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I invite you to take out your Bibles with me and turn to the book of Colossians chapter three as we continue to make our way verse by verse through this letter written by the hand of the Apostle Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Thank you, Noah, for that.
We're going to be looking today specifically at verses 20 and 21, but as is our custom to read the context of the passage, we'll be reading beginning at verse 17 and going down to the end and beginning at chapter four, verse one.
But before we read, I just want to share a quick anecdote.
There was a man who entered Bible college and went through all of the classes and began to feel himself very educated in the ways of God and specifically in the ways of life.
And so he chose to write as a dissertation for one of his advanced classes a definitive method for raising children.
He was a single man and he had no children, but he felt like he had all the necessary things to write such a book, and he did write what he considered to be a definitive book on raising children.
Then he had one, and he changed the title of his dissertation from a definitive method for raising children to thoughts on raising kids.
Then he had three, and he changed the title, or rather he added a chapter entitled Why Children? And then his three became teenagers, and he wrote a new book called Help, I'm Falling Apart.
Today we're going to be talking about parents and children.
We're going to be talking specifically about the role of children in the home and specifically fathers leading their homes.
Coming from the words of the Apostle Paul, let's stand together and read.
Paul begins this section, I believe, in verse 17 when he says, and whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God through him.
Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.
Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.
Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.
Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.
You are serving the Lord Christ, for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
And then chapter 4, verse 1 says, masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.
Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
I pray even now that you would keep me from error as I preach, for Lord God, your word deserves to be preached truly, and many men have perverted your word, have mistreated your word, have abandoned your word for secular ideals.
Lord I pray that in this pulpit your word would be preached, and that your spirit would go out among the people, and that the word of God be mixed with faith by the power of the spirit and bring change in all of our lives.
For the believer, Lord, that we would be closer conformed to the image of Christ, and for the unbeliever, Lord, that they would be given the gift of regeneration.
Give them faith, O God, to trust in your son, by the power of your spirit, in Christ's name.
Amen.
Every week I sit down to prepare my message, and every week I look at the text, and I think to myself about 8 a.m.
on Monday morning when I'm looking at the text, I think, you know, I don't know if there's enough here for a whole sermon.
And then by Saturday, I'm thinking, I wonder how many weeks it's going to take me to say all this.
And that is this week.
I am in a mini-series in Colossians, as you all know, we're looking at the three spheres of authority.
I talked about this last week.
The first sphere we talked about was the relationship between wives and husbands, and how Paul calls the wife to submit to the husband, and he calls the husband to love his wife, and we see that as the first and most important social commitment that any of us enter into outside of our relationship with Christ.
Our relationship with our spouse is obviously the most important, lifelong, and one that is not to be broken by anything but death.
But outside of this, there's a next sphere, and that is the sphere of children and parents, and that's what we're going to look at today.
And then next week, we're going to finish out this little portion of Colossians by looking at servants and masters.
And so all of this really deals with the relationship of priority and authority.
Priority and authority.
The priority in the home is the husband and wife, and then after that is the children and the family.
Family, and within those structures, there is authority, and there is submission.
Two words that we absolutely hate in our culture today.
We hate the word authority, especially when we are told that we have to do something.
We have grown up in a culture that was singing, we're not going to take it.
You know, that's our motto.
So, we have grown up in that culture of no authority.
I am my own man.
I do my own thing.
We become a people who despise commands, despise any authority.
As I was thinking about this week, and I was thinking about specifically the authority of parents and children, I got to thinking about how our lives, if we live a normative lifespan, our lives can be broken down into four basic sections, and I put them up here for you if you want to see.
When you're a kid, you're cared for by your parents.
Praise God, you have to be, because you're born into this world useless.
You know, you can't do anything.
Even a deer can stand up when it's born, but a kid can't even stand up.
When I said useless, that maybe sounded kind of mean.
You're born helpless, maybe that's a better word, and you have to be cared for throughout your childhood and into adolescence, but there comes a time where you get to care for someone else.
