Fundamental Duties of Faithful Dads

Ephesians 6:4 and the Cultural Need for Faithful Fathers

Well, we are in Ephesians chapter 6, the final chapter of our series in Ephesians. We started this in September of 2020, and what a journey we've had. And what we've been talking about the last few weeks together, really is the idea of the home, and how the family in our nation today really is under attack.

And we've talked about that with husbands, we've talked about that with wives, we've talked about that with children. We come today and we talk about that also with fathers, dads. If you watch most sitcoms today, I remember growing up, there's just a little bit of a different standard with sitcoms growing up than there are even today.

Many of the sitcoms today, it's hard to watch in good conscience, but many of the sitcoms portray the dad as what? This bumbling oaf, right? It's always the mom who has to come in and give the wisdom, or to rescue the dad.

It's not diminishing mothers in any sense. How many of us as husbands and fathers need and have been helped and aided by a great wife, or mother growing up, or a great mother to our children? We're not diminishing the necessity of godly motherhood at all.

But what we are saying is, we need to push back against the societal narrative that exists today, that dads really don't matter. I've told you this before, but for about a year and a half, I worked with a secular counseling company.

And I can tell you the consistent issue with children who were disobedient in the school system, it didn't matter what their skin color was, it didn't matter really how old they were, it didn't matter whether they had a lot of money or didn't have a lot of money.

Do you know what the number one factor in children and behavioral problems in the school? When they didn't have a father in the home. They were either being raised only by their mother, they were being raised by their grandparents.

So what I'm trying to say as we begin this sermon, dads and moms need to hear this, children, granddads, aunts, uncles, you need to hear this. Dads play a non-negotiable role in the rearing of godly children.

So what we want to do today is talk about fundamental duties of faithful dads. Our text is our next verse in the exposition of Ephesians, Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 4. Would you stand with me as we read that together?

Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4, we stand in the honor of reading God's Word. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this text.

We pray that it would be a means of grace to our hearts. We pray that You'd give us ears to hear. Lord, we don't want to merely push back on society, though we do, but we also want to sit humbly under the preaching of Your Word and to grow from this text and to understand how it points us to Christ and our need for Him and how it points us to our duties as dads and how we should think about the home and raising children and all these things.

And we pray that You would receive glory from it. We pray today that the Holy Spirit would be in our midst. Holy Spirit, be in this place. Edify us with Your Word. Confront us with Your Word. Counsel us with Your Word.

Convict us with Your Word. Let us leave here different than how we came. Let us be refreshed and renewed, recreated, as it were, in Your grace. We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. The first thing I want to point out here, just so you know, is that the term fathers in our text in verse 4, I don't want you to think that it has to refer exclusively to fathers.

Rather, it refers to fathers as the leader and head of the home. So in other words, what I'm trying to communicate as we begin as moms, this applies to you too in a certain sense. In a certain sense, we could say, parents, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So for example, Proverbs 1 .8 says, Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching. So what I'm saying is there's a sense in that what we're going to examine today for fathers is not just for fathers, but for mothers as well, or even for anyone involved in the rearing of children.

So let me just put it this way, moms, it is also your duty as well not to exasperate your children, but to bring them up in the discipline and instruction, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We know this from the context because look at verse 1.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord. So children and mothers, don't hear this sermon today and think to yourself, well, dad, that's just what you have to do, and moms are exempt. Rather, you need to hear this sermon today in the context of its intention.

Paul understood, listen carefully to this because this is countercultural and not popular in some evangelical circles today. What Paul wanted his listeners to understand is that husbands and fathers need to be understood as the head of the family, the head of the household.

Dads are responsible, are you listening, are responsible before God in a way that mothers and children are not. So hear me very carefully today. Dads, you will give an account before God on what your children are learning, on what your children are watching on television, on what your children are doing with their time, on how your home is ordered, on what your children learn about the Lord, how the family is brought to church or not.

Dads are going to give an account before God as the responsible party on all of these things in a way of responsibility that moms and children will not. Dads, husbands, you are in a very real sense responsible even for your wife's sanctification, your wife's holiness.

