Christian Fathers (Ephesians 6:4)

Welcome to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. Check us out online at www.sharonrpc.org. We pray that this message will be a blessing to you and that the Lord will use it to transform your faith and your life. Well, you meet me in your Bibles in Ephesians chapter 6, Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6 and we'll read this morning verses 1 through 4. Ephesians chapter 6, this is God's word.

Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment, with a promise that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth. And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath. but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." Thus ends this reading of God's holy and perfect word. Brothers and sisters, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

Well, we started late and so you get a shorter sermon today. So you have to come to Chalk and Talk later so we can finish it out. But seriously, yesterday we made a conscious decision that there was much work to do and I thought, well, I should be able to get all the stuff done this morning before worship starts. And then we woke up and there was a flat tire. as well as a car that's been dead outside the church since we left to go to my grandfather's funeral.

And there's something that always seems to happen like that, isn't there? Men, maybe you understand this. When you've tried to prioritize your family, and then it seems like everything else wants to break, right? When you need to spend time with your family, and you sit there and go, is it worth it? Is it worth it? Well, yes. Yes, the scriptures here tell us. that there are priorities in life. And fathers, we need to prioritize our children. We need to prioritize our families.

And so, this is what the Scriptures call us to today, is how to be specifically a Christian father. How to be a Christian father. So, the entire sermon will be coming from verse 4. And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

It's interesting that mothers aren't pointed out here. It's interesting that again and again and again in scriptures, it is the men who are called out. Again and again and again in scriptures, it is fathers who are called out, told to be fathers. And I think there's a reality to why scripture does that because naturally after the fall, men don't want to be men. Men would rather be boys. Men would rather have fun. But God has a different plan for Christian men. And here God says, men, we need to man up. God is calling us out here specifically.

Notice what it says, the first part, and you. It's like the Holy Spirit has a big old finger pointing, and you, dad. Yeah, you, dad. Yeah, I'm talking about you. That's right, we're going to talk about dads and this is going to be uncomfortable. We need to raise up our children. Raising up our children.

This is one of these amazing things that God does where God calls himself the Heavenly Father. And as you as a Christian husband and as a Christian father then are called to model what your Heavenly Father is. Have you ever thought about the weight that comes with that? The weight and the blessing that you are the physical image which your children will understand these passages when God calls himself a loving father. Now sometimes you're going to be the mirror where they look at and they go, thank God he's not like my dad in that area.

But one of the greatest testimonies I've ever heard was a woman of a generation above us who said, if I ever wanted to know what my heavenly father looked like, All I needed to do was look at my dad and how patient and kind and loving he was with us kids. I thought, man, I'm not sure if I have that type of testimony to my children, but that is the testimony that God wants us to have to the future generations. That's what the legacy God wants you to leave to your children is. Do we resemble God in our affections and in our conduct?

This is why we started the book of Proverbs as the Old Testament reading. The book of Proverbs is Solomon writing to his son, and he's saying, hey look, look, I got wisdom to share with you. This is how you're going to fear God, and this is how your life is going to go well. Son, you need to listen up. You need to pay attention. And the first seven chapters are nothing but a father instructing his son in wisdom.

Fathers are specifically called out here, but there's a sad crisis in America. There's a crisis in America in that 33% of children do not live with a father in the home. One out of every three families does not have a father living in the home. That is erosive. to the foundation of family that is erosive, to the foundation of a culture when fathers aren't present in their children's lives. Children need their father.

41% of children born in the US in 2012 don't have married parents. Let me say that again. In 2012, the number's only gotten bigger in the last eight years. In 2012, 41% of children did not live with married parents. 4 out of every 10. The percentage of births to unmarried women has more than doubled since 1980. And the divorce rate in America is almost 50%. 50% of American marriages dissolve in divorce. And the statistics are? Only 3% of those children will live with their father after that. Think about that. Fathers are ripped out of the home.

This is even natural revelation, even just the normal order of the universe indicates this way. You look at someone like Reverend Farrakhan, who is a Muslim Brotherhood idolater, He would even rail against the liberals, against those who would try to rip the fathers out of black families. Because he said it was purposely meant to try to drag back black families apart.

And without the family structure, without a husband in the home, without a father to care for the children as well. the society would go into collapse. So this is not just a, you know, oh, conservative thing, oh, we're too much divorced. No, no, this is like legitimately like even non-believers, even Muslims, even pagans, even the Romans and the Greeks knew you had to have a father. And yet in America we're going on a path where more and more it's this sad reality. More and more we see it in pop culture where the single mother is held up as this woman of virtue who against all odds is doing everything.

That's not the way it's supposed to be. It's because men have been boys. It's because American men have been taught to chase after their own pleasure and to never grow up and learn how to be sacrificial, to pour out their lives for their children, for their wives. The biblical way is directly against our modern culture's way.