You grow up, you become a parent, and then you who were cared for for two decades now become the one who is responsible to care for someone else, and you have to do that for a few decades, depending on how many children you have.
I'm on number six, and I am not going to be done forever, but I'm not going to be done at least with high school until I'm in my 60s.
Praise the Lord, pass the Advil.
But you start out being cared for by your parents, then you're caring for your children, then you're caring for your aging parents, and there's overlap there.
Because as your kids are coming up, so are your parents getting older, and you're caring for your aging parents, and sometimes as they get older and older, you have to care for them in ways that you never thought before, and that rotates to a different life.
Sometimes they even have to come and live with you so that you can care for them in the home.
And then finally, you're going to come to a point where, by God's grace, if you live that long, you'll be cared for by yours, your children, and it'll be a big switch.
And there'll be an authoritative switch.
You know what's funny is we come into this world with very little authority, none, and we leave this world with very little authority in general.
When we're older, we tend to give up authority as we go, we give up our driver's licenses, we give up our ability to go where we wanted to go and do the things that we want to do, and so it's like at each end of our life, it sort of comes and goes in the same way, depending on how long we live.
So when we talk about authority and submission, this is not a monolithic thing that's always the same, it's actually a shift throughout your life.
So as you're younger, you're learning how to obey authority, and then in that, you're learning how to exercise authority.
If you have parents who are doing it in a way that's godly, you're actually learning to mirror how they do authority, and then in such a way that you hope that by God's grace, when you're under their authority, they can treat you with the same respect you treated them.
See how this cycle that God has created works.
It's very interesting if you think about how our lives are structured.
So today as we examine the command of the Apostle Paul, he's going to give two commands in verse 20, and again, if you have your Bibles and we're looking at them, you'll see he gives a command first to children, in the first half of the sermon we're going to deal with verse 20, and then he gives a command to fathers, and I will say this, I think that the fathers in this verse does apply also to both parents, but specifically to the role of the father as leader.
As we saw in last week, there is a specific role of authority given to the father.
As the wife is commanded to submit to her husband in everything, so the father has a unique role in the marriage relationship.
So too does the father have a unique role in the relationship with the children.
Children who are not being disciplined may be able to say that mom wasn't doing a good job, but father, dad, you are the one responsible for your home, and therefore the one to whom feet it must be laid will first be you.
And so we're going to look at these things, and as I said, I have so many trails I want to chase, so many rabbits I want to go down with this, I'm going to try to be careful not to keep us here for two hours, but that's all I'm promising, is that I won't go two hours.
So let's look first at verse 20.
It says, children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Now you'll remember last week that I said that there is a parallel passage in the book of Ephesians.
The book of Ephesians has a section almost exactly like what we find in Colossians, and it's important for us to understand these books are sister books.
These books were both written by the Apostle Paul, both written around the same time.
These books have a lot of the same information in them, but if we compare the two, we'll actually see some important distinctions and additions that we don't want to miss.
So if you'll hold your place in Colossians and just take your thumb and thumb over a few books to the book of Ephesians and go to chapter 5, I want you to see the parallel passage which is in Ephesians chapter 5, I'm sorry, Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1.
Ephesians chapter 6 begins with the same word, it begins with the word children.
And while it says something similar, it does not say the same thing, and I hope you notice the difference.
In Colossians it said children obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
But in Ephesians it says children obey your parents in the Lord.
Notice the change there in the preposition.
For this is right.
And then in Ephesians it references the old covenant command, the fifth command of the Decalogue in saying honor your father and mother.
This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.
So the Apostle writes in Ephesians a little bit more of an explanation and even gives an Old Testament foundation for what he's saying.
But it is essentially the same command, he tells the children to obey their parents.
In both senses, in both passages rather, he says children obey your parents.
It's interesting when you look at the original language, and you know as often as I do when I'm studying, I try to look at the original language and see if there are anything underneath the English that we need to recognize, and there is something here underneath the English that I think would be important for us to see.
And that is that the Greek word that underlies the word for obey here is different than the Greek word that underlies the word for submit, which is in the verse preceding regarding wives.