The head of the home is the responsible party. Now, moms and wives, ladies, children, this is not releasing you of culpability, right? That's what our society does today. I sin because my dad didn't do a good enough job.

No, no, no, you are still culpable for your sin, and I'll illustrate this biblically. In Genesis 3, Eve is held culpable for her sin, and she is punished. Genesis 3, verse 16, the Lord, Yahweh, says to Eve, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.

In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. Okay, so Eve is held culpable for her sin. She transgressed God's law, she sinned, and God holds her accountable.

But who bears the responsibility? 1 Corinthians 15, 22 says, not in Eve all die, but in who? In Adam all die. Now, wait a second, preacher. I thought Eve sinned first. She sinned first, didn't she? She ate first, and then Adam ate.

So why is it in Adam all die, and not in Eve all die, or not in Adam and Eve all die, but in Adam all die? Because it was Adam's responsibility as head of the family, as head of the human race, to obey God and lead his wife to obey God.

Both sinned. Both were punished. But there is a greater responsibility upon Adam. So again, our text. Fathers. Again, this is not to say that mothers shouldn't do this, too. They should. But it is to put the weight upon fathers.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the nurture, discipline, and instruction of the Lord. Okay, dads and moms are not to provoke their children to anger. Dads and moms are to raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

But dads are mentioned specifically because they are the responsible party. God is going to hold them responsible for leading their families in this way. Let me give it to you like this. When a mother fails in this, she's accountable to God, but so also is her husband held responsible.

Before God,.

Because it is his responsibility to oversee the home. In a very real sense, dads and husbands, you are a pastor in your home. So I reiterate, no matter what the sitcom may say, no matter what society may say, no matter what Hollywood may say, dads are simply indispensable to the health, happiness, and holiness of the home.

Of course, I'm not belittling mothers. Moms, you're indispensable too. But is that really in question today? Ask yourself that. Is there anybody out there who is trying to say that women are not important, right?

Like, I don't think society has that problem as much as the problem it has that dads are unimportant. So Paul addresses in our text the priority and importance of fatherhood in the home. Now, I don't want to put too much hope in statistics or trust in statistics.

However, I don't want to ignore statistics either. So listen to some of this. When neither parent goes to Sunday school, only 6 of the children attend Sunday school when they grow up. When only the mother attends Sunday school, 15 of the children attend Sunday school when they grow up.

When only the father, now this is rare, but when only the father attends Sunday school, 55 of the children attend when grown. Think about that. That's a 40 jump from moms to dads. When only the moms go to Sunday school, 15 of children when they grow up go to Sunday school.

When it's only the dads, that jumps to 55%. And of course, when both parents go, it goes up higher. When both parents attend, 72 of their children attend Sunday school when grown. What I'm saying here is, dads matter in the faith of their children.

Or listen to this. Here's one you've probably heard before. And this speaks, I think, to the foolishness of churches sometimes. Churches have this mentality, we need to reach the children so we can reach the parents.

Statistically, friends, that's not how it works. Listen to this. When a child comes to Christ first in a family, there is a 3 .5 chance that the rest of the family comes to Christ. When the mother comes to Christ first in a family, there is a 17 chance that the rest of the family will come to Christ.

Listen to this. When the dad comes to Christ first in the family, there is a 93 chance that the rest of the family will come to Christ. Now, now, Quatro, don't you believe in the sovereignty of God?

Don't you believe that God saves by His sufficient grace, effectually drawing whom He will for His glory? Of course I believe that. Absolutely I do. This is the clear teaching of Scripture. So why are you giving us chances?

Well, because I also believe the teaching of our confession of faith is 1689. It says this in chapter five, in His ordinary providence, God makes use of means, though He is free to work apart from them, beyond them, and contrary to them at His pleasure.

So listen to me, church. God is sovereign in salvation, but in this sovereignty, He makes use of means. Means are the pathway, as it were, the method by which something is brought about. And so one of the means, God is free to work apart from these means, but one of the means God ordinarily uses in the salvation of children within a family is the salvation and Christian influence of dads.

