Part Two: The Father

Telling the Next Generation The Praises of The Lord
Part Two: The Father
Ephesians 6:1-4

Introduction: Read Text

I want to talk about the role of father’s in telling the next generation the unchanging praises of the Lord. Before I launch into this text, I want to make a few qualifying remarks: 1) First, I want to acknowledge that, not everyone here is a father, or maybe your children are already all grown up. But that does not mean that this sermon doesn’t apply to you.

Let me try to show briefly how this message applicable to you: Here’s the rationale: the church is a family, an extended family. All the rules and structures and emotions, as well as interpersonal dynamics and family patterns that apply in the home, apply at church (for better or for worse). So, if you are a man, then you perform the role of father in the church and everything I am about to say is equally applicable in the church.

Scriptural lends weight to this point: Paul modeled it with Timothy, whom he called his “true son in the Faith” (1 Tim 1) even though Timothy had a real father, and Paul had no children. John refers to Christians as his “little children.” Paul paints a picture of the church in familial terms saying, “Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters...” (1 Tim 5).

2) The second qualifying remark I want to make is to the woman: Some of you may feel the urge to elbow your husbands when I say something that you want them to hear. Or, sometime this week, you might find yourself reminding your husband of something I said today in order to change some behaviour or attitude- that’s called nagging.

Please resist that urge or you and I will both fail because nagging produces the reverse effect of the thing that it tries to do. That’s because men like to do the right thing by their own will rather then by coercion. And they don’t like to reinforce or enable nagging by allowing it to succeed. So let’s agree not to repeat this message after today, except in our meditations with the help of the Holy Spirit. If you want to change your husband, pray for him. And don’t tell him you are praying for him, because that’s nagging too!

3) A final qualification I want to make is to acknowledge single parent and the fatherless. It may be very painful to hear a message about fatherhood either because you have never known your father, or because you are a lone parent raising your children. This reiterates the importance of my earlier point that the church is a family and there are men here who can help- a little. After all, it is the duty of the church to be the father to the fatherless and the husband to the husbandless. So let’s look at the text:

I. Provoking them to Wrath
Paul commands two things to fathers in verse 4: the first thing he says is that fathers are not to provoke their children to wrath; they are not to exasperate them by making them angry. The other thing he commands is that, instead, fathers train and admonish them in the Lord. Let’s look at the 1st command:

Do not provoke you’re children to wrath, do not make them angry, do not exasperate them. This command does not mean what it means in the world, for, in the world there is a wide selection of parenting philosophies available- they range from theories minimize the need for discipline to theories that involve rigid rules and immediate discipline.

So the no-rules parents will lean on the first command and say, “see the bible confirms what we have always said: ‘Rules and discipline exasperate children.’” And the disciplinary parents will lean on the second command and say “it exasperates them if we don’t teach and admonish our children.” Paul is not commanding us to build up our children’s self centeredness, nor is he commanding us to beat them into submission. What Paul is commanding is what we might describe as the discipline of grace.

The goal is neither self esteem nor submission in the child; not self confidence, nor self defeat. The goal is that the child would learn and utter self denying confidence in a consistently just, longsuffering and lovingly merciful God that is modeled to him/her by their fathers.

Yes there is a practical life-enhancing, character building, success boosting consequence to applying this command: 1) because failure to provide proper barriers and correcting bad behaviour can exasperate children when they get into the real world and lack the ability to live within the rules of society or discipline themselves to correct behaviour. 2) As well, disciplining a child and turning everything into a battle can exasperate a child- he never knows when the other boots going to come down and he learns to repress his rage at the lack injustice which explodes in his teens or early adulthood.
But those practical social consequences are not the goal of the command. The more important consequence is to declare to the next generation the praises of Lord in a way that does not exasperate them so that they will be utterly God centered and not self centered. That means that they will do everything in God’s strength and for His glory.

II. Teaching and Admonishment
Let’s look at the second command Paul gives: he writes, “but…” that’s a big but because it sets what he about to say up against what he just said- ‘this not that’! “Bring them up in the training and admonishment… the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

This command is what makes Paul’s command to fathers radically opposed to the world’s philosophies of parenting. The world cannot train and instruct a child in the Lord it can only train and instruct a child in the world (which will exasperate them and deny them the most important thing: the ability to worship a saviour). Only a parent who is sold out for Jesus, who is a disciple, who understands to moral requirements of the Law, who lives in the grace and joy of salvation can teach and admonish children in the Lord.

