These Are Your Kids

Thanks for listening to the podcast from Jonathan Combs and the preaching team at Eastgate Community Church in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Check us out on the web at eastgate.church for more. And now, here’s the sermon. Good morning, church. Let’s get some lights on these people so they can see their notes and see each other.

Y’all want to see each other? You good with that? I know you’re supposed to keep distance, but you can at least look, right? You can at least look at each other. Hey, we’re in part 3 of this This is us, and this week we’ve entitled it, “These are your kids.” Parents in the room, if you haven’t said that this week, you probably needed to at some point to say, “Lord, these are your kids.” And wow, I could subtitle this for those in the room who think, “I’m just going to immediately check out.” I could put in parentheses, “These are your parents,” because there’s a few of you in here that there’s some timeless principles in here for you.

I just— here’s what I know is true. Everybody has a family. We’re in a series talking about family. Of you are in families, some of you showed up with those people today, uh, but we all have a family. And today we need to dig in on this idea of how to be not only a child of God, which we just sang about, but also a parent, a godly parent.

And so there’s really something for everyone today. And it starts with us really just beginning to ask God for his blessing, for his favor when it comes to our families, because no matter which role you’re in in this current moment, whether you’re the child learning how to be a responsible person, an adult eventually moving out of the house, or you’re the parent, or maybe you’re the grandparent, no matter what role you’re at in the house, it’s a constant growing process, asking God over and over, “Grant me your favor, give me your blessing,” and praying along with everyone else, “God, these are your kids.” These are your parents. For some of us, it means praying things like, God, this is your infant. And if it’s your first infant, you’re thinking, help me, give me rest, help me understand. God, this is your terrible two, or for us, terrible two through— it’s indefinite at this moment.

Just praying this prayer and God, help me not to lock them outside. God, this is your teenager. Give me wisdom. God, this is your adult child that has boomeranged back in my life. Guide their life.

God, these are your grandkids. So on and so on. There’s a constant praying. And my dad told me just the other day, he’s, you know, I think he’s always had a habit of praying for us as kids, but he made it sound like he almost prays for the grandkids even more than he used to pray for us. That says a lot about, you know, we’re pretty messed up.

He probably should have prayed more. But, but he’s praying a ton for his grandkids. And maybe some of you grandparents in the room understand, just you feel a certain way about those kids that maybe you didn’t even feel about your own kids. Something to do with legacy, I don’t know, but we’re constantly praying, God, these are your kids. God, this is your family.

God, these are your parents. And I have no doubt that the parents in the room have had some, a few disciplinary encounters with your kids just this week, perhaps this morning. I bet almost all of you who have young kids had an encounter today, and today is so young. And yet there’s already been something. And you’ve probably in the last, I don’t know, 24/7, because it’s a constant process.

You might think everyone’s asleep at 2:00 AM, but you don’t know. Somebody could be up roaming about. It’s a constant process. And I imagine that over time you’ve used a lot of different methods. Sometimes we fall back to methods we’ve seen, methods we were brought up with in our homes, some of which are not very effective, and yet we still kind of fall back on them sometimes.

We’ll try to bring bribe a 3-year-old, and that might work for a season until, like Pavlov’s theory, they begin to expect a handout every single time. If you want to give your kids something just for obedience, go ahead, but I don’t think that’s the right way to go about it. Things are going to get expensive at your house. Every time you need to go potty, you get a sucker. At some point, they just need to go potty, otherwise at 18 years old they’re going to have a stash of suckers for every potty visit.

It’s going to get weird. I’m just saying it’s going to get weird. Bribing, we, “Come on, do what you’re told, I’ll give you something.” Threats, and then we make up threats that we honestly aren’t gonna follow through on. Stuff like, I’m gonna take, I’m at this stage right now where, if you don’t stop with these electronics, I’m getting them out of the house, but here’s the problem, I wanna play ’em later. I mean, I’m gonna work all day, but at some point, I might wanna relax, so I don’t really mean it, so if you’re gonna threat, threaten, you better follow through.

But it’s not necessarily the best method. We reason. If you ever tried to reason with a 2-year-old, it can’t be done. They’re unreasonable. Cannot reason with them.

You can yell all you want to, but what you might create is kids that yell back. I found this to be true in my life. You can count down if you want, and so every time that you actually mean it, they’re going to wait for you to finish your countdown. So your words only matter after one, or you’re a teapot, which is probably who I am most. Eventually you just get fed up and you just kill everybody.

At some point you volcanically explode on everyone, and that’s often where I’m at. Have you had a kid yet that breaks all of your methods? Some of you, if you’ve only got one or two, maybe this hasn’t happened. It didn’t happen till three for us. The third kid broke everything.

Everything was working. And now none of the methods work. And so these methods, even these, these bad ones, even some of the ones that are from God, sometimes it’s just hard being a parent and we have to rely on the Lord. I’m convinced some of you need to hear this today. No matter what stage of life you’re in, you are constantly going to be reminded of your need for Jesus constantly.

