Fundamental Duties of Faithful Dads

Providence Baptist Church

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Well, we are in Ephesians chapter 6, the final chapter of our series in Ephesians.

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We started this in September of 2020, and what a journey we've had.

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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.

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And we've talked about that with husbands, we've talked about that with wives, we've talked about that with children.

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We come today and we talk about that also with fathers, dads.

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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.

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Many of the sitcoms today, it's hard to watch in good conscience, but many of the sitcoms portray the dad as what?

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This bumbling oaf, right? It's always the mom who has to come in and give the wisdom, or to rescue the dad.

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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?

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We're not diminishing the necessity of godly motherhood at all.

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But what we are saying is, we need to push back against the societal narrative that exists today, that dads really don't matter.

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I've told you this before, but for about a year and a half, I worked with a secular counseling company.

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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.

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Do you know what the number one factor in children and behavioral problems in the school?

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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.

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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.

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Dads play a non -negotiable role in the rearing of godly children.

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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.

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Would you stand with me as we read that together? Ephesians chapter 6 verse 4, we stand in the honor of reading

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God's word. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the

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Lord. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this text. We pray that it would be a means of grace to our hearts.

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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.

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And we pray that you would receive glory from it. We pray today that the Holy Spirit would be in our midst.

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Holy Spirit, be in this place. Edify us with your word. Confront us with your word.

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Counsel us with your word. Convict us with your word. Let us leave here different than how we came.

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And let us be refreshed and renewed, recreated, as it were, in your grace.

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We pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. The first thing

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I want to point out here, just so you know, is that the term fathers in our text in verse 4,

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I don't want you to think that it has to refer exclusively to fathers.

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Rather, it refers to fathers as the leader and head of the home.

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So, in other words, what I'm trying to communicate as we begin as moms, this applies to you too in a certain sense.

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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

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Lord. So, for example, Proverbs 1 .8 says, Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching.

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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.

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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

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Lord. We know this from the context because look at verse 1. Children, obey your parents in the

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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.

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Rather, you need to hear this sermon today in the context of its intention.

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Paul understood, listen carefully to this because this is counter -cultural and not popular in some evangelical circles today.

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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.

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Dads are responsible, are you listening, are responsible before God in a way that mothers and children are not.

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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

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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.

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Dads, husbands, you are in a very real sense responsible even for your wife's sanctification, your wife's holiness.

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The head of the home is the responsible party. Now, moms and wives, ladies, children, this is not releasing you of culpability, right?

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That's what our society does today. I sin because my dad didn't do a good enough job.

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No, no, no. You are still culpable for your sin and I'll illustrate this biblically.

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In Genesis 3, Eve is held culpable for her sin and she is punished.

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Genesis 3, 16, the Lord Yahweh says to Eve, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing.

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In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.

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Okay, so Eve is held culpable for her sin. She transgressed

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God's law. She sinned and God holds her accountable. But who bears the responsibility?

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1 Corinthians 15, 22 says, not in Eve all die, but in who?

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In Adam all die. Now, wait a second, preacher. I thought

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Eve sinned first. She sinned first, didn't she? She ate first and then

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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?

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Because it was Adam's responsibility as head of the family, as head of the human race, to obey

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God and lead his wife to obey God. Both sinned. Both were punished.

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But there is a greater responsibility upon Adam. Now, so again, our text.

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Fathers, again, this is not to say that mothers shouldn't do this too.

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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

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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

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Lord. But dads are mentioned specifically because they are the responsible party.

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God is going to hold them responsible for leading their families in this way.

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Let me give it to you like this. When a mother fails in this, she is accountable to God, but so also is her husband held responsible before God because it is his responsibility to oversee the home.

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In a very real sense, dads and husbands, you are a pastor in your home.

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So I reiterate, no matter what the sitcom may say, no matter what society may say, no matter what

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Hollywood may say, dads are simply indispensable to the health, happiness, and holiness of the home.

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Of course, I'm not belittling mothers. Moms, you're indispensable too. But is that really in question today?

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Ask yourself that. Is there anybody out there who is trying to say that women are not important, right?

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Like, I don't think society has that problem as much as the problem it has that dads are unimportant.

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So, Paul addresses in our text the priority and importance of fatherhood in the home.

