run through some conclusions for practical application on how to provoke your children to anger?  These are things that if you do these you are likely to provoke your children to anger.  I’ll just run through them.  Number one, overprotection.  Overprotection, smothering them, never trusting them.  And I know there are age-appropriate things.  But you have to start trusting them.  Being overly restrictive, always questioning their judgment, always thinking they’re up to some evil.  Watch that, fathers.  Work on that in your own hearts.  You can guide their wills, but you can’t control their wills.  Read, talk to other fathers, look at some godly literature.  WE have some that’ll help you.  And make sure you’re not overly protective.

Secondly, favoritism.  OH, fight any small semblance or appearance of favoritism.  This leads to discouragement, resentment, withdrawal, bitterness.  Or remember Isaac favored Esau, but Rebecca favored, uh, Jacob?  And, and they, they, they became embittered.  They became rivals, and we have conflict repercussions in our culture today from this favoritism in this family. 

Number three, pushing achievement beyond bounds is very likely to provoke your child to anger.  It’s when nothing seems to be sufficient.  No sooner does your child accomplish one goal you’re pushing another one on them.  Achieve, achieve, achieve, achieve.  Man, make sure you children know you love them unconditionally.  I try to pattern this behavior when I see a report card, and we’ve seen a lot of all A report cards.  I try to say, “Man, that’s great.  Honey, I want you to know something.  If you made some C’s and D’s and that’s what you could do, Daddy would love you just the same.  Do the best you can.”  That’s something, nothing profound here, but I came up with when my girls were little.  I don’t know if it’ll help you.  It might be an encouragement to you.  But I’d be talking to them and I’d say, “Honey, I want to ask you something.  Uh, does Jesus love you when you’re good?”  “Yes.”  “Does Jesus love you when you’re bad?”  “Yes.”  “Does Daddy love you when you’re good?”  “Yes.”  “Does Daddy still love you when you’re bad?”  “Yes.”  “But Jesus and Daddy want you to be good.”  Just letting them know you’re not pushing some accomplishment thing in order to get your approval.  Be careful with that.  There’s a balance in all of this.

MacArthur said parents who fantasize their achievement through the lives of their children prostitute their responsibility as parents.  The don’t have to be that athlete that you never were.  They don’t have to be that whatever that you never were.  Be careful there.  Just be careful pushing achievement beyond bounds.

Number four, discouraging words and actions.  When you’re always telling them what’s wrong and you’re not complimenting them.  Just discipline yourself to look for those things that you can compliment everyday.  I have this little statement written down in my notes that probably one good pat on the back is worth one hundred whacks on the behind.  Now there’s a time for behind whacks.  But make sure you’re not discouraging. 

Number five, failure to sacrifice for them and make them feel unwanted.  This one really spoke to my heart.  When you are busy with important things, and, man, when you pastor a church you just, “Oh, this is so important.”  Make sure they don’t feel like they’re an intrusion, that they’re in the way of you and your wife’s projects or plans or plans for your life.  Making them feel like they’re interfering.  Something that I’ve tried to do through the years is when I’m in my study, and some of you know me well enough to know and know preachers well enough to know that when I’m studying, when my mind’s on it I’m a total zombie.  I mean I, I, Charles Haddon Spurgeon said one day on the way to his pulpit he introduced himself to his wife.  I can understand that.  It just gets in you, but that’s no excuse.  And I’ve tried to make a practice that when one of my girls walks in my study, not matter how engrained, I will stop and give them some attention and make them feel welcome.  “You’re not an intrusion.  You’re my daughter.”  Wish I could say I’ve been perfect at that, but I’ve been a lot better than I would have had I not made that commitment. 

Number six, using love as a tool of reward or punishment.  Folks, as Christians we just love.  We never use love as a tool.  WE just love.  Amen.  For example, in Hebrews 12:6, the Bible says, “For those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines.” … Those whom the Lord loves…  So it’s all love, and then you discipline sometimes in love.  It’s all love and you compliment and encourage and bless and console in love.  It’s always love, but you never use love.  OH, what a cruel thing.  You are so unlike Christ if your child feels like, “I’m not loved if I don’t behave certain ways.”  I want my children to know, “No matter what you do, you will be loved.  Now I may have to discipline or correct, but you’ll be loved.”

Number sever, our last one, you can provoke your children to anger if you withhold appropriate discipline.  Someone said one time that a child without discipline in his life is like going over a bridge without any side rails.  Now I don’t know how many hundreds of times I’ve crossed O’Neal bridge.  And I’ve never one time bounced my car off the rail in order to stay on the bridge.  But if you told me this afternoon they’re removing all the guardrails from O’Neal bridge, I’m never going over it again.  There’s just something about needing that security.  You need that, you need to know there’s lines and there’s parameters.  And a child interprets those parameters and that proper discipline as security and love.  And when you’re real wishy-washy or if you make up the rules as you go along where they don’t know where the rails are, it’s insecurity.  They need to know from the Word of God you’ve established things and this is how our family functions and this is how we’re gonna work. 

One of my girls was talking to a friend one day, and there was an activity that they were all gonna do, and one of my girls said, “Well, you know I, I’m not gonna be able to do that.  My parents are not gonna allow me to do that.”  And one of her friends looked at her and said, “You know what?  I wish my parents would tell me I couldn’t do some things.  They let me do anything I want to do.”  She felt unloved because she didn’t have proper disciplines and boundaries in her life.  And one day, a child will resent you for that if you don’t do that.