This father is like a house built on a rock, his life:
…empties itself of pride and human good works and is humble and repentant because of its own sin. Such a life strives, with the Spirit’s help, to enter the narrow gate of salvation and be faithful to the narrow way of Christ and His Word. The life built on the rock trusts in God’s will and hopes in His Word above all else.[1]

There are many noble practical things that a godly father must teach his children. I pulled just a few of the many found in proverbs:
1. A godly father’s words have the power to lead children to God, “then you will understand the fear of the Lord, And find the knowledge of God” (2:5);
2. A godly father’s instruction will lengthen a child’s life, “Hear, my son… And the years of your life will be many” (4:10);
3. and a godly father can teach his children about hard work, “He who gathers in summer is a wise son; he who sleeps in harvest is a son who causes shame.

The father must also teach his children the Law. The context of this passage confirms that, look at v. 2; Paul quotes the 10 Commandments, “Honor your father and mother that it may be well with you and you may live long upon the earth.” And just so you don’t think this is one isolated case of Paul quoting from the Law and applying it to Christian behaviour, the 10 Commandments are taught throughout the NT as valid to Christians.

Jesus even made them stricter in the Sermon the Mount; he called hate murder and lust adultery. He also called the Pharisee idolaters because of their traditions. James wrote, “If you really fulfill the royal law…,“You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well, but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law…” (Jas 2:8-10).

But our teaching must not just be law, it must be counterbalanced with ample grace or we will certainly provoke our children to wrath. If we are to teach and admonish our children by rules only and never show them grace, we are as bad as the servant, who though being forgiven a great debt by his master, refused to forgive a small debt of his servant and threw him into debtors prison until he could pay off the debt. So we teach our children Law, in order to bring them to grace.

There are two ways we do this:
The first is by example, how we live out the other 166 hours of the week between visits to church when we put on our Christian face and show up all religious. Kids spot hypocrisy in a second. They see us singing “Blessed is the Name of the Lord” at 10:30 and then using his name to curse someone who’s cut us off on the road. Guess what it does? It teaches our kids how to be double minded, how to do the church thing and then live completely different lives in the week when they’re around friends.

So father’s we need to be so into this Word and applying it to every instance of our lives… even the most trivial events that the Praises of the Lord ooze and seethe out of every pore and orifice of our bodies. Our sweat, our tears, our very breath declare his praises so our kids not only hear it, they see it.

This is not just the responsibility of fathers to their own children either. It’s the responsibility of all the men in this church to all the children of this church, because you teach them too and that’s why it is so important to choose a good church- one that picks good men to be its elders. One with a healthy men’s group where the older men can mentor the younger ones and the wise men can instruct the foolish ones and the strong men can lend their strength to the weak ones.

The second way we teach our children is in precept; by intentional as well as by spontaneous instruction. When our children are young, much of the instruction is spontaneous- your child will ask you a question about God, or you will have to explain some spiritual truth to match a circumstance.

And as the child matures and becomes literate, the instruction must become more intentional and more systematic. It helps to understand that every child learns differently- some children are more visual learners, they need illustrations and examples; some children, they learn through lectures and discussions- listening to others talk; other children need to touch and feel.

Not only that, but every parent is also different in teaching styles. I have trouble systematically teaching precepts to illiterate children with short attention spans. It’s easier for me to do that with college students. But what works for me with my kids at the age they’re at is I teach them out of life experiences, like when we’re swimming together, or flying a kite or answering their questions.

I don’t have the patience to teach the basics, but I know as they grow, I will be able to teach them more systematically and intentionally. Other men are different and spend hours teaching their kids to read and write. One last point, turn with me Proverbs 1 (read verse 7-9):

Notice that if we only read Ephesians 6:4 we might mistakenly assume that it is only the responsibility of the fathers to teach children. But according to Proverbs 1:8 as well as other places, this is a shared responsibility between the mother and father. And there is a time in the life of children when the mother has the most influence- she nurses him, she bathes him, she coos with him, she spends time working out grammar and helping him to learn to go to the bathroom and to learn the alphabet. But as the child grows, the father’s influence will increase and there will come a time, when the father will have more influence before that influence shifts towards their peers. That’s when they will either wear what you have taught them or discard it like an old coat.

Conclusion:
So the father must wisely instruct and discipline his children so that he does not exasperate them. This is the responsibility of all the men in the church, not just those with children and it is a responsibility we share with the woman according to our giftings.

The church needs a message like this more then ever. With so many father’s failing and so many children growing up without them, if Christian men would step up to their responsibility to be godly men so that they can teach their children the praises of the Lord without provoking them to wrath, the church would be a potent force in one generation because a godly father will provide children with a positive image of God. Rather then a harsh and malicious task master, they will worship a just and merciful God who is longsuffering and loving whose chastisement is consistently just.

[1]MacArthur, J. (2001). Truth for today : A daily touch of God's grace (Page 260). Nashville, Tenn.: J. Countryman.