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Now, I don't want to put too much hope in statistics or trust in statistics.

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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

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Sunday school when they grow up. When only the mother attends

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Sunday school, 15 % of the children attend

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Sunday school when they grow up. When only the father, now this is rare, but when only the father attends

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Sunday school, 55 % of the children attend when grown.

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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.

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When it's only the dads, that jumps to 55%. And of course, when both parents go, it goes up higher.

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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.

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Or listen to this. Here's one you've probably heard before. And this speaks, I think, to the foolishness of churches sometimes.

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Churches have this mentality, we need to reach the children so we can reach the parents.

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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

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% 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.

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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.

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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

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He will for His glory? Of course, I believe that. Absolutely, I do. This is the clear teaching of Scripture.

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So why are you giving us chances? Well, because I also believe the teaching of our confession of faith.

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It's 1689. It says this in chapter 5. In His ordinary providence,

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God makes use of means, though He is free to work apart from them, beyond them, and contrary to them at His pleasure.

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So listen to me, church. God is sovereign in salvation, but in this sovereignty,

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He makes use of means. Means are the pathway, as it were, the method by which something is brought about.

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And so one of the means, God is free to work apart from these means, but one of the means

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God ordinarily uses in the salvation of children within a family is the salvation and Christian influence of dads.

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Ninety -three percent! 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.

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

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Dads, I'm not here this morning to beat you up. Isn't that funny how typical sermons go on Mother's Day?

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Ladies, you're so beautiful, you're wonderful, we love you so much. Father's Day.

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Dads, you stink. You're terrible. And then we preach to the dads who aren't here, right?

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Why aren't you bringing your children to church, right? I'm here, right? Like, 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?

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No, I do. But I want to encourage you, dads. I want to encourage you that we need you.

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The church needs you. Our nation needs you. Our society needs you.

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And your children and your grandchildren and those of you in here who are young enough to not have children yet, we need faithful,

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God -fearing dads. And so I'm going to break down this passage, the fundamental duties of faithful dads, with two headings from our text.

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The first is this, the prohibition. Number one, the prohibition.

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So Paul tells fathers to not do something. And that's what we want to examine.

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Number one, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.

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One of the fundamental duties of faithful dads is not to provoke their children to anger.

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Now, this phrase, provoking to anger, that's one word in the Greek. Brian Chappell notes this of the word.

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It's helpful to help us understand. The exasperation described here refers to a righteous resentment of actions or attitudes inconsistent with one's faith commitments.

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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.

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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.

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I'm just going to tell you, I can make my children upset with one magic two -letter word.

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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.

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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?

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And so they're going to cry. They're going to get upset. You're not saying never make your children upset or sad.

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A good dad is ultimately a dad that's willing to hurt his children's feelings sometimes, right?

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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.

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So I'm going to use three words that will help us consider what not to do when it comes to parenting.

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The first word is this. So this is not, don't listen carefully. I'm not saying do this.

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I'm saying don't do this, right? Number one, tyranny. First word, tyranny.

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Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. So how could you do this in the home?

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With tyranny. Dads are not to be tyrants in the home. They are not to be tyrants to their wives.

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They're not to be tyrants with their children. They're not to rule with an iron fist. Never exemplifying humility.

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Never exemplifying their need for the gospel. Always coming home, putting their foot down, and demanding what needs to be done.

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Never modeling repentance. A tyrant in the home will exasperate your wife, but it will also provoke your children to anger.

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They don't hear encouragement. They never see you at things that are important to them.

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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?

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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.

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Or the same can be true of sports or whatever. All of this falls under parental tyranny.

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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

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Christ King? Amen. He is King. And by the way,

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He is a firm and unwavering King. He doesn't compromise His righteousness, but He's also a good and gracious King.

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He is a just King. He's not a tyrant. We should, by the way, oppose tyranny at every level.

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We should oppose tyranny in the government. We should oppose tyranny in the church.

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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.

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But the point is, we need bold -hearted men, not heavy -handed men. We need meek men, not mean men.

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R .C. Sproul says this, the ultimate model of discipline and chastisement is God Himself, who always tempers

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His wrath with mercy. Fathers, this is the way that you discipline your children.

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Not as a tyrant. You're not to be a tyrant. Secondly, second word. First word, tyranny.

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Second word, slavery. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.