93 Now, I don't know these methods of these statistics, and I don't know how much trust we should put, necessarily, in these statistics, but I'm standing before you today affirming that God works through means, and one of the means that God works in bringing children to faith in Christ is godly fatherhood.

Let's not despise this truth. So here's my encouragement to the home, to the church, to dads.

Dads.

I'm not here this morning to beat you up. Isn't that funny how typical sermons go on Mother's Day? Ladies, you're so beautiful, you're wonderful, we love you so much.

Father's Day.

Dads, you stink.

You're terrible.

And then we preach to the dads who aren't here, right? Why aren't you bringing your children to church, right? I'm here, right? I'm here. So I don't think that we should do that, although I'm not saying that maybe dads don't need a little berating sometimes, right?

No, I do. But I want to encourage you, dads. I want to encourage you that we need you. The church needs you. Our nation needs you. Our society needs you. And your children and your grandchildren and those of you in here who are young enough to not have children yet, we need faithful, God-fearing dads.

So I'm going to break down this passage, the fundamental duties of faithful dads, with two headings from our text. The first is this, the prohibition. Number one, the prohibition. So Paul tells fathers to not do something, and that's what we want to examine.

Number one, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. One of the fundamental duties of faithful dads is not to provoke their children to anger. Now, this phrase, provoking to anger, that's one word in the Greek.

Brian Chappell notes this of the word to help us understand. The exasperation described here refers to a righteous resentment of actions or attitudes inconsistent with one's faith commitments. An exasperated child is one who has a right to be provoked because of the incongruities between a parent's stated beliefs and the parent's actual behaviors.

So I'm going to explain that more in just a moment, but let's be careful. This is not saying if you ever make your child upset that you're in sin. I'm just going to tell you, I can make my children upset with one magic two-letter word.

You know what the word is?

No.

Oh, you have the magic word too.

No.

Sometimes, Dad, it is your duty to upset your children. You understand what I'm saying? What I mean is, it's not that you desire them to be upset. Not that you desire them to cry or whatever, but you need to tell them no, right?

And so they're going to cry, they're going to get upset. You're not saying never make your children upset or sad. A good dad is ultimately a dad that's willing to hurt his children's feelings sometimes.

Right?

Sometimes, disciplining your child is going to make them upset or angry, but that's not what the prohibition is talking about in our text. So I'm going to use three words that will help us consider what not to do when it comes to parenting.

The first word is this. So this is not, don't, listen carefully. I'm not saying do this. I'm saying don't do this, right? Number one, tyranny. First word, tyranny. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.

So how could you do this in the home?

With tyranny.

Dads are not to be tyrants in the home. They are not to be tyrants to their wives. They're not to be tyrants with their children. They're not to rule with an iron fist. Never exemplifying humility. Never exemplifying their need for the Gospel.

Always coming home, putting their foot down, and demanding what needs to be done. Never modeling repentance. A tyrant in the home will exasperate your wife, but it will also provoke your children to anger.

They don't hear encouragement. They never see you at things that are important to them. You only drive them toward the things you like. You hear the classic story of the man who has a child, and before the child is born, that child's going to be a lawyer, right?

No matter what.

And they drive them and drive them and drive them, never conversing with the child what it is they may want to do in life. Or the same can be true of sports or whatever. All of this falls under parental tyranny.

Moms, you can be tyrants too, so you need to think through some of the application. When you say, you tell me not to be a tyrant, isn't Christ King?

Amen.

He is King.

And by the way, He is a firm and unwavering King. He doesn't compromise His righteousness, but He's also a good and gracious King. He is a just King. He's not a tyrant. We should, by the way, oppose tyranny at every level.

We should oppose tyranny in the government. We should oppose tyranny in the church. We should oppose tyranny in the home. By the way, sometimes families are inverted and actually allow their children to be tyrants of the home.

But the point is, we need bold-hearted men, not heavy-handed men. We need meek men, not mean men. R .C. Sproul says this, the ultimate model of discipline and chastisement is God Himself, who always tempers His wrath with mercy.

Fathers, this is the way that you discipline your children. Not as a tyrant. You're not to be a tyrant. Secondly, second word. First word, tyranny. Second word, slavery. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.