But there is hope in the redeemed family. When you start digging into the statistics for marriage and divorce, those in the census who say that they are religious, 41% of them will get divorced. But when you dig into it and you find out from more Pew research and such, come to find out if both mother and father live together, if both mother and father attend church together, if both mother and father are involved in their children's religious education, that number plummets to the single digits. The world doesn't want to tell you that, but there is a blessing in following God's way. Fathers, if you are diligent in bringing your family to church, if you're diligent in raising your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, if you're diligent in hearing God's Word and how it hits into your life and into your marriage, It's amazing what happens.

The divorce rate plummets. Sticking around in fatherhood brings your children to a new level. When families stay together, children reap the benefits. Tim Keller in his book, The Meaning of Marriage, says this, children who grow up in married two-parent families have two to three times more positive life outcomes than those who do not.

Marriage, parenting go hand in hand in the biblical model. and the prediction is success for your children. I remember living in the north suburbs of Chicago. And as we were there, it was a great gig I had going into families' homes, and I would do in-home tutoring. So all these rich families would hire me to go in there, and I would go in and tutor their kid in elementary math or in AP chemistry or whatever different subjects they would hire me for. But there was this one family that The son just, he wouldn't get any of his homework done.

I mean like none of it. And so, just like normal, I went to the house and he and I tried to troubleshoot, okay, what's going on? Where's he getting stuck? And I kind of come to find out that he has no problem with the concepts with his math. Actually, when we go through his math homework, he gets it done in like five minutes. It had taken his mother two hours of dragging it out and pulling her hair to plead with him and beg with him to get his homework done. And so I was supposed to be there for an hour. It had only taken about 10 minutes. And so he and I sat there and we started talking, trying to figure out what's the root issue here.

Come to find out that his parents were going through an ugly divorce and his dad wasn't there anymore. He just wanted his father to be there. It was his way of screaming out to his parents, this isn't right. This isn't right. I need my dad. I need someone here to walk me through this. Fathers, there are times when your children legitimately need help. And there are times when they are crying for help. Because they just need you to be with them. Children need their fathers. This is how God designed the family. This is how God has made us to function.

But yet fathers, even though they're present, can still mess up. This verse starts with, and you fathers, but then starts with a negative command. Do not provoke your children to wrath. Do not provoke your children to wrath. As a Christian father, you have the blessing of being part of God's redemptive plan, of getting to care for your children, to love your children, to show them the path upon which to walk. But as you go down that path with them, there are plenty of potholes to mess up. There are plenty of ways to turn aside and get off the path.

The Westminster Larger Catechism has, in question 100, I think it's 130, asks, what are the sins of superiors? It's talking about the fifth commandment, right? Okay, children, honor your father and your mothers. But that means we have an obligation as those who are over our children.

And what are the ways in which we can fail as we do that? The Westminster Larger Catechism points out some of these. It says that we can abuse our authority as God has given to fathers by neglecting our duties. You can mess up being a dad by just not doing the stuff you're supposed to do as being a dad.

Just by putting it to the side and paying attention to other things instead. Seeking after our own desires. In our modern culture there is so much pressure, so much desire, so much advertising money spent on just enjoy your life. You deserve to relax, you should just sit down and eat, just eat, drink and be merry, watch your sports, enjoy your hobbies, go work on your car, be involved in the things that make you happy, all the while you neglect your children, our hobbies or even the good things like our work.

We can neglect our children by doing the good thing of work. And this is a real difficulty. I mean, the culture in which this was written to was an agrarian culture. When Paul was writing this to the people in Ephesus, they didn't have the modern school system that we have.

What would typically happen is if you had a child, your children would either go out into the fields and work with you, help you with chores, or when your son was old enough, he would come into the shop and you would teach him the trade which you were working. But in the modern family, it's even harder for you because fathers, your children are taken away from you early in the morning and they're put into a school and they're trained away from you, and you miss that whole section of the day that used to be given to fathers training their children. No son, that's not how you treat your brother or sister because when you do that, the ox can step on their foot and they can get killed. No, you don't do that because if If you don't work hard now, we're not going to have food to feed us through the winter. There are so many things that were taught in agrarian society, in a pre-modern society before the industrial revolution, when children and their parents were with each other all the time.

Every once in a while they would go off to school, but that was mainly for the rich. The book of Ephesians isn't written mainly to the rich, it's written to working class people. to normal people, but our work can strip us away from our families. The Westminster Larger Catechism says we can seek after our own glory, right? We can be so about our own reputation that we're involved in all the community events, all the church things, all the things that will bring glory to our name, that we spend all of our time working on our own reputation, our own good name, that we don't worry about our children.

