Danger and Destinations

Prayer for Wisdom in Parenting

All right, let's pray. Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the opportunity we have.

To look into your word.

Help us now to think through these things for your glory that we can show the world how disciples of Jesus are in the home. And we just pray that you would help us to learn tonight. And Lord, don't let this just become something new that we tuck away, but that it would change us as we consider what you call us to do.

Thank you in Jesus' name, amen.

The Danger of Provoking Children to Anger

Jacob is a rebel.

He's done with his parents. He hates to be around them and his two sisters. He rarely talks to anyone in his family. And when he does talk, it's usually an explosion of rage. He avoids his dad like the plague and treats his mom like trash with mocking words and defiant tones.

Jacob stays in his room if he's home, but he tries to spend as much time as he can away from home with his friends. His grades have plunged and it's not unusual anymore for his folks to get a call from school saying that something has happened with Jacob there in some incident.

Jacob, who's 17, makes no bones about the fact that when he gets to be 18, he cannot wait to get out of this stupid house. His parents are completely perplexed. I just don't understand it, says dad. We were at the church every time the doors were open.

We had family devotions every day. We raised him to be a good boy. Mom chimes in. When he disobeyed, we were sure to discipline him. How could he embarrass us this way? Doesn't he see what he's doing, not just to himself, but to us?

Now, we've all heard those stories from friends. We all know that's not an unfamiliar story to us. Maybe you're even facing this or you see things headed that way. And some folks write kids off and they just say, well, you know, every family has an ESAW, right?

But before we dismiss the ESAWs of this world, it's good to examine our parenting. See, many parents are unaware of the danger in raising their kids. There's a danger involved. And that's because they don't have any idea where they want to take their children.

They don't have any destination in mind either. So tonight, we want to explore the danger to avoid and the destination to pursue with our children. Let's turn again to Ephesians 6 .4. Ephesians 6 .4. Here we read again.

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

All right?

Notice the danger that God identifies. Do not provoke your children to anger. And also, the goal that's indicated with the words, but bring them up. Bring them up to head in a certain direction.

Now, we need to beware of the danger. Uh-oh, excuse me for a moment.

I don't know what happened here. Oh, I know what happened. There's a danger to be avoided. We have to beware of the danger, okay? There is a danger in raising our children. What is it? It is simply, do not provoke your children to anger.

Do not provoke your children to anger. Now, what does that mean? What does that mean? You know, some kids who've grown up in Christian homes, they get wise to it, and their mom or their dad says something to them, and they say, be careful, Dad.

You know, the Bible says, don't provoke me to anger.

What?

Is that what it means? Well, let's think about that. It does not mean that we never upset, annoy, or disappoint our children, nor does it imply that we withhold from them something that they desperately want.

That's not what it means. In fact, you see something here in 2 Kings. I think it's real important. 2 Kings 1. 2 Kings 1, verses five and six. Now, what we have here is, it's not, it's 1 Kings, not 2 Kings.

Sure, that didn't look right. 1 Kings 1, you find here one of David's son, Adonijah. And Adonijah is seeking to mount a palace coup. He's going to throw his father off the throne. And so he starts gathering people, starts gathering his co-conspirators.

It says in verse five, now Adonijah, the son of Haggith, exalted himself, saying, I will be king. And he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen and 50 men to run before him. Now note, his father had never at any time displeased him by asking, why have you done thus and so?

Isn't that interesting? Here's a boy who's rebellious because his father never withheld anything from him, never really crossed him. So it doesn't mean that you never upset, annoy, or disappoint your children.

It does mean to not bring up your child in such a way that he becomes an angry person, one that's characterized by perpetual resentment or explosive anger, impulsive anger. A key verse here is Proverbs 25, 28.

Proverbs 25, 28.

A man without self-control, or I think NIV has it, a man who cannot control his spirit is like a city broken into and left without walls. Now it's talking about the walls that defend a city. A man who has no self-control is like a defenseless city.