Children are not slaves. They're not your property. They are owned ultimately by God. You are a steward over them. Yes, they are to be taught discipline. They are to be taught good work ethic. We should not let them be lazy.

We should make sure that our children, they need to learn from a young age that they need to carry their weight around the home in terms of chores, age-appropriate chores. Even from a very young age, they should be engaged in age-appropriate chores.

But dads, what I'm saying here is, your children also need time to be children. It's okay for children to play games sometimes. It's okay for children to even play sports or do these other things. It's okay.

Now listen, I know of homes that their whole schedule revolves around a child's extracurricular activities. This is not good and it's not healthy. However, the opposite extreme is also poor. That is, never letting your children in any sort of extracurricular activities because of how busy you have them in the home or because it would inconvenience you as a dad.

That's not good or healthy either. It will exasperate your children and rightly so. So here's what I'm saying to you in this point. Teach your children to work. Teach your children to help with chores.

But also don't forget, your children need to be children. They need to play. They're only children once. So tyranny, slavery, third word to avoid, hypocrisy. Perhaps more than anything I've said, and these two kind of fall under hypocrisy, don't they?

This will exasperate your children. This will provoke your children to anger more than anything else, hypocrisy. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. Nothing will provoke your child worse than pretending you are one thing in front of the church, pretending you are one thing in front of everyone else and being something else in the home.

I think about my own reality. There's a special weight and burden here, I think, for Pastor Jacob and myself, and that is, so many stories you hear of children whose father was a pastor, and they grew up and they hate the church.

Why? Because their pastor acted, their father acted one day, one way in the home. He was always available for everyone else. He acted one way in the church, I mean to say. He was always available and always pious and always humble, and yet in the home, he was a hypocrite.

Friends, this extends beyond Pastor Jacob and myself. This has been the misery of many a wife and many a child. To see you profess Christ in the church or at work, but to deny Him in the home. To hear you pray when you're called upon at church, but not pray in the home.

To hear you discuss the Bible in Sunday school, but never in the home. To hear the way you talk at church, but not at home. To pretend to love God in public, but to show forth the love of the world in the home.

To honor God with your lips, but your home is far from Him. Hypocrisy, tyranny, slavery. Fathers, these will provoke our children to anger, but let me give you a bonus. Let me give you an honorable mention, a bonus here.

Idolatry. Now, the reason it's a bonus is because idolatry, you understand, won't necessarily provoke your children to anger. Okay, if you are an idolatrous man, it won't necessarily make your children upset with you.

What will it do? It will lead them in the same idolatry. You understand this morning that whatever a dad finds important, children tend to mimic that, right? Dads like hunting, children tend to like hunting.

Dads like football, children tend to like football. Dads like whatever, children tend to have a natural inclination to mimic their father. This is good. But Dad, if you jump off into idolatry, whether it's Netflix, whether it's gaming, whether it's sports, or camping, or hunting, or whatever it may be, if you lead your family in idolatry, your children will follow suit.

And it may not provoke them to anger, especially when they're little. They may enjoy it. They love the God that you love. They might not know any difference when they're younger as they're following your lead.

But let me say this, if they grow up and become Christians, they will be sad at all the years they wasted in idolatry when they were just trying to follow your leadership in serving vain idols. Dads, whatever you put in front of God for your family can be any number of things.

It can be self-righteousness. Whatever it is you put in front of God for your family, that is idolatry. And if God is just and doesn't intervene, He will only damn and ruin your children's souls. This is the prohibition.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. Now, let's pause and ask this question. What do we do? What do we do if we failed here? By the way, I'm just gonna tell you straight up, you have failed here, and so have I.

We have failed. We all have failed in this area. So what do we do? Well, what we do, and we've all struggled with maybe a little bit of tyranny in the home or maybe treating our kids inappropriately, like slavery, like you gotta do that for me or whatever.

Or maybe we've all failed with hypocrisy at times. We've failed with idols in our lives at times. So what do we do if we fail? We don't double down. We take it to the Lord in repentance. We turn from it, right?