I think there’s a blessing underneath the hood in marriage, underneath the hood in having children, and the blessing is this: you begin more and more to realize how insufficient you are. You should have realized this already. Single people in the room, young people in the room, I hope that you can realize this at a very early point in your life, because the quicker you can realize, “I’m insufficient apart from Christ,” the better of a person you’re going to become. The much more significant things you’ll be able to do when you realize you’re insignificant and He’s very significant, and suddenly something can shift in you. If you’re coming into a marriage or you’re coming into parenthood thinking this is going to fulfill the brokenness in your life, it’s not.

It’s going to utterly expose it. You’re going to realize just how messed up you are. If marriage didn’t fix my problems, children certainly did not. You know, I thought, “Well, I need this person to complete me,” and over a few years, you know, honestly, If you work well with your spouse, if you, if you work hard on it, you do grow, you mature things. And then you throw kids in the mix and you go, well, we didn’t know what we were doing.

I didn’t have a clue.

It’s a constant process of growing. If you’ve come to church today and you’re just hoping that this Christian walk is a process of just eventually just casually going through life until God comes again, that’s just not what God’s up to. You know what his major goal is? If you’ve been missing it, he wants you to look more like Jesus every single day, and you’re really far from it. And so am I.

And so he puts obstacles in our life, whether it’s at our workplace, whether it’s at school, whether it’s in a dating relationship, whether he puts obstacles in our life with our kids, with our wives, our husbands. He does this to make us more like his son Jesus. And I’m thankful for it. And I hope that you can find a place where you’re thankful for the obstacles. You’re thankful for the process.

It’s not all about the endgame, it’s also the process, and if you could fall in love with the process, man, this sermon’s going to speak to you. God, these are your kids. God, these, whether I like it or not, are your parents that you’ve given to me. Let’s dig in now. We’re in the book of Ephesians chapter 6.

I love how Paul moves right into children after talking about mutual submission, and then talking about husbands and wives, and then talking about children, and then we’re not going to address this, but then I’d encourage you to read ahead if you’re having trouble at work. He talks about how to deal with employers and employees later in chapter 6. He just deals with a lot of rudimentary things right here, and I love that. So here we are in Ephesians chapter 6:1-4, and he’s instructing children and parents to completely focus their relationships on the Lord., and I hope that you’ll see as we dig in a few ways to focus your relationship on the Lord. Let’s dig in.

Ephesians 6:1-4, it says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Fathers, Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. God bless the reading of His Word.

Amen. Just 4 verses today and they’re loaded. They’re absolutely loaded. You’ve probably seen them before if you’ve been in church at all. You— I don’t even know if you have to be at church to be somewhat familiar with some of these verses.

They’re pretty well known in our culture still. And I hope today that you’re going to get something fresh out of it, no matter what stage of life you’re coming in here with. I hope and pray that you get a fresh word from the Lord as we dig in on this question: How do we completely focus our parent-child relationship on the Lord? Here’s the first thing: Teach our children to obey. Now, if you don’t yet have children, this word is directly for you.

You guys have all gone kind of front and center. Praise God! Look at all you up front! This is really clear what Paul says, “Children, obey your parents, for this is right in the Lord.” What’s really unfortunate about this verse, and I’m so sorry to give this to you, he doesn’t give any conditions. He doesn’t say, “Hey, if your dad is an absolute knucklebutt, you don’t have to do this.” I don’t know if that’s a word, knucklebutt?

There you go. I like that. It’s a new phrase, you can use it from Pastor Jonathan, knucklebutt. If your mom just doesn’t get— she just doesn’t get me. She doesn’t understand.

It doesn’t matter. There’s no condition here. It says, do it because it’s right in the Lord. Now, some of you might have experienced parents who mess up. Guess what parents are?

They’re flawed. They’re imperfect. They make mistakes. And if you have good parents, they’ll probably realize that. They might even apologize.

I have to apologize to my kids sometimes and go, I don’t know why I’m so angry about this, but yeah, I’m sorry about the anger, but you didn’t do— and sometimes I don’t catch myself, but the Lord doesn’t— the Word doesn’t say only obey them if it feels right, if it feels good. It’s almost unconditional obedience. Now, let me put a parameter on this because some of you are moving into a new phase of life. The word children here is the word tekna, which literally means of this age where you’re still in the house. So some of you at some point are going to get to a place where you move from direct obedience to, “I respect what my mom and dad have to say.

I’m going to take their advice into account, but I have to start being an adult.” There’s a handful of you, you just got to be an adult now. And mom and dad are probably still right a lot because they’ve been living longer, They’ve thought about some problems you haven’t thought about. Listen to them. But there’s a few of you in the room right now that this directly means obey, for it is right in the Lord. Children need to see that their parents— now, here’s how this applies to most of us in the room.

This obedience needs to be inspired by love. Obey, for it is right in the Lord. John Calvin, writing many centuries ago, he said, the obedience of children is enforced by the authority of God. Hence, it follows that parents are to be obeyed. So far, only as is consistent with piety to God, which comes first in order.