All right, think about this. Here's someone who's angry, right? His teachers make him angry. His parents make him angry. His brothers and sisters make him angry. You know, the coach makes him angry. Here's a guy who's defenseless.

He's at the mercy of everybody. Everybody around him, you know, tempts him towards anger. He's like a city without walls. He's defenseless. He's not in control. Everyone else is. Now as we look at Ephesians 6, 4, do not provoke your children to anger, the Amplified Version says it this way.

Fathers, do not irritate and provoke your children to anger. Do not exasperate them to resentment. We should avoid exasperating our children to the point of deep and abiding resentment. The parallel here is Colossians 3, verse 21.

In Colossians 3, 21, we read, fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. Don't take the wind out of their sails. Okay? Well, what does someone who's provoked look like? What does that look like?

It looks like open rebellion, blowing up. Okay? It's someone who's blowing up. Someone who just explodes. Okay? So, or it's someone who expresses it in passive rebellion, blowing up or clamming up. Resentment, apathy, subpar performance, maybe rebellion with a smile, or rebellion with silence.

And many parents accept this kind of anger because it doesn't bother them. So, say, Levi, I want you to take out the garbage.

He says, me, take out the garbage?

Why me?

Why don't you ask Calvin? Why don't you ask Jantz? Why don't you ask one of our sisters? Why is it always me?

Right?

He's really mad and he's having, what, you're gonna get all over that, right? So, that one day, the next day, you say, Annie, why don't you take out the garbage? And Annie goes, ah, garbage. Pulls the garbage out and wraps it up.

She's mumbling, mumbling the whole time and butts open the door and stuffs it in the can and she's grumbling the whole time and everything. But you don't get over that. You know why? You don't get on that.

Why not? Because the garbage made it out, right? Good to see you, Jackson. All right? So, a lot of parents don't like the first, but they'll accept the second, right? They have compliance at least. And we're gonna talk in a little bit about the goal because both of them are missing the goal.

But too often, we don't get much further than I got compliance rather than what the attitude is being shown. So, you've got, what does it mean to provoke a child to anger? It means bring them up in such a way that you end up with open rebellion or this passive, resentful kind of rebellion.

Both are rebellion, okay? How do you exasperate your children? Well, here's one. When you're a passive or permissive parent, I think two great examples are David and Jacob, right? David and Jacob, you don't see either one of them really correcting their boys.

They just seem to not bother with it. It's often expressed like this. It often has this kind of expression. Well, it's no big deal. That's the way a four-year-old acts. That's the way a six-year-old acts.

That's the way a 10-year-old acts. Well, of course, they're rebellious. That's the way a 16-year-old acts, right? They're often expressed that way or he's too young to understand, right? He's too young to understand.

He just won't understand. Or this one, I love this. I don't know what I'll do with this kid. We haven't done anything. And so at this point, you don't know what to do. You know what, many dads are too lazy to be leaders.

You know, to be a leader means you're gonna make decisions that won't sit well with some people. And too many dads don't like the idea of their kids being unsettled or angry or anything like that. So they just don't wanna make the decisions.

Too often, dads are lazy. And that leads to angry children. Look at Proverbs 13, verse 24. Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. Wow, okay. If you spare the rod, you actually hate your children.

Or this one, the rod and reproof gives wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother and shoots up a local elementary school. Listen, the violence that we're seeing today, the violence that we're seeing today, I would suggest, is not because all those children grew up in abusive homes.

I would suggest to you that it's because we've had two generations now of parents who won't take control. And you leave a child left to, we're all born depraved, right? Violence is born in a human heart.

And if you do nothing to curb it, that violence will come to full flower. It's born in the human heart. Now, some children may not be as violent as others, but all I'm saying to you is a passive permissive parent is headed for trouble.

That one proverb really grabs my attention. A child left to himself. Bring shame to his mother. All you have to do then is don't do anything and you will end up with an angry child. You will exasperate your children when you have no grace in your home.

What strikes me here is 1 Thessalonians 7, chapter two, verses seven and eight, where the apostle Paul talking about his relationship to the Thessalonians. At one point, he calls himself their father.