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Children are not slaves. They're not your property. They are owned ultimately by God.

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You are a steward over them. Yes, they are to be taught discipline.

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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, right?

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Even from a very young age, they should be engaged in age -appropriate chores. But dads, what

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I'm saying here is, children also need time to be children. It's okay for children to play games sometimes.

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It's okay for children to even play sports or do these other things.

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It's okay. Now listen, I know of homes that their whole schedule revolves around a child's extracurricular activities.

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This is not good and it's not healthy. However, the opposite extreme is also poor.

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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.

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That's not good or healthy either. It will exasperate your children and rightly so.

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So here's what I'm saying to you in this point. Teach your children to work. Teach your children to help with chores.

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But also don't forget, your children need to be children. They need to play.

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They're only children once. So tyranny, slavery.

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Third word to avoid. Hypocrisy. Perhaps more than anything

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I've said, and these two kind of fall under hypocrisy, don't they? This will exasperate your children.

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This will provoke your children to anger more than anything else. Hypocrisy.

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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.

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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.

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Why? Because their pastor acted, their father acted one day, one way in the home. He was always available for everyone else.

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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.

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Friends, this extends beyond Pastor Jacob and myself. This has been the misery of many a wife and many a child.

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To see you profess Christ in the church or at work, but to deny

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Him in the home. To hear you pray when you're called upon at church, but not pray in the home.

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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.

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To pretend to love God in public, but to show forth the love of the world in the home.

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To honor God with your lips, but your home. Is far from Him.

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Hypocrisy, tyranny, slavery. Fathers, these will provoke our children to anger.

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But let me give you a bonus. Let me give you an honorable mention, a bonus here. Idolatry.

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Now, the reason it's a bonus is because idolatry, you understand, won't necessarily provoke your children to anger.

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Okay, if you are an idolatrous man, it won't necessarily make your children upset with you.

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What will it do? It will lead them in the same idolatry.

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You understand this morning that whatever a dad finds important, children tend to mimic that, right?

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Dads like hunting, children tend to like hunting. Dads like football, children tend to like football.

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Dads like whatever, children tend to have a natural inclination to mimic their father.

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This is good. So, 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.

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And it may not provoke them to anger. Especially when they're little, they may enjoy it.

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They love the God that you love. They might not know any difference when they're younger as they're following your lead.

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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.

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Dads, whatever you put in front of God, for your family, it can be any number of things.

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It can be self -righteousness. Whatever it is you put in front of God for your family, that is idolatry.

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And if God is just and doesn't intervene, it will only damn and ruin your children's souls.

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This is the prohibition. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. Now, let's pause and ask this question.

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What do we do? What do we do if we failed here? By the way, I'm just going to tell you straight up.

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You have failed here. And so have I. We have failed. We all have failed in this area.

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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 got to do that for me or whatever.

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Or maybe we've all failed with hypocrisy at times. We've failed with idols in our lives at times.

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So what do we do if we fail? We don't double down. We take it to the Lord in repentance.

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We turn from it, right? We trust the gospel again and we rest in God's grace.

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Let me tell you something, dads. Dads, you've got big shoes to fill, but God's grace is bigger.

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The grace of God is big enough for dads. And so go to Him. Don't be obstinate.

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Repent. See again the sufficiency of God's grace for your life and fatherhood.

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God's grace is sufficient for dads. Christ's atoning work, His life, His death,

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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.

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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.

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So we've considered prohibition. Now, secondly, the precepts.

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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

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Lord. So the verse has a negative and a positive. It's not just don't do something, but also do something.

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Okay, don't provoke your children to anger. And secondly, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the

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Lord. So let me pause for a second and say this. Sometimes we have passive men. We have men who are passive.

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We have men who say, well, I'm doing very good on the front half of that verse, right?

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I'm not provoking my children to anger. Whatever my wife wants, I just say yes, and she never gets angry, right?

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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.

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Because the verse is not saying just be passive. It's not saying just don't do something.

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We don't need passive men who are just not doing something. We need active men, right?

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We need men who are also doing something. They're not doing this, but they are doing this.

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They're not provoking their children to anger, but they are actively bringing them up in the nurture or discipline and instruction of the

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Lord. In other words, you can't relegate this, right? I'll hire a professional at the church.