So, what he’s saying there is, parents, your objective is to help them become holy, help them to know Jesus, help them to come to God. Your obedience, your inspiring their obedience, should be based on that, should be based on those things, not just generally your comfort. Which is sometimes how I struggle in parenting, is that I want comfort, and so I’m not thinking about obedience rightly. So there’s something to be applied for both the child and the parent. He says, “For this is right.” This is added in order to restrain this rebellious nature.

Look, guess what? If you haven’t had kids yet, guess how they come out? They come out broke. They just don’t come out right. I told Michael this morning, I said, “Kids come out and they’re just not good people.” They’re just not good people.

They’re adorable. They’re nice to look at up until the point they can actually talk. You’re thinking, “This kid is great, perfect. Okay, poopy diapers, spilling things sometimes, I can handle that.” Then they start doing this, and you go, “What a sinful creature. What a terrible person,” you might think to yourself.

If you’re introspective, you’ll go, “Well, so am I. No duh. Look what I made.” The Bible says clearly that we’re all born sinners, but we’re saved by grace. God loves us and he cleans us up.

This is added here to restrain, restrain this rebellious nature. Look, we can’t just say, all right, I only obey if it’s convenient. Pointing our children to the Lord is the first and most important thing we need to do as parents. That’s the first and most important thing. Everything else pales in comparison.

I know you love sports. I know you want your kids to be smart. I know you want your kids to be successful. And these are good things. Don’t hear me belittle that.

But if you do all that and miss pointing them to Jesus, you’ve missed your primary responsibility as a parent. There’s nothing more important than this because there’s eternity at stake. And how good they are at baseball has no effect on eternity.

I want my kids to be great at these things. I love sports. In fact, before I wanted to be a pastor, I wanted to be on ESPN. No lie. Well, before that, I actually wanted to play professional football, and then it just— my body just— it didn’t look good.

It didn’t work out. I was okay. I made the team. I played some. It wasn’t great.

I love the sport. I thought, well, if I can’t play it, I’m going to talk about it. Look, y’all, I love sports. I went to college with a media performance degree. This was my That was my goal.

And then God said, “I got an idea. Let’s do something completely different, but we’ll use this communication degree. You thought you were going to be running your mouth on screen. No, you’re going to be running your mouth with a bunch of people that probably don’t want to hear everything you say, but here we go.” And here I am. Look, I love sports.

I want my kids to be great at that. I want my kids to be smart. I’ve already told them, “Hey, look, your dad’s probably not going to have any money to send you to college, so you better do real good and get some scholarships because otherwise you’re going to be paying.” You gonna be paying for real, because I did. You can handle it. I’d love to set you up better, but this is your reality.

I want my kids to be successful, but if I miss the point where I connect their hands together— I’ve seen this image many times, but I hope it will stick in your brain. Here’s what should be occurring in your life. You as an individual should be clinging to Jesus in prayer, in His Word. Single, married, have kids, no matter what stage of life you’re at, you You better be clinging to Christ. And then when these little kids come along, now you’re hanging on to them.

And what you do for the next 18 years, hopefully that’s it. Some of you are going to boomerang a little bit and you’ll have to come back and work a little more. That’s okay, it happens. But for the next 2 decades, roughly, you’re doing this.

And then you’re releasing. That is your goal. That is your primary purpose. If I can just bring this kid, and the Lord’s coming to him too. It’s not all my work.

The Holy Spirit is in charge of salvation. That’s what’s terrifying underneath the whole thing is you cannot save your kids. You can’t, but you can do everything in your power to introduce them to the Savior and then pray that the, the Lord does the rest. But you better be doing this part, making that handoff. It’s almost kind of similar in a way to what husbands are instructed to last week.

There’s a sense that a husband is doing this with his whole family, that he’s, he’s with his kids, with his wife, with himself. He’s connecting those dots. Paul’s just reemphasizing that raising a rebellious child is a sure way to lead to ruin later in life. At some point, we’ve got to connect the dots to the Lord. D.L.

Moody once said, if people were true to the first commandment, which is putting God first, basically, obedience to the remaining 9 would follow naturally. It is because they are unsound in this that they break all the others. We bring kids to the Lord, we teach them His Word. Proverbs 1:8 says, “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching.” Jesus modeled this very behavior in obeying His parents. Luke 2:51 says, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them.” And his mother treasured all these things in her heart.

Look, it pleases the Lord to do these things. Paul writes in Colossians 3, “Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.” So if for some reason you read Ephesians and you didn’t get the “all things” part, well, here’s Colossians for you young people. Obey your parents in all things. Man! That’s so universal and unconditional.

Oh, what am I going to do about it? You’re going to— you’re going to obey because you love Jesus. That’s what you’re going to do.

Children, obey your parents. Fathers inspire, mothers inspire obedience to the Lord. What is your goal? Teach them to obey you in the sense that you are obeying the Lord. That’s that You’re connecting that.

The sooner that you can do that and say, hey, as I follow Christ, you follow me, and eventually you’re following Christ, and I’m watching and just wonder. This is what Paul says even to the church. He says, imitate me as I imitate Jesus. As a parent, are you doing something worthy of imitation? Are you worth imitating as you follow the Lord?