At another point, he says, I was like your mother. I'm like a nursing mother to you. But at one point, he says, look, I didn't just share my life with you. I mean, I didn't just share the gospel with you, I shared my life.

There was lots of grace in that relationship. In Isaiah 65, you see God graciously holding his arms out. Too many homes run on law. That is to say, do what's right and you'll be rewarded, but mess up and you're in big trouble.

In homes like that, parents are sure to tell their children when they've done wrong. They're sure to tell everybody else how their children are doing wrong. And all they recall is the wrong things they do.

There's little place for repentance and little hope for forgiveness and restored relationships. And they act as if the wrongdoing is all there is to this kid. Parents have the attitude, I'll love you if you perform well, if you do what you're supposed to do, then I'll accept you.

Now, I'm not making a case here for what we typically called unconditional love. I really don't like that. Because that essentially says, just be as bad as you wanna be and I'll just always love you. And there's an element of truth, but it's not what we need to be thinking.

Here's what you need to remember. There is plenty of room for love and affection in all those hours of the day when your child isn't being a rat. Okay? There's plenty of time for love and affection in those times.

And you show your affection as much as you can. Here's another way that graceless homes exhibit themselves. Children have to do everything correctly every time, right? You left your book bag, son. You left your book bag here.

Now, we've talked about that, okay? Or there's a pencil on the table. What have we said? When you're done with your plan on the table, there's a pencil there, right? Or, oh, I don't know.

Hey, come here.

There is a spoon in the fork section here, okay? What have we done? What have we talked about being careless with our chores, haven't we, right? And so kids get this idea they gotta do right all the time or they're gonna be in trouble.

There's no room for mistakes. There's no room for forgetting. But everything must be done right all the time, okay? Be very careful about that. I love what Wayne Mack says. Home for the child must be a safe place, a place where he will be understood and helped, a place where people will not mock him or make fun of his faults and weaknesses, a place where people may disagree with him but still welcome and respect him, a place where people will encourage him and bind up his wounds, a place where people really care about him.

Now, don't take Wayne Mack to say, don't hear him saying, so you don't do anything, you just coddle your kids. What he's saying is there's more to a child than his behavior and everything. It's gotta be a place of grace.

Here's another way we exasperate our children when we handle our anger in unbiblical ways. James 1, 19 and 20 says the wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God. Now, that doesn't mean that parents never get angry but what it does mean is too often, we think that if we just explode enough, if we get angry enough, the kids will fall into line.

Wrong.

Ephesians 4, 26 and 27. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and give the devil a foothold. And you know what? There are some parents who they're silent for days making sure everybody knows just how mad dad is because you failed here and now everybody walks on eggshell.

Everybody walks on eggshells because we all know dad's mad and that goes on for days. The Bible says don't let that happen. Or you blow up so everyone is like living at the foot of the volcano. That's the formula for producing exasperated kids.

Here's another one. When you never repent and ask for forgiveness. When you never repent and ask for forgiveness. There's always room for repentance. You need to, if you're gonna be a disciple of Jesus then be in the habit.

If you sin against your children, you need to repent and ask their forgiveness. Many, many years ago, I sat in my office with a man who actually at times would sit in the living room with his gun to make sure everybody toed the line in that family, all right?

I said to him, you know what you need to do? You need to go home. You need to ask your wife. You need to ask your children to forgive you for your sin. His response was I could never do that. Why not?

Because they won't respect me if I do that. Now by the way, I'm not gonna tell him they probably will. I'm not even gonna tell him that. Because they might not. But that's not the reason why you do it.

When I turn to 1 Peter 5, 5 where it says, God gives grace or God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Every time I read that verse, I think of that particular individual. And this is what I told him.

I said, if you don't do it, I'll tell you who'll be against you. The most powerful being in the universe will be against you. You want that to happen? And you know what? If you do humble yourself, God will give you grace.

He'll give you the grace to do it. And if your family doesn't respect you, he'll give you the grace to handle it. You don't want God against you. Well, here's the point I'm making. And if you never repent and ask for forgiveness, right?