We trust the gospel again, and we rest in God's grace. Let me tell you something, dads. Dads, you've got big shoes to fill, but God's grace is bigger. The grace of God is big enough for dads. And so go to Him.

Don't be obstinate.

Repent.

See again the sufficiency of God's grace for your life and fatherhood. God's grace is sufficient for dads. Christ's atoning work, His life, His death, His burial, His resurrection was for our sins as parents too.

So I'm encouraging you this morning, trust the gospel again, and turn from any areas where you have provoked your children to anger. Moms, that's for you too. Some of this may have hit home with you. Secondly then, so faithful duties, sorry, fundamental duties of faithful dads.

So we've considered prohibition. Now secondly, the precepts. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but now here's the positives. Instead of provoking them to anger, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So the verse has a negative and a positive. It's not just don't do something, but also do something. Don't provoke your children to anger. And secondly, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So let me pause for a second and say this. Sometimes we have passive men. We have men who are passive. We have men who say, well, I'm doing very good on the front half of that verse, right? I'm not provoking my children to anger.

Whatever my wife wants, I just say yes, and she never gets angry, right? Whatever my children want, I just say yes, and they never get angry, right? Okay, but this is a bit of passiveness that needs to be corrected.

Because the verse is not saying just be passive. It's not saying just don't do something. We don't need passive men who are just not doing something. We need active men, right? We need men who are also doing something.

They're not doing this, but they are doing this. They're not provoking their children to anger, but they are actively bringing them up in the nurture or discipline and instruction of the Lord. In other words, you can't relegate this, right?

I'll hire a professional at the church. I'll hire a children's pastor or a youth pastor. I'll give extra money to the church so they can farm this out, and the children pastor and the youth pastor will now take on my duties of bringing my children up in the instruction discipline of the Lord.

You can't do that. Oh, okay, but I'll pawn it off on my wife. She can do it. I'll go and I'll work, and I'll provide my home with a roof. I got you a roof over your head and food to eat, and you guys take care of it.

No, no, you can't farm it out to your wife either. Okay, well, I'll let the public schools do it, right? The schools will teach my children all that they need to know. I pay my taxes, so I'm done. No, fathers, listen to me very carefully.

You are held responsible before God. This is a duty before God to actively bring your children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Now, this word discipline is used a few times in the New Testament.

It's used in Hebrews 12, where the author quotes Old Testament text there about discipline, and says that the Lord disciplines those that He loves. So in discipline, there's a corrective aspect in discipline.

So he who spares the rod hates his child. That's what the Scriptures teach. Proper, gracious, and godly discipline is a fundamental duty of a faithful father. We talked about this last week, but we're not loving our Lord, we're not loving our neighbors, we're not loving society, and we're not loving our children when we allow them, without discipline, to be disrespectful and disobedient.

But let me push on this for a minute. To discipline your children is not just offering correction. It's also offering positive instruction. For example, this word for discipline is also used in 2 Timothy 3 .16.

You'll know the verse when I start reading it. All Scripture is breathed out by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and then here's the word, for training in righteousness.

Okay, so discipline has a negative connotation, but it also has a positive connotation in not just being negative, but also training. So think about this. When you think about church discipline, what do you think about?

Probably when you think about church discipline, you think about that, oh, we had to take someone off the church roll because they persisted in unrepentant sin. Yes, that is church discipline, but church discipline goes far beyond that, right?

Church discipline also has a positive aspect. In one sense, it's funny, go tell this to your friends and neighbors today at church, or today at lunch or this afternoon. Tell them, what happened at church today?

You tell them, I got church disciplined. What, what? Well, because part of what it means to be disciplined in the church is not just the negative, removing a person in unrepentant sin off the church roll, but also church discipline is the positive instruction, right?

Do you know what Latin word, the root Latin word, we get another word in English out of the word discipline. You know what it is? Disciple, right? So discipline is not just this corrective aspect responding to everything that you're telling, it's also to disciple your children, to train your children in the nurture and to train in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

So in our parenting, we train our children in the discipline of the Lord. We positively teach them the truths of God found in His word. I might add here, right? We teach them who God is. We teach them what the gospel is.