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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.

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And the children's pastor and the youth pastor will now take on my duties of bringing my children up in the instruction and discipline of the

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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.

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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.

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Okay, well, I'll let the public schools do it, right? The schools will teach my children all that they need to know.

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I pay my taxes, so I'm done. No, fathers, listen to me very carefully.

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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

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Lord. Now, this word discipline is used a few times in the

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New Testament. It's used in Hebrews 12, where the author quotes Old Testament text there about discipline and says that the

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Lord disciplines those that He loves. So in discipline, there's a corrective aspect in discipline.

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So, he who spares the rod hates his child. That's what the

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Scriptures teach. Proper, gracious, and godly discipline is a fundamental duty of a faithful father.

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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.

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But let me push on this for a minute. To discipline your children is not just offering correction.

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It's also offering positive instruction. For example, this word for discipline is also used in 2

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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.

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Okay, so discipline has a negative connotation, but it also has a positive connotation in not just being negative, but also training.

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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 continued, they persisted in unrepentant sin.

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Yes, that is church discipline, but church discipline goes far beyond that, right? Church discipline also has a positive aspect.

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In one sense, it's funny, go tell this to your friends and neighbors today at church, or today at lunch, or this afternoon.

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Tell them what happened at church today. You tell them, I got church disciplined.

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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?

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Do you know what Latin word, the root Latin word, we get another word in English out of the word discipline.

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You know what it is? Disciple, right? So discipline is not just this corrective aspect responding to everything that you're telling.

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It's also to disciple your children, to train your children in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord. So in our parenting, we train our children in the discipline of the

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Lord. We positively teach them the truths of God found in His Word.

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I might add here, right? We teach them who God is. We teach them what the gospel is.

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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

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Bible. It's not easy to do all the time. When we have to not find time.

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If I find time, I'll teach my children the Bible. No, no, no. No, you've got no time to find.

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You've got to make time. When we need consistent time, rearing our children, instructing our children, disciplining our children in God's Word.

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That's not merely just doing it when you're out and about, although that's good. That's certainly important and necessary.

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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.

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We call this family worship or some families in our church call it family devotions.

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But this is an expectation of the Scriptures and it's a distinctive of our church.

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This is going to look different in different families. There's not a cookie cutter approach, but the principle is there.

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Dads are responsible before God to gather their families. Come here, children.

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Before we go to bed tonight, let us gather around the Word of God so that I can obey

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Ephesians 6 .4 so that I can bring you up in the discipline of the

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Lord. Now, doing that entails much more than just gathering your family at night and reading the

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Bible, but it certainly doesn't entail less than that. You don't have to be a seminary grad.

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You just need to have a heart for God and a love for your children and a love for the Bible.

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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.

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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.

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Think about that for just a moment. Let's say, and this doesn't happen anymore.

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Used to a committed church member came to church three times a week, right? That's not true in our day.

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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.

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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.

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How many hours of instruction are your children getting in a week from church?

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Four. Four hours. Four. Your children will not be disciplined and instructed rightly in the

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Lord based on four hours a week at church and nothing in the home.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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God's word is the foundation of our parenting. Like how foolish would we be?

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You teach your children all the time, before you cross the road, do what? Look both ways. Well, how foolish and despising of the

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Lord must we be not to tell our children, this is what the Bible says about sin. This is what the

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Bible says about immorality. This is what the Bible says about sexual immorality. This is what the

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Bible says about lying or about stealing or about idolatry. We warn our children.

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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.

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That's not warning them in the ways of God. That's not bringing them up in God's instruction. That's encouraging folly.

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Or to give your children free reign on the internet or what they watch.

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You're encouraging folly. You're setting your children up for failure. Now, obviously, we understand children get older, restrictions decrease or whatever.

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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.

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And so we wonder, now that our children have access to the internet, how come they did this thing?

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Well, maybe it's just because of sin, but sometimes it's because we didn't sufficiently warn them.

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So what I'm saying, dads, we are responsible for warning our children from God's Word of the folly of sin.

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How God hates sin. Of sin's deceptiveness and life -ruining ways of our obligation to turn from sin and to run from it.

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To be like Joseph, right? To flee from it. Drop our cloak, if necessary, and get out of the situation.

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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

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Bible. Dads, will you make your home a safe place to run from sin?