We don't spend that time with our children. Brothers and sisters, there are two very costly things in life. One you can earn more of, the other you can't. Money, but more scarce than money is time. If we do not invest the time in our children now, you will not get that time back to invest in them later. We invest our time, not in our own glory, but in our children.

Seeking after our own ease or desire is another way. Our relaxation, TV, entertainment. Just leave me alone, kid. Stop bugging me, kid. This is like, if you've ever watched TV sitcoms, this is how they'll treat children. You're just annoying me, kid. Just go away. It's not how the Christian father treats his children.

Seeking after our own profit. Working long hours to fill the bank while the children are starving for our attention. Seeking after our own profit. Meaning we think about ourselves. We're consumed about what we need, what we desire, what we want. And we don't think about what our children desire, what our children want, what our children think.

Now, I'm going to pause this for a second and just say we were watching the Disney Channel while we were at my grandma's house this past week. And I will tell you, I am so thankful our children do not have a television at home after watching the Disney Channel.

There's a scene where there's this girl and she's in bed and she's feeling a little sick and her sister's over here and she's in bed and she's a little sick. And the girl has a bell every time she needs something. And here comes her father. Oh, oh, I'm sorry, do you need something? No, it wasn't that bell, it was another bell. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't get your feet taken care of. And he runs over here.

Fathers, this doesn't mean that you're a servant or slave to your children. It just means that you're thoughtful of them. Right, again, this is what I'm saying. Our culture wants to say, no, fathers serve their children in the way that they are like slaves or servants. That's not what this is saying. But it's also not saying that then you don't pay attention to them or care about them.

We can also provoke our children to wrath by commanding what is unlawful. There are atrocious stories that I've talked to children who have grown up in homes that their parents told them in the grocery line They taught them how to steal the candy. Just put it in their pocket as they were standing there. Children who have been taught that when the debt collectors call on the phone that their parents have told them, if it's a collector, tell them I'm not home. And their parents have provoked them to lie, to cheat, to steal.

We can provoke our children to wrath, fathers, by provoking them to do evil. We can command them We can provoke them to wrath by commanding them to do what they don't have the power to perform. I can tell Daniel to go mow the front lawn and be mad at him when he does not mow the front lawn, but he has not the weight to turn the switch on the remote to keep the mower running. But fathers can do this. We can provoke our children to wrath by giving them huge things that they need to accomplish with no help accomplishing it. Huge responsibilities to get done without helping them to get it done. Provoking our children to wrath by giving them duties that they don't have the power to perform. We can provoke our children to wrath by correcting them unduly, too harsh or too strict.

I'm going to go ahead, and this list keeps going for a while. If I wasn't 10 minutes late, you'd get 10 minutes more, but come for Chalk and Talk, and we'll honestly talk about this, about ways, and children, I encourage you to talk during Chalk and Talk about ways in which it's hard, your parents make it hard to obey. But does this, all of this mean that we don't discipline our children at all? No. No, right? We can go through this whole list of different ways that we can provoke our children to wrath, but fathers, that doesn't mean that you then swing the pendulum to the opposite side and you don't discipline your children at all.

Proverbs 19.18 says, chase in your son while there is hope, but do not set your heart on his destruction. Chasten your son while there is hope, but do not set your heart on his destruction." Do you see? There's a middle ground there. There is abusing your children which will provoke them to wrath. There is undue and harsh punishments that will provoke your children to wrath. You're told here not to do those things. But yet you must still discipline.

Proverbs 22 verse 6 says, "'Train up the child in the way he shall go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 13, 24 says this, this is a striking one for those in our culture who think that we shouldn't discipline our children at all. He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly. Do we discipline our children in love? Fathers, are you letting your children get away with murder? because you're worried about provoking them to wrath, all the while what you're really showing them is you're not actually loving them well.

There's a balance. Disciplining, but not destroying. Serving, but not becoming a servant. Fathers, you are called to follow in the footstep of God Almighty Himself, who in Hebrews chapter 12 says this, And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, my son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when He rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and He chastens everyone He accepts as a son.

Endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as His children. Have you ever wondered why you have to go through hard things in your life? It's because our Heavenly Father disciplines us as a loving Father does His children. He is caring for us, He is disciplining us. Not for us to be provoked to wrath, not for us to turn against Him, but because He loves us. How? Okay, where is this balance?

Well, it looks like the rest of verse 4, "...bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." God has laid upon fathers the blessing of training and admonishing your children. God has given you fathers the blessing of training and admonishing your children.

This word for training is a word in the Greek that you teachers will actually know real well. There's a few teachers here and you'll recognize this weird word that's typically only in teaching circles, pedagogy. or pedagogical method, right? How do you actually teach? How do you actually get this information into your kid's brain comes from the Greek word here for instruct or train.