You'll raise angry children. And I can tell you this right now. His family was in compliance until his son got bigger and stronger and faster than him. And he didn't do it anymore after that.

Okay?

But he lost his son. He lost his son. Made him an angry man. Here's another way of producing exasperation. When you use sarcasm and ridicule.

All right?

When you make fun of your children and they become the butt of your jokes and when they do something wrong, you make some kind of a joke about it. You'll produce exasperated children. When you're not careful about the way you reprimand or correct your children.

Now, what do I mean by that? Do you make their sins public? I mean, okay, I think this is a principle. I can't insist on this particular application of the principle, but let me ask you this. Do you reprimand and discipline your children in front of other people?

I would suggest to you, don't do that. If they've done something, you take them, you get them out. Not even in front of their siblings. You don't have to do that. Just get them out. And we used to go to the bathroom.

The bathroom was the punishment palace, I guess. Take them out. You don't need to get on your kids in front of all the guests that are there, okay? You can quietly say, come with me, and leave. You need to think of your tone of voice and the words that you use.

Do you call them names when you're disciplining them? Do you call them names when you're not? You have nicknames for them that's just kind of denigrating. You pull that out when you want to make your point.

Be careful about the way you reprimand or correct your children. You know what, we really do need to treat our children with respect and not with contempt, all right? Now, here's another one. When you don't make your expectations, rules, and regulations clear, right?

She walks across the floor that you've just cleaned with her muddy boots, and you're all over her. And the next day, she does the same thing, but you're in a good mood, and nothing happens, right? That'll produce angry children, because they don't know, what do I have to do?

Okay, what's expected of me? So, beware and avoid the danger of exasperating your children, okay? So, it's not that I don't deny them anything. It's not that I don't say no, but it is, I respond to them in certain ways that can stir up, that contempt them towards anger and just exasperation.

All right, you need to be aware.

The Goal of Raising Godly Independent Disciples

Of the destination you must pursue. Now, I'm gonna say this as clear as I can. This part of what I'm gonna tell you is probably the most significant thing that changed the way I related to my kids. This part right here, this is the thing that helped me in incredible ways, okay?

So, I want you to listen, and you know what kind of pressure is on you when you say things like that, and your children are sitting here? You know, you kind of wait for them to go, nah, not quite. Listen, this is really important, because this really helps you sort out stuff.

A destination to pursue. How would you complete this sentence? The goal for my children is what? If you can't fill that in that blank, then you're not up to the challenge of your children. You've got to be able to put something in that blank.

You must have a destination. You must have a goal for your children. Where do you want them when they leave home? What do you want them to be when they're walking out the door and going out on their own?

You've got to have that in your mind. This is the thing that really helped me a lot, okay? This is what helped me a lot. Now, question. Why should you have a goal in raising your children? Well, the first thing you need to understand is you have a goal, whether you recognize it or not.

Everybody has a goal. Sadly, too often, too often, it's nothing more than do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't bother me. That's your goal. Sometimes it's all I want you to, I just want you to do what I say.

And that's the goal. That everybody has a goal. Even if you can't articulate one, you're operating with one. You do have a goal in mind. Now, why should you have a goal? Because a goal directs your choices as you raise your children.

It's gonna direct your choices as you raise your children. If you want a son who'd be really coordinated, if you want a son who gets a scholarship to a Division I school, then you are gonna skip church to go to all the tournaments all summer long, because that's that important to you.

That's what you're, so that'll form your choices. If you think it's important that your daughter be popular, attractive, you might go along with her when she buys the blouse that's cut down to here and the skirt that's cut up to here.

You might go along with that, if that's what you're thinking. If your goal for your daughter is that she learned to understand life from God's perspective, you're gonna make different choices. If you value godliness above athletic prowess, that'll, you'll make different choices.

The goal that you have for your children, whether you can articulate it or not, you have a goal, and whatever goal you have is gonna direct your choices in everything that you do. Helping a goal or having a goal helps you in the long run.