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All right, 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.

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What I mean is they need to be able to come to you and confess their sins, and you can get mad.

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You can get righteously mad, right? Your sin comes to you, and your son comes to you, your daughter comes to you, and they've sinned in an egregious way.

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It's okay to be righteously upset about that. Yet, you need to do it in such a way that they understand there's grace in your home.

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And if they need a place to run from a party, a chain of decisions that they've let themselves get into because of their immaturity, they need to believe that they can come home and understand the grace of God.

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Let's just understand, think through these things, and these are things that we have to think through as dads and parents.

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And then we have this clause here at the end of verse 4. Bring them up in the discipline and instruction, and this little prepositional phrase here, of the

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Lord. Friends, this discipline and instruction is the

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Lord's. So let me say something very clear. It may be offensive, but you need to hear this. Your parents that you grew up with they're not the ultimate pattern.

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You understand? Well, my dad always did things this way. My mom always did things this way. That may be good and it may be right, but ultimately, they're not the pattern.

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You must try their parenting methods by what? By the Word of God. Your own parents are not the pattern.

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Society is not the pattern. And the way that your friends do it and your neighbors do it are not the pattern.

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What is the standard? It is the discipline and instruction of the

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Lord. It's silly. Don't say this, please. Because it's very silly when we use this as a justification.

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Well, I was brought up that way, and look how I turned out. Maybe you didn't turn out as great as you thought, right?

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And maybe it is okay. But that's not the standard, you know?

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Well, my dad, no, dad didn't do this. Just be clear, just an analogy. My dad let me drive 100 miles an hour down the freeway without a seatbelt on and my head hanging out the window.

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And it didn't hurt me. Okay, but you think some of the things that you grew up with and that your parents allowed you to do, it actually may be wrong.

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And if the Word of God says it's wrong, then you need to instruct your children in the right way. My parents, you might say, my parents never did family worship.

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I turned out okay. Yeah, but if your parents didn't do family worship, they were wrong, right? And you should adjust your parenting by what

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God's Word says. So society is not your standard. Your parents aren't the standard. Your family and your friends and your neighbors aren't the standard.

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This is the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Dads, we are responsible for a holistic approach in the raising of our children.

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So listen carefully. This even means if your children are taught falsely at a private or public school, you're held responsible.

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If they're taught something false in a Disney movie or at a friend's house, you're responsible for that.

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There's just no way for dads to do this properly while always being reactionary.

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Hear me on this. You are not on the defense. What I mean is every time something goes wrong, then you're responding to it, right?

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Okay, they learned this. Now I'm going to respond to it. They said this. Now I'm going to respond to it.

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That's playing defense. Take baseball as an analogy. Can't score no runs on defense.

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You have to go on the offensive. You can't just react to what your children are learning or taking in.

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You have to positively and preemptively teach them the discipline and instruction of the

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Lord. As children obey in the Lord, as you raise them in the instruction of the

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Lord, you need to be reminded this is your responsibility as a man.

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God requires this of you as a husband and father. You are the leader of the home.

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The buck stops with you and you are responsible before God in a way that moms and children are not.

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And you say to me, well, that seems unfair. Listen, that's why

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God made your shoulders bigger than your wife's.

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Because you are responsible to carry a greater load. And God's wisdom and instruction and counsel and goodness in this, it is right.

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It is true. Friends, we need to recover this view of fatherhood today. And we also need to be reminded of the grace of the

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Gospel. This is such a weighty and high standard set for dads.

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Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but raise them up. Rear them in the discipline and instruction, in the nurture and admonition of the

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Lord. What a precious commodity we have been given as dads, these precious tiny little babies.

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And I think it's interesting or kind of funny really that the Lord doesn't give you a detailed instruction booklet, right?

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We have these general principles, but there's a lot of things we just gotta figure out when it comes to our kids.

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And it's like, wow, how weighty, God, what are you doing, right? Think about how fragile humanity hangs in the balance and the fact that God has given these precious little gifts to young men and women.

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Like you don't have kids when you're, unless you're Abraham and Sarah, you don't have kids at the end of your life. You have kids at the beginning of your life, right?

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And you're like, well, how do I do this? I don't know, but what a precious cargo God has given to us. And what a weighty and high stakes we have here.