Look again at, if you're in Colossians, look again where it says wives submit to your husbands.
The word submit there is the word hupotasso, and it literally means to be under the order of someone else.
It's almost a military term where you have authority and submission and structure.
The father is the leader, the mother is the support staff.
She comes alongside and supports him under his leadership, and there is submission there.
But when you come down to verse 20, and you get to the children and the parents, the word here is different.
It is not hupotasso, it is hupakuo.
And the word hupakuo is where we get our English word acoustics, and it's the idea of hearing something.
An acoustic is like something that deals with hearing, like acoustical panels that are put up to dampen sound, or an acoustic guitar means it produces its own sound, right? That's where that word comes from, and hupakuo means to come under the hearing of the parent.
And in one sense, it means literally to listen to your parents.
That when your parents say something, when your parents give you a command, when your parents tell you what to do, it's your job to listen to what they're saying.
But not just listen as the one person listens and then goes and does whatever he wants to do, but take what you're hearing and apply it to what you're doing.
Give you a few thoughts from the book of Proverbs.
You don't have to turn there, but you'll probably remember these as I rattle them off.
Proverbs chapter 1 verse 8 says, hear my son your father's instruction and forsake not your mother's teaching.
Notice the first word in that proverb is hear, to hear what your mother and your father are saying.
Proverbs chapter 4 verse 1 says, oh sons, hear a father's instruction and be attentive that you may gain insight.
Proverbs 13 verse 1, a wise son hears his father's instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.
Proverbs 23, 22, listen to the father who gave you life and do not despise your mother when she is old.
I like that last one, because we have come to a point in our culture where age is genuinely discriminated against.
Not just in the workplace where it's harder to get a job when you're past 60, but in the idea that as, well let me say it this way, in older cultures and in other cultures around the world, age is respected and venerated.
The older are considered the wise, the ones to whom you go to and you ask of and you learn from.
But now we say you're just a bunch of boomers, right? And we treat our elderly with disrespect because we know how to work a computer, therefore we're much more wise and intelligent.
You see we have flipped what the scripture says on its head, where it says with gray hair there's glory.
No, we've turned that around.
The Bible tells children to listen to their parents and listen with the idea of obeying their parents.
Children in this room, by the way, we're all children.
We're all somebody's child, but in this context you might ask, well who's in view? Who is in view? Who are the children in view here? And I must say, I don't think that that is necessarily an easy answer because I want to break it down for you in a little bit of a, I've had to work through this in my mind, so I'll give you just a few thoughts.
One, there is a point where a person goes from being a child to being an adult.
And the Bible does identify that.
But there's also the sense in which in this passage it seems to be addressing specifically believing children.
And why would I say that? I want to show that from the text because the text says in Colossians, it says children obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord.
It speaks of a child pleasing the Lord.
And I would say this, while certainly any child that disobeys their parents is unpleasing to God, apart from faith it's impossible to please God and therefore I do think there is a sense in which this is referring to a believing child.
But the Ephesians passage is the one that really gets me because it says obey your parents in the Lord.
So I want to say this to you today.
If you are a child in your parent's house and you are a Christian child, this passage specifically applies to you.
Now if you're an unbelieving child, I'm not saying it don't apply to you because I can say the general point of Scripture is that children should obey their parents and the fifth commandment still holds.
Paul uses it in Ephesians 5 so it still holds.
You are to honor your father and mother whether you're a believer or not.
And if you don't honor your father and mother there are consequences, temporal consequences that will come from that.
But if you are a believing child, and I know there are some of you out there because I baptized some of you, I ain't going to go pointing fingers but you know who you is, and you're still in your parent's house, you're still under the authority of your parents, you have a responsibility to listen to what your parents have to say because in doing so, you are not just listening to your parents but you are honoring God.
You're not just obeying your parents but you are in one sense being obedient to God in the same way that last week I talked about wives submitting to their husbands as unto the Lord because they're doing it not because the husband is worthy but because God is worthy.
Because you might tell me, well my parents are not believers.
And some of you may have parents that aren't believers.