The mother of George Washington attended a banquet. This is a hard transition, just follow along here for a second now. Y’all are like, whoa, George Washington, the first president of the United States, that guy. Okay, so that guy, his mother, George Washington’s mother, attended a banquet shortly after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis after the American Revolution where we became independent. A French officer asked Washington’s mother, How she managed to raise such a splendid son, and this is going to be, man, I can’t wait to tell you this news.

Here’s what she said, simply, “I taught him to obey.” It’s not, “Hey, I fed him his Wheaties, I made sure,” no, “I taught him to obey.” And George Washington, many would argue, is probably one of the greatest presidents we’ve ever had. Selfless person, unlike many of our last 50 years of presidents, a very humble, didn’t want the job kind of president. Isn’t that crazy? Our first president wasn’t sure he wanted the position at all. He was taught to obey.

Now I want to share with you a book. Some of you are readers in the room. I highly recommend this book. I’ve nearly finished it. Chip Ingram’s Effective Parenting in a Defective World.

If you like to read, check it out. It’s amazing. But I’m going to just share today a couple of myth to reality points. And here’s one. A parenting myth is that my child’s primary responsibility is to juggle the schoolwork and extracurricular activities that will make them a real well-rounded successful adult.

And that myth is prevalent in our culture. The reality is this though: my children’s primary responsibility is to learn healthy obedience. It’s their primary responsibility. Your primary responsibility is to connect the dots, teach them to obey the Lord. Their responsibility is to learn healthy obedience.

I spent a little bit of time in the Army, and I can tell you right now, it’s easy to point out who had the bad parents. Really easy to point out, because they’re the ones getting smoked by drill sergeants. You know what I did when they told me to do something? “Yes, sir.” “Yes, sir.” How many? Let’s do this.

No is not something you put in your vocabulary when you’re dealing with a drill sergeant. You don’t do it. But there’s people, ah, I could just tell, didn’t learn healthy obedience, gonna suffer in life. Certainly in the Army, but you’ll suffer anywhere, workplaces. Learn healthy obedience.

Let’s move on. Next way, show our children how to honor. Show our children how to honor. This verse, verse 2 and 3, honor your father and mother, and it reminds us this is the first commandment with a promise. Another unconditional.

This comes from Exodus chapter 20, verse 12. This is one of the Ten Commandments. Honor your father and your mother so that your days will be long in the land, the land that the Lord gives you. So there’s something promised here about the length of life, or at least Maybe not the length of life, but the way that life is, it’s more valuable. God promises something here for those who honor their parents, and it’s unconditional, and this one applies to all of us.

And some of you are sitting here thinking, “But Jonathan, I’m so thankful that I’m in my own family now. I’ve moved on from those people.” But there’s no condition here. Unconditional honor for your parents. It doesn’t mean you love everything they’ve said to you. In fact, they may have been mean, they may have been malicious to you as an adult.

Doesn’t matter, there’s no condition. You honor them to the best of your ability. You estimate. What this means is, this word, it’s the word tima, which means fix the value. You make a decision, this is what this person’s worth.

Maybe they personally don’t feel worth that, but their role as my mother is honorable. Their role as my father is worthy of honor. Do they always do respectful things? No. Lord, you don’t either, but you honor them because you’ve been instructed to do so, and it’s a promise that follows.

Honor is something that is owed. Similar to last week, it’s unconditional. Unconditional love and respect, unconditional honor. Obedience is the evidence that honor which— of that honor which children owe to their parents. Now he says promise, says there’s a promise here.

He adds in Deuteronomy 5:16, Moses adds, that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God has given you. There’s something there. I think it’s about— it’s about something that gets passed on.

I don’t know if this is completely true, but it seems true in my life and what I’ve observed is that the parents who honor their parents who honor their parents, it’s like a system of honor gets put in place in your household. So that my kids honor their grandparents, I honor my parents, I honor my grandparents, there’s just a system of respect that I can’t take credit for, it goes way back, many generations before me, and when that system gets broken down, it gets difficult to fix it. And that’s not to belittle you or family or to make you think that this can’t be done, because it can. By the power of the Holy Spirit, you change. You make the decision, my parents aren’t worthy of honor, but I’ll do it because the Lord said so and because they’re— at least their position is worthy of such honor.

And what’s crazy is your parents or your kids, your children are going to notice that. Honor is this thing that is caught, not necessarily taught. Your kids are going to notice the way that your, your wife or your husband, the way you love and respect each other. That’s honor. They’re going to notice that and they’re going to assume this is how people should treat one another.

They’re going to notice how you honor them and encourage them and embolden them. They’re going to notice that and think, this is the way that people should be with each other. Honor is something that you put on display and they observe it and they catch it. You can try to teach it, but you better display it.

I haven’t read a whole lot on this. I, I can’t vouch necessarily for this site, this journal site that I found called The Art of Manliness. So if you go on there and find something strange, I’m sorry. I just— this is where I found the article and I wanted to at least throw it out there to you if you wanted to check me on it. But it talks about two kinds of of honor in this particular article, and it says one is horizontal, one is vertical, and I found this to be helpful.