We teach them what God desires us to do. We teach our children the Bible. And so dads, this takes personal discipline from you to teach your children the Bible. It's not easy to do all the time. We have to not find time.

If I find time, I'll teach my children the Bible.

No, no, no.

No, you've got no time to find. You've got to make time. Well, we need consistent time, rearing our children, instructing our children, disciplining our children in God's word. That's not merely just doing it when you're out and about, although that's good.

That's certainly important and necessary. But bringing our children up in the discipline of the Lord is disciplining ourselves to have consistent and intentional time together in God's word as a family.

We call this family worship or some families in our church call it family devotions. But this is an expectation of the scriptures and it's a distinctive of our church. This is gonna look different in different families.

There's not a cookie cutter approach, but the principle is there. Dads are responsible before God to gather their families. Come here, children. Before we go to bed tonight, let us gather around the word of God so that I can obey Ephesians 6, 4, so that I can bring you up in the discipline of the Lord.

Now, doing that entails much more than just gathering your family at night and reading the Bible, but it certainly doesn't entail less than that. You don't have to be a seminary grad. You just need to have a heart for God and a love for your children and a love for the Bible.

You can make good use, you ought to make good uses of the resources available to you and if you're not sure what those resources are, talk to myself, talk to Pastor Jacob. We would love to help. But dads, what I'm saying is we need you.

The discipleship of your children should not merely be happening at church. Think about that for just a moment. Let's say, and this doesn't happen anymore. Used to a committed church member came to church three times a week, right?

That's not true in our day, but let's just say that you came to everything our church offers. You come to Wednesday night, you come to Sunday night, you come to Sunday school, you come to Sunday morning.

And let's just pretend each of those offers an hour of instruction. It really doesn't, probably a little bit less, but let's just say it does. How many hours of instruction are your children getting in a week from church?

Four, four hours, four. Your children will not be disciplined and instructed rightly in the Lord based on four hours a week at church and nothing in the home. So what I'm saying is dads, this is on us and we need to do this.

Now this other word in verse four, instruction. We bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So there's a little bit of overlap here, but this word carries the connotation of correction or warning or admonition.

That's why you hear me a lot say the nurture admonition. That's how I memorized this verse. But there's an overlap between discipline and instruction. But how much must we despise the Lord? How much must we despise our children if we're not ready to warn them and correct them based on the truths of God's Word?

God's Word is the foundation of our parenting. Like how foolish would we be? You teach your children all the time. Before you cross the road, do what?

Look both ways.

Well, how foolish and despising of the Lord must we be not to tell our children, this is what the Bible says about sin. This is what the Bible says about immorality. This is what the Bible says about sexual immorality.

This is what the Bible says about lying or about stealing or about idolatry. We warn our children. Friends, you must not encourage folly with your children. Allowing your children, for example, to date at a young age and to just trust them on their own to make the right decisions is with a person of the opposite sex.

That's not warning them in the ways of God. That's not bringing them up in God's instruction. That's encouraging folly. Or to give your children free reign on the internet.

Or what they watch.

You're encouraging folly. You're setting your children up for failure. Now, obviously, we understand children get older, restrictions decrease or whatever, but too often, we only do that because our children are older.

We've never taught them. They get older, so we loosen instructions, but we haven't given them a good grounding in God's Word. And warnings and exhortations. And so we wonder, now that our children have access to the internet, how come they did this thing?

Well, maybe it's just because of sin, but sometimes it's because we didn't sufficiently warn them. So what I'm saying, dads, we are responsible for warning our children from God's Word of the folly of sin.

How God hates sin. Of sin's deceptiveness and life-ruining ways of our obligation to turn from sin and to run from it. To be like Joseph, right? To flee from it. Drop our cloak if necessary and get out of the situation.

This is why particularly at younger ages, dads, what we need to do is actually shield our children from sin while simultaneously teaching them the truth of the Bible. Dads, will you make your home a safe place to run from sin?

Alright, so think about this for just a moment. As your children get older and as they're allowed more freedoms, you need to communicate to them that your home is always a safe place to run from sin. What I mean is, they need to be able to come to you and confess their sins and you can get mad, you can get righteously mad, right?