You can see past the trials, you can see past the hard times to what you want to accomplish. You can see that. Paul Tripp, in his book, Age of Opportunity, by the way, that is a great book. Okay, so, okay, footnote, or at the end of this whole thing, the bibliography, two books I think are really good.

One is Shepherding a Child's Heart. That gives you a general overall idea, but it deals mostly with children, and that's Ted Tripp, and his brother Paul Tripp wrote a book called Age of Opportunity, okay?

A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens. Those two books are exceptional. So I say that. So Paul writes this. You cannot expect that when the moment is tense and the emotions are high, you'll be able to think clearly, biblically, and concretely.

You have to enter those times with your children with a pre-commitment to a concrete set of goals. So what he's saying here, and it's right, is that when you have a goal, and all of a sudden you're in the midst of this incredibly intense situation, and you're tempted to blow up, you're tempted to take your child and lock him in the garage for the next 60 days, okay?

When you're tempted that way, the goal in your mind is gonna say, okay, wait a minute, if I lock him up for 60 days, he's gonna miss that goal. And if I say things right now and do things right now, it might swerve him away from the destination I wanna take him.

What do I have to do at this moment to help him get there, you see? It helps you in the long run. It helps you in the long run. You don't just see this trial, this hardship with your son or your daughter.

You say, okay, we've got a problem here. Now, how can I handle this in a way that will move him to that goal? So, okay. And we're gonna articulate this goal a little bit, but with that goal and with the goal that God gives us in my head, I would always be asking questions like this.

Okay,.

Are they doing something right now that'll keep them from reaching the goal? Here's the illustration I use all the time, okay? I go to bed, I get a call at one o 'clock in the morning, which is never a good thing, right?

No one ever calls the pastor at one o 'clock in the morning saying, man, thank you for doing our wedding. That was wonderful. That doesn't happen. Typically, it's a crisis. So you get up, you go to the hospital, you're there until six in the morning, and you've got appointments that day.

So then you go home, you go to the office, you get those done. Sunday's coming. I gotta get my sermon done, right? You got all that going on, and then you go home, and you walk in the door. Girls, I'm gonna use the boys again.

Annie and Lydia. And there the boys are jumping on each other and rolling around and wrestling and everything else. What do you think I wanna do at that moment? What do you think I wanna do? Not just stop it, but scream at them.

And say, what are you doing?

Stop it. Will you please stop? Now, why am I doing that? I'm tired. I didn't get any sleep. I'm really tired. I just want peace and quiet. Oh, stop this, and ugh, right? But then I have to say to myself, are they doing something right now that's gonna keep them from that goal?

And the answer is no. They're being boys, all right? So just cool it, cool your jet. They're not doing something, okay? But then if their mom comes into the room and she's got some work to do or sewing to do, it's time to stop.

Why?

Because they gotta put her interests above their own. So cool it now. Go outside. Your mom has some things to do. I'll tell you what. Have any of you ever heard of the band Arsene's Daughter? Yeah, how funny that a majority of you would know that band's name.

But when that band started, I remember Becca saying to me, and it was probably the worst band I ever heard, right? Of course, two of my boys were in it. And I remember Becca saying to me, no, don't you think you oughta tell them no?

And I thought, no? They're not doing something right now that keeps them from the goal. I hate their music, I hate it. But they're not doing anything that keeps them from the goal. So I'll never forget the time she said, you think the people in church will find out?

Ha ha ha ha!

Ever tell you that yet? Well, we'll have to deal with that then. All right, now there's a whole lot more that goes into that story, which will probably come up later. But the point is, the goal helps you sort things out.

Discipline and teaching and so forth. Pursuing a goal equips your children for life. If you're pursuing a goal, you're equipping them for life, all right? You wanna take them somewhere. And so if that's your goal, then in the process you're going to equip them to live life in this culture, all right?

By the way, it's the way that God operates with us, God has a goal with us. Someone read Hebrews 12, five through 11. By the way, you're gonna need your Bibles because we're gonna have a bunch that we need to read, okay?