The idea here is that we all owe each other a horizontal honor. That’s just a mutual respect. If with a perfect stranger, we just go ahead and assume, I respect you at this point mutually. Why? Because we’re made in the image of God, the imago dei.

God loves us, he’s made us, whether this person I’m not sure about yet, Horizontal respect. But then they talk about a vertical respect, which is this idea of honor your parents because of their role, honor the Father because He is God, honor an office, honor someone based on their sex. Like, that’s something I was taught as a kid. This is a woman, so you honor her, you take care of her. That’s culturally becoming irrelevant, but biblically it shouldn’t be.

Honor vertically. Two kinds of honor. And we teach this and we display this. Look, the Bible links honoring with fearing God. Leviticus 19 says, “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God.

I am the Lord.” A good way to start honoring your gray hairs is to not call them gray hairs, you know. “Hey, old guy!” It’s interesting how the Bible puts that, but it just kind of puts it verbatim. Nevertheless, it says honor the old man, honor your elders essentially, if somebody Some versions probably say, “Honor your elders,” and the Lord is observing that as honor to Him. Honor extends— this is this mutual respect. Look at Romans 12:10, it says, “Love one another with brotherly affection.

Outdo one another in showing honor.” There’s a call to unconditional honor here for believers.

How does this honor look?

I used to hate it when I’d go to one of my friend’s house. I’m glad my parents didn’t really say this, although this is what they meant, but they didn’t say it. But I would go to my buddy’s house and his parents would say, “All right, how do we obey? How do we obey? Immediately, sweetly, and completely.” And I’d go, “Oh my gosh, these are robots.

I’m dealing with automatons in here. They’ve been brainwashed.” And yet it’s exactly what my parents were expecting too. Think what you want about how to parent, you know, there’s a lot of ways to slice this cake, but the way it worked at my house was eyeballs. So when you’re being instructed, you— good Lord, people, this is a sidebar, sidebar, but if you can’t look me in the eyes when we’re communicating, your parents did you a disservice. You’re scared to look me in the eyes?

What’s going on here? My parents, “Boy, you better be eyeballs.” And I know this now as a parent, if you don’t have eyeballs, you probably don’t have a brain connected yet. They’re somewhere else. I have a little one named Kenzie, y’all. If you don’t have eyeballs, I’m telling you, she’s somewhere else on another planet.

That girl is on cloud nine all the time. “You better get eyeballs. Did you hear me? Repeat it back to me.” You know, this is what we— I don’t say immediately, sweetly, and completely because for For some reason that just bugs me. It’s not a bad line, use it, go ahead.

It just irks me for some reason, but it’s exactly what I want out of them. I want, and here’s, you northerners are going to love this, I want, “Yes, sir.” If you don’t like that, so be it, welcome to the South, it’s what we say down here, so either adapt or just make your own decision. But I’ll tell you this, “Yeah” ain’t going to cut it. Yeah. You get this, yeah.

No. I’ll beat you for that. Yeah. Not going to work. I want, personally, I want a “Yes, sir.” You do what you will with it.

You can say, “Hey, you got eyeballs?” Maybe for you it’s “Yes.” Yes, mom. Yes, daddy. Whatever you want, go for that, but make sure honor is on display. This is important stuff. This might sound so petty, but look how adults will turn out.

Adults will turn out not being able to look their employers in the eye and say, “Yes.” Yes, I understand. Why? Because they never learned how to do it. You’re teaching your children healthy obedience to God the Father, and that is going to translate to everything in their life.

Welcome to the South. It’s yes sir and no ma’am down here. You know, I like that. You know what else it means? It means caring for your parents in their old age.

It never ends. This is unconditional, lifelong honor. And your kids will observe this. They’ll observe it. You know, Mommy and Daddy, they really hate their mommy and daddy.

Maybe this is how life works. Just be careful what they’re observing because they’re observing everything.

Do you show an attitude of disrespect towards your spouse? Your children are seeing that even when you don’t intend them to see it. How do you speak of your parents? How do you speak of your boss, of your leaders? Honor is caught, not taught.

Here’s the last, and I got enough time to cover it. It’s going to get hairy. Here we go. The third way that I see is this: encourage our children to live for Christ. Encourage our children to live for Christ.

This is the instruction that finally reaches parents. Honestly, those people in the room who are not yet parents, everything up until this point was actually imperatively directed to you. To you, obedience and honor. If you’re not doing it, you’re disobeying the Word of God. But something transitions at verse 4, it says, “Fathers, do not provoke,” another version says, “Do not exasperate your kids.” Now, why does it come out with fathers?

Don’t miss this, this is not a mistranslation, there’s nothing, this is the word “pater” here, which means, you know, where we get patriarchy, this is the word father. Why is it the word father here? Mothers, do we get to just exclude ourselves? Hallelujah! The role of raising kids is actually for the father.

Not the case. Remember what he’s already established previously as husbands’ headship under Christ. What he’s saying now is, “Let me talk, first of all, to the spiritual leader of the household, and then everyone underneath will follow as he follows Christ, as Christ follows God.” Remember this hierarchical system that God has established. He said, “Let me talk to the head of the house.” So when he says fathers, he is in fact talking to parents, but dads in the room, do not miss the direct instruction to you. I’ve said this recently and I’m going to say it as often as I can say it.