Fathers here though are told just like in 529, no one ever hated his own body but nourishes it and cares for it. God tells you to nourish your children. God tells you just as you would feed your own mouth with a steady diet of food, You need to train your children. You need to nourish your children with instruction. You need to train them. But what is the content of this training?

It's training in the Lord. It's instruction in the Lord. Deuteronomy chapter 6. We know the great Shema, hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. But what does it say after that? How do we show our love for the Lord? Look, go ahead and turn with me there real quick. Deuteronomy chapter 6. Notice what it says after that. Deuteronomy chapter 6, for the sake of time, page 165. Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 6.

And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.

When you rise up, and when you lie down, and when you sit, and when you're with your kids mowing the grass, and when you're with your kids at the dinner table, and as you're driving down the road, what are you talking about? What are you feeding your children with? How are you instructing your children? Are you giving them the Lord's Word? Are you educating your children in the Lord? This is a... This is a hard thing in our culture. Again, in a day and age where children go off to public school, this is difficult.

There's a few copies in the back of a writer from the 1800s, a theologian named Charles Hodge, who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary. And as he's talking about this verse, about the need for religious education, from a day and age where a public school system, remember the public school system was set up as the old deluder of Satan act. that every single town in colonial New England had to have a public school because there the kids could learn both morals and natural intellect. So they could both know how to be moral and religious as well as how to be functional in this world. We have stripped the religious out of it, but even in the mid 1800s when Charles Hodge is writing, they're still teaching it in the schools. Christians are still allowed to speak about their faith and how their faith is there. If we realize that we have a problem with the morals of our society, maybe we need to look at the administration has ripped the morals aspect out of the school. The reality is there's always a moral aspect in it, even if it's not religious. There is a moral aspect no matter what.

So the question is, are we instructing our children in the Lord? But we instruct them in the Lord, but it's not just instructing in the Lord, it's also admonishing them in the Lord. Admonishing them in the Lord. I love when people say, oh, this child's like a perfect little angel.

No, they're not. No, they're not. If you've ever been around a two or a three-year-old, you know they are not perfect little angels. The reality is that children need to be told, no, don't do that. I need to be told, no, Brian, don't do that. This is why I love being here where John and Jim are able to tell me, Brian, you're working too much. Brian, stop that and go spend time with your family. I need a friend like Micah who's able to tell me, Brian, you're being an idiot. Go home and spend time with your wife.

Fathers, your children need you. Your children need you to admonish them. The world wants to tell you that you should be best friends with your little kids. No, God has told you, you need to instruct and admonish your children. You need to tell them, no, this isn't the right way. If you go this way, it's not gonna go well for you, son. If you go this way, daughter, it's not gonna go well.

But we're so worried about offending our children, so worried about our children liking us, so worried about our children being happy, We don't think about their eternal joy. Fathers, God is inviting you into the redemptive aspect just as He disciplines us, just as He teaches us, just as He admonishes us. That's what we just looked at in Ephesians chapter 5 when we admonish each other with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Just like you need to admonish me and I need to admonish you and we admonish one another, so our children need to be admonished as well. Our children need God's Word applied to their hearts to say, this is the way of life, walk in it and it will go well with you. If you don't, it will be heartache and pain. Our children need to be admonished, fathers. This doesn't end, I'm going to encourage you, this does not end just when they are out of your house. Now, remember when we talked about leaving and cleaving. But if you have adult sons, adult daughters, fathers, Spend time talking to them.

Closing Prayer

Ask probing questions. Ask questions in such a way to draw them back to the Word. Encourage them to be in the Word. Encourage them to still be under the tutelage of the Lord, that they would be taught by Him. Again, Proverbs chapter 22 verse 6 gives us this great principle, that if we train up a child in the way, they won't depart from it. Fathers, God is inviting you. God is encouraging you. God is commanding you to raise up your children in the Lord, to take seriously your responsibility to raise your children in the Lord, to care for them, to nourish them, but with the warning also that we must not provoke our little ones to wrath. Let's pray to God for wisdom and how to do that and to live it. Let's pray now.

Father, we thank you so much for the family. We thank you for the gift that you have given us in stability that comes from the family. We thank you that you love us as a heavenly Father. We thank you that you discipline us, that you instruct us, that you admonish us, that you correct us and reprove us.

Father, we pray that your Holy Spirit would be working in our hearts, that we would be faithful Christian fathers, that we would have faithful Christian families, that You would redeem families. Lord, we pray that we would look to You and look to Your Word. How do we parent with wisdom? We pray that by the power of Your Holy Spirit, You would give us the skill to apply Your Word in how we raise up children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Father, we pray that You would teach us. Our earthly fathers were imperfect, but You, Father, are perfect. We pray that You would teach us to walk after You. In His name we pray. Amen.

Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith in your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue, Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.