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And so this should remind you this morning of the Father's importance in the home.

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But you also need to be reminded of this, dads, what God requires of you, He also supplies you with the grace to accomplish.

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So we hear a sermon like this and maybe we feel a little beat up, but here's where I need to encourage you.

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This begins with the Lord Jesus Christ. Friends, it begins with dads looking to Jesus as the only suitable and all -sufficient

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Savior. You have to start in your home with looking to Jesus and trusting

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His atoning work on your behalf. Mothers and fathers, you cannot parent your way to heaven.

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I know you like to get on the Facebook wars, right? I've been involved in those too. And I know you like to get in the battles and show how great little

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Johnny is and how Johnny got honor roll or merit roll or how Johnny won the trophy or how

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Johnny got best behaved at school. And you feel a little self -justified in that, but you need to hear this, you can't parent your way to heaven.

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You can't be justified on the way that you parent. You cannot stand before God on your parenting.

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There is already enough sin in your parenting, just in your parenting, to warrant the lake of fire for all eternity.

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But here's the Gospel. Jesus paid for that.

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Jesus bore the curse of the law and the wrath of God in our place and rose again so that those who look to Him in faith will be justified by His grace as a gift so that no one will boast.

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It's the only way. Parents, dads, we start by looking to Christ and then we realize that what

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Jesus has accomplished on Calvary produces in us by the Spirit of God the power and desire to live out what

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He has called us to do. There is no one more for godly fathers than our

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Father God. He is for your godliness in parenting.

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So that means, dads, Ephesians 6 .4 is not a hopeless verse, it's a doable verse because Christ has already paid for our failure of it and the

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Spirit of God enables us now to walk in this way. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the

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Lord. Yeah, but what about when I fail? What about when this afternoon, when I fail when it comes to this verse? What do

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I do when I fail? You go to Christ! Because there's no condemnation.

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The law cannot sit over you anymore as a believer and say, you're condemned. Because there is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

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So when you fail, you take it again to Jesus, you repent, and you rest again in His grace.

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And I'm saying, dads, Christian dads, you can do this. Lead your home with the gracious authority.

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I don't like that word. Authority. Lead your home with the gracious authority given to you and expected of you and required of you by God.

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And we need you to do this. Your children need this. Dads, granddads, uncles, we need this kind of mentality and resolve in our churches today.

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We need to push one another toward this. We need to encourage one another in this.

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Society may ridicule you. Society may say you're an unnecessary reality or a waste.

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But I say to you, man, don't listen. We need godly manhood in our homes and in our churches.

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And if you say that we needed that 50 years ago, well, I say we need that then today, now more than ever.

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Let us see the grace offered to us in Christ. Ephesians is a book of grace. We see grace upon grace upon grace upon grace.

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Grace lavished upon us. And I say to you, dear dad, dear father, you can do this not in your own power, but only because of the grace of God.

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And I say to you, let the grace of God, as it were, lead you in repentance. Repent. Repent of any area of sin that the

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Holy Spirit exposes to you today. Repent and take it to Christ. Don't hear a sermon like this and double down and say,

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I'll not repent. I'll not repent. I'll just keep doing things my own way. Receive the grace of the gospel.

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Will we do this together? Lay hold of Jesus by faith and seek to set our feet on the narrow path for the glory of our

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King. And then let me say this and we'll close. Moms and wives and children, others in this room, understand the weighty responsibility and let us encourage godly fathers.

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Let us encourage godly leadership in the home. Children, don't make it difficult on your fathers.

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Wives, don't make it difficult on your husbands. Let us understand what

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God has required of men and the responsibility set before them. Let us be a gospel culture and let us love the

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Scriptures and let us strive together and let us expect these fundamental duties of faithful dads.

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Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you for this text and we thank you for your mercy.

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We pray, Lord, that you would take this text and drive it deeply into our hearts. We pray that as dads, we would take up the calling of the

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Scripture. We would rest in grace and go forward in it. We pray the gospel would reign supreme in our hearts and in the hearts of the people listening even now.

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Lord, I pray for conviction of sin where it's needed. I pray for encouragement where it's needed. I pray for regeneration, reconciliation, sanctification, all these things where it's needed.

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Use your Word and apply it to our hearts as only you can. And we know it won't return void.