I have no doubt that the number one issue facing our culture and our country is not racism, is not this virus, it’s not any of this stuff. It is fatherlessness. It is the number one issue in our country, period. It is broken families, the disestablishment of the nuclear family, and a lot of it is rooted in fatherlessness. We solve this problem, I have no doubt we start solving every other one.

But this is an— phew— this is an extreme uphill battle. We as the church should model correct behavior. So fathers, this instruction being to you, I don’t mind it at all. And if I’m honest, often it’s the father in the house that struggles with exasperation most, with provoking. Why?

It might be because of the deep baritone of our voice, I don’t know. It might be because that men have a general bent to anger. We think it’s the only emotion that’s okay. Somebody along the way taught us that it’s not okay to cry, it’s not okay to be sad, it’s not, but it is okay, expected to be angry. Angry.

Sometimes we should be angry. You know, Jesus got angry. It happened a couple of times, but it shouldn’t be our go-to emotion. But notice here it says, fathers, don’t provoke your children to anger. Now, how does that happen?

I love— oh my goodness, I love what John Piper has to say about this. He says, fathers cause their children’s souls to shrivel into small, hard, angry little shells mainly by being like that themselves. Paul says to all of us, especially dads, “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you,” not just your children, “along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.” You want to know how to not provoke your children to anger? It, a lot of times, starts with you.

Mom and Dad in the room having trouble provoking your kids to anger, isn’t underneath the hood a possibility that you yourself are already angry? You are already upset. Look, do what you will in your parenting, but I know when I really mess up, it’s because I’m already in a bad place before I even deal with kids. Something’s happened in a relationship, something’s happened over the phone, something’s happened on an email, something’s got me ticked off, and then I just come in with a bat and just start beating everybody. Not literally, but figuratively.

Calm down, everybody. And this is— and it’s sad because later I realized, wait a minute, okay, they disobeyed, they did some things, but man, I was over the top today.

And it’s because, as Piper said, I’m being a small, hard, angry shell myself. It begins with introspection, saying, “Am I right?” It’s starting my day with the Lord, saying, “All right, I got to face this today.” Some of you get the luxury of maybe a small commute home or something, and you face something at work today, you need to take that before the Lord before you step foot in the door. And start assassinating everybody in your house. Handle that with God on the way home. Say, “Lord, wow, what a day.” And some of you got some jobs that are unlike mine.

You see some stuff. You see things if you’re in the medical field, if you’re in law enforcement, you’re, you’re a teacher. You see things and there’s just stuff that goes on that’s not pretty. And just so you know, when people call the pastor for counseling, it’s never pretty. So my job is not as elegant as being on stage all the time.

This is like 1% of what I get to do all week. This is my favorite part, the 1%. And I’ll take that bitterness home with me. Check yourself, parents. Check yourself.

Whew, okay. Then I can come in and encourage honor and obedience rather than demand it. I can embolden them to honor and obedience rather than expect it and kill them over it. Have you ever heard your kids play yelling at their toys because they are emulating you? Wait till this happens to you.

They’re getting their GI Joes out going, “You better get in there!” Wait, I think I said that last night. This stuff happens with my daughters, right? I haven’t seen it so much with my son, but my daughters will be in there, and I’ve got 3 of them, but one of them’s not talking yet, but the 2 ones that are communicating, they’ll be in there with their Barbies going, “You better go to your room!” You better clean up! And they’re doing— and I know, man, that’s me, or that’s mom. That’s where they’re— that’s when you know, okay, am I provoking?

You know, kids are going to be silly no matter what, but sometimes it’s a good check. You start seeing their parroting and you go, hmm, I might want to shape up.

Dr. Leon Wood writing on on this particular passage, he says, “The gospel introduced a fresh element of parental responsibility by insisting that the feelings of the child must be taken into consideration.” In a society, in this century, first century, where the father’s authority was absolute, this was a revolutionary concept. They lived in a culture when this was written to the Ephesian church, where it was do exactly what I say or die. You know, maybe not quite to that level, although you can go to the book of Leviticus and find out that a rebellious child could receive capital punishment. Kids in the room, you better be thankful you got some different kind of parents. You better be praising God for the New Testament right now, because we could kill y’all.

This was the society they were in in the first century. Do exactly what I say, I am And this is a different kind of system that we can’t even understand. Now, if I’m honest, I think the pendulum has shifted the complete other way, where we care way too much about the feelings of the kid to the point where we don’t demand healthy obedience.

But it is wonderful to think that God cares about the heart of your child, that underneath the hood, he cares about how your kids feel, and he wants your children to love you and translate that into loving him.

Whether you like it or not, a lot of people come to faith by the way that they love and respect their parents. It’s really hard, and some of you are aware of this in a personal way. It’s more difficult to come to a Heavenly Father when you hate your father.