Hebrews 12, five through 11. Okay, five count.

All right, Lydia, what's that?

That's okay, you volunteered, good for you. To share in His holiness, to experience or to produce righteousness, which then leads to peace. Okay, so that's the goal God has for us. So if God operates with the goal, then so should we.

What are some common goals today? What are some common goals? Well, here are some. I want my child to be a success, however you define that, right? To live a happy, comfortable life. I want my child to be a success.

I want him to have better than I ever did, right? I want my child to be well-adjusted. I don't want him to be some kind of a freak, right? A nerd. I want him to be well-adjusted. I want my child to get by.

Now, this usually becomes the goal for our children when we've not thought ahead to what we really want them to be when they leave home. And the pace of life is so hectic that we just get our kids over the next hump.

Life gets so hectic that all we're trying to do is get them over the next hump, right? And you don't think long-range. You're just thinking about what do we gotta do to get by? Okay? Or another one, I want my child to be well-behaved.

Well, that sounds good. That sounds great, but if that's all you're going for, you're gonna miss the goal. You're gonna miss the goal. If you cut that off from a biblical understanding of a goal to serve Christ's kingdom, to be what God wants them to be, that just becomes a classy way of manipulating them.

Okay? I want my child to get a good education. All right, there's a lot of parents. I've met lots of parents who say, I really want them to get a good education because in their view, an education is the answer to all the problems.

Get them educated. They've got all kinds of opportunities. I want a child I can control or that will be compliant. You know, some parents seem that they have to control everything. And some parents are afraid of their children achieving independence.

They have an idolatrous lust oftentimes for everything to remain the same. We don't want anything to change.

All right?

And they don't want their lovely family to change. They want it all to be the same. They just don't like it. They gotta control.

Or compliance.

A kid who will do what I want when I want. You say, well, what's wrong with that? We want our children to obey. Yes, you do. But if that becomes your goal, if that's your goal, you're gonna use all kinds of sinful methods.

You're gonna get them to do what you want them to do. By the way, what's the common element there? I want them to do what I want them to do when I want them to do it. What's the common element there? It's me.

Okay?

I want my life to be easy.

He will obey.

Okay? Now, if you wanna know what your goal is, then just examine your attitudes and actions with your children. Stop, take a look, take an inventory. What are my attitudes toward my children? What are the actions in relationship to them?

That will tell you what your goal is.

Right?

All right, so if I'm standing back here shaking hands with people, well, it doesn't happen now. I can't imagine one of my kids walking up and kicking me in the shin. But let's say I'm standing there. I don't think they do that.

I'm standing there shaking hands with people, and one of my kids comes up when they're little, and they wanna talk to me, and they're standing there, and they kinda tug it at my sleeve, and I just keep talking, and finally one of them kicks me.

They just kick me to get my attention. And man, I am madder than hops now.

Why? Why?

Because you just embarrassed me. By the way, that's a very common goal. That's a very common goal, and that is I don't want children who'll embarrass me.

Okay?

Now, look, don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying so because they kick you, you don't do anything about it. No, what I'm saying is, oftentimes that's our only goal, because my child may do something else that's wrong when no one else is around, and I don't deal with it.

Why?

It's not embarrassing me, right? So, look at what you're doing, and that'll tell you what your goal is, okay? And why you're doing it. All right, what's God's goal for our children? Let's start looking up verses.

I'm gonna sign verses here. Matthew 5, 16, who'll read that?

Dennis.

Yance, Philippians 1, 20. Psalm 73, 25 and 26. Caleb. Matthew 28, 18 through 20.

Steve.

Hebrews 12, 10 and 11.

Lydia.

Proverbs 1, 1 through 4.

Micah.

2 Peter 1, 3 and 4.

Pam.

Proverbs 4, 23.

Lee.

Genesis 2, 24.

Jake.

Wow, guys, this is great. All right, Matthew 5, 16.

Live in such a way that people will see their good works.

And they'll talk about God.

Philippians 1, 20. This verse, to me, is just unbelievable, because this guy's up to determine.