This is true. So display love and grace and honor to your kids. That’s the manner. The manner in which we come to them is love and grace. Now, here’s the method he gives, and I got to give it quickly.

He says, “Bring them up.” How? “In the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Proverbs 22 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he’s old he will not depart from it.” The word here for discipline is paideia, which is where we get this word pedagogy. Pedagogy. Pedagogy is the method and practice of teaching. This is where we get this word, and he’s saying the same word in 2 Timothy 3, speaking of training in righteousness.

So what’s, what’s your job, parents? You’re trainers. You are trainers in the house, teaching your kids, training your kids. It’s bigger than just teaching. You’re showing it, you’re moving them, you’re helping, you’re going through the whole process together.

I want to give you a quick image, something to think about. About. This is a leadership model, but I think is wonderful. It’s been translated into a book called Situational Parenting. But some of you have kids who are currently in red, D1.

This is a kid that’s probably less than 5 years old. This kid does not know how to do some of the instruction you’re giving. They just don’t. So you have to have S1, that is directing style. That means high, high, direct.

You know, you’re actually coming in and showing them how to do it. If you tell your 4-year-old to go wash the dishes and you don’t show them how, that’s on you. That’s on you because that kid don’t know what they’re doing. But if you want them to learn that behavior, you model it with them. As this thing progresses, as you’re parenting, eventually you get to this quadrant which is a teenager where you hopefully are getting to the point where you say, “Alright, I’ve trained you, I’ve taught you, now go.” And when you need help, come back, come check in with me, but you move into less support, less directive.

Parents, here’s where we mess up, okay? If you’re wondering where we mess up, sometimes we get it right in Stage 1, but somewhere in Stage 2 or 3, we stop getting it quite right, and then when we get to Stage 4, we realize this kid is messed up, and we go back to Stage 1. And guess what doesn’t work? Going back to Stage 1 on a teenager. They’re not going to model you anymore.

So it’s very imperative that you do the best you can as you go through the process to start letting hands— because you’re hoping at 18 this kid’s going to college, you can release and say, all right, they know the Lord, they’ve been taught well.

They might make mistakes. I guarantee you they’re going to make mistakes. But you push them and you send them. Proverbs 23 says, “Don’t fail to correct your children. They won’t die if you spank them.

Physical discipline may well save them from death.” The New Living brings it hard there, man. Hebrews 12 ESV says, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” Discipline your children. Includes certainly the process of instruction, but also the process of rebuke and correction. If you’re not doing this, someone else will do it for you, so you better do it, or otherwise a John or some law enforcement officer or some teacher or somebody in their process is going to show them correction because guess what? You can’t break the law.

You can’t do these things. So why don’t you go ahead and do it for them? Teach them healthy. Correction and obedience. It goes on to say, “Instruction, admonition,” in some verses, “be prepared.” This is the idea of warning, so parents, do yourself a favor, as they’re reaching this point of release, all along the way, begin to give them warning.

The word here, instruction, could also mean a warning. And if you’re the kind of household that’s, you know, really sheltered somewhat, and you’ve got to figure out your levels, where’s your balance, but but if they’re about to face a world that they’ve never seen, you better give them a warning.

I mean, I went to public school, so I saw a lot of it. Some of you are doing homeschooling and private schooling, totally cool. Do what you feel led by the Holy Spirit to do, no matter what. But if you know they’re about to face evolution for the first time, they’re about to face irreligion for the first time, hedonism for the first time, time, send them to East Carolina University and see if they don’t go, whoa, these Pirates get down! That’s what they’re going to find.

I was prepared. I had the warnings of my parents. I was prepared. But I knew a lot of people that weren’t prepared, and boy, were they excited to find out some new news. Instruction, nouthesia— warn them, tell those be prepared, prepare your kids for the road ahead.

Look, everybody’s not going to be nice, Johnny. Everybody’s not going to love you like mommy and daddy. There’s just some people out in the world that are mean. Be prepared. Be prepared that everyone’s not going to agree with you.

And it’s okay to have a good debate. No one’s good at this anymore. People just disagree and they hate each other for it. Learn how to have an argument that’s healthy. Prepare your kids.

And then lastly, here’s your motivation. Underneath all of that, your motivation is “of the Lord.” That’s how the verse ends, “of the Lord.” This is the idea that your whole curriculum— we’ve gotten away from this word, it’s the word “catechism.” It scares the snot out of anyone in the room who’s had a Catholic upbringing or something high church that they’re trying to avoid, but this word is great and we should be doing it as parents, catechizing our kids. This is the idea that the curriculum of your household is the Word of God. The curriculum in your house is the Bible. Yeah, there’s all this other learning, there’s all this other wonderful stuff, but you’re teaching them the Word of God.

You’re in prayer together, it’s a constant habit. Your kids can’t get out of the house without knowing how to pray, how to study the Word of God. The ways that you study, you begin to teach them that. This will be a blowing, a mind-blowing thing at my house, because every week I’m inside of concordances and commentaries. I’ve got books open all over the place, I can teach my kids this.

There’s no reason they can’t know it. To really know God’s word, what harm would that be? It would be a blessing. This is the idea of catechizing your kids. And then something really wild happens in some people’s houses, and it can happen in yours, where your older children begin to instruct your younger children.

I have my doubts whether this can happen in my house because it seems like my kids hate each other. I’m still working on that, everybody. But this thing can happen, and the motivation is in of the Lord. Another quote from John Piper, he says, “The goal of a father’s— the goal of a parent’s whole life with his children will be from the Lord, through the Lord, and for the Lord.” Get your head around that. 1 Thessalonians 5 says, “Encourage each other and build each other up, just as you are already doing.” This is the primary purpose of the church, this is the purpose of the family, encouragement, building each other up.

Let me close with this myth to reality from Chip Ingram’s book, Effective Parenting. He says this, the myth, and this is definitely the cultural myth right now, your goal is to make your kids happy. Just so you know, if that’s your goal, you will not succeed. I asked I asked Addie yesterday, because it was so stinking hot yesterday. I don’t care what anybody says, I’m ready for the fall.

You love your summer all you want, it’s killing me. I’m sweating right now, profusely. I asked her yesterday though, I’d been working outside for like 4 hours, I was sweating like a dog, and I said, “Man, I can’t afford this, but wouldn’t it be cool if we had a swimming pool?” Some of you are thinking about these things too. And I said, hey, would you rather have a swimming pool or a swing set? Because we’ve been talking about getting them a swing set because— this is a whole nother topic, but there’s this like, at some point our kids are going to be too old to play with the swing set.

We need to get the swing set. I don’t know. I’m just not a nice person, I guess. I’m not thinking about that. But anyway, I ask her, swimming pool or swing set?

She says, why can’t we have both? So if you’re trying to make your kids happy, If you want to make your kids happy, you better be wealthy. And even then, it won’t be enough. You ever meet a spoiled brat? They’re never happy.

Never.

Your goal can’t be to make your kids happy. It’s not a successful strategy. You know what your goal is? The reality of parenting is to make your kids holy. Don’t aim at making your kids happy.

Aim at making them holy.

Are you an encouragement to your children? Children in the room, are you an encouragement to your parents? Is it a blessing to have you as a son, as a daughter? I’m not sure it always was when I was young. I think I’m a blessing to my parents now.

I wish I would have started younger. Parents, are you encouraging your kids? Do you care more about their happiness or their holiness? What are you encouraging them towards? Is it some career, some lifestyle, or to the Lord Jesus?

Don’t you want a blessing, God’s blessing on your family, on your kids? Let’s pray together. Heavenly Father, I thank you so much that you are a God who loves us, loves us enough to give us a word, basic things in our life, these basic things like family. Underneath all of this, I understand, God, that the building building block that you’ve established long before you established the church was the family. And it is your greatest desire, God, that our families would glorify you, that our families would represent you well to a fallen world, that our marriages represent Christ and the church, that our kids, our parenting, our children in their honor and obedience, that this would be a constant modeling of just how you love us, God, and how much you’ve done for us.

You designed the family to represent the blessings, your blessings on this world. It’s this crazy thing you’re doing, God, where we’re submitting to one another in marriage and submitting to one another as parent-child, a child submitting in obedience and a parent submitting in instruction and discipline and healthy love and grace. That this whole thing of mutual submission, that’s what you’re about. Even within the Godhead, this submission between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that’s what you want us to display.

God, I pray that this could be true in our church.

We have to admit, we come to you right now, God, as fathers and mothers, as children, as future parents, as future spouses, as we come to you recognizing this is a battle that the world around us is at odds against. It’s been this way for several decades in our nation, God, that almost the complete and utter destruction of the nuclear family. And you, you’re not absent, God. You didn’t disappear. No, you’re right in the middle of of guiding us through this, and what might seem like such a difficult road ahead, I know, God, you have us.

You are for us, you love us, and you desire for us to follow your word in obedience and not be taken aback by it, but know that we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to actually do it. God, I thank you so much for your word. Your word. I pray now, Lord, would you help us to do it? Help us to obey our parents, to love them in spite of their imperfections, to honor them in spite of perhaps how much they’ve hurt us, perhaps how much they’ve been disrespectful, Lord, that you would help us to honor because we honor you, because we love you, God.

We love you, Jesus. And so we honor out of respect to Your Word, and respect to You. Teach us to honor our parents. Teach us to be obedient. Help us as parents to teach and instruct healthy obedience from our children, not obedience to just our, our every desire and our every comfort, but no, our teaching them obedience to be holy and set apart for You, God.

Help us to show them an abundance, as parents, an abundance of of love and grace, even when we don’t feel like it. Sometimes we have bad days, God, would you help us to be filled with the Holy Spirit, with grace and mercy and love for our families? Help us to not come home and just destroy everything we’ve been working on with our, our hateful words and our painful actions. Lord, help us to show love and grace that come from you.

Encourage us in this, empower us in We need you desperately. We recognize more and more how insufficient we are. God, we do pray, as Paul writes, in our weakness, would you be strong?

In our insufficiency, would you be more than enough? We love you, Lord Jesus. We pray all these things in your name. Amen.