That doesn't mean they're not your parents.
And that doesn't mean they don't have to be respected.
Now I talked about this in Sunday school, as many of you know I teach the teen Sunday school with Mike and today we talked about this, is there ever a limit to authority? There's always a limit to authority.
We talk about that in government.
If the government commands us to do something ungodly we don't do it, we obey God rather than men.
If you have a parent that is commanding you to do something that disobeys God, obviously you obey God.
But here's the thing, we shouldn't be trying to immediately look for exceptions, we should be looking where we're not actually obeying God.
Because almost every time we hear about authority we want to find the way out of the authority.
Every time we hear about authority we want to find the exception clause.
Well let's forget the exception for a moment and just say this, kids obey your parents.
Isn't that what it says? Listen to them, listen to their commands.
They're uncomfortable.
Well sometimes they're meant to be.
My parents don't do it the way I would.
They're probably wiser than you.
They've been around longer than you.
They've probably been Christians longer than you.
It is the fool who despises the wisdom of his father.
And therefore there is something important about listening to your parents, children, especially believing children.
Now I have to add a thought here, and I don't want to get into the distinctions between Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists.
We're Reformed Baptists for those who don't know, which means we're a lot like Presbyterians, but I call us deep water Presbyterians.
That's what we are, we're deep water Presbyterians.
So we're Reformed Baptists, which means we actually hold to a Calvinistic soteriology.
We believe in the scripture as the sole infallible rule of faith and practice.
But when it comes to our understanding of the family, there is a distinction.
In Presbyterian theology, the belief is that when a child is born into the home, the child becomes a member of the new covenant by virtue of being born into the home.
Baptist theology, what we would hold, would say a child does not become a member of the new covenant, but by faith, and that you are entered into the covenant not by birth, but by new birth, by regeneration.
So the reality happens is, brothers and sisters, when you have a baby, while that baby is certainly in one sense, 1 Corinthians 7 says they're sanctified because they're born into a Christian home.
They do have a blessing from God to be born into your home.
You're still dealing with a little sinner.
I don't know if I have to say this, but I'll say it anyway.
Your children is a sinner.
Your children are sinners.
If you only got one, he's a sinner, or she.
The same seed of sin that was in Adam is in your little baby.
And we're all raising potential juvenile delinquents.
You weren't ready for that, were you? You say, not my precious little angel.
Let me tell you something.
Yes, your precious little angel.
I always think it's funny when people come to me and we talk about some potential transgression, and they say, well, my child would never do anything like that.
I say, mine would, because they have the same seed of sin that was in Adam.
They have the same seed of sin that was in me.
And I know my proclivities for sin.
I know my failures.
I know the things I struggle with.
And I don't think that they are immune from those same sinful, fleshly struggles, especially as I'm dealing with unbelieving children.
We do not need to look at our kids with rose-colored glasses.
People get angry when I say viper in a diaper.
Take him for the evening.
Ten-month-old.
I'm 43 years old.
What a, get into that.
But if you think that because you're a believer, your children are somehow immune from the sins that plagued you as an unbeliever, then you're sadly mistaken.
This is why we're called to raise them in the fear and instruction of the Lord, the discipline, and I'm going to get to our, I'm going to get to the parents' part in a minute, but I'm just saying, understand who we're dealing with here.
We're dealing with children.
And children are little people.
This is something else to think about.
We're dealing with children who are, people think, you know, oh, just put them on the shelf, watch them grow.
No, you're dealing with a person who has a personality, who has bad days, who has an attitude, who is, even if he's a believer or she's a believer, wrapped in flesh that they're struggling with, same as you.
So Paul speaks to the children first.
He says, children, understand, you have a responsibility, and your responsibility is very simple.
You are to listen to your parents.
You are to obey your parents.
Now, does there ever come a time when that is not the case? Well, let me just say this.
There is a time, there is a time when a child is no longer a child, and there is a time where the authority of the parent shifts.
I talked about it with that authority structure earlier.
There's a time where the authority structure shifts, but there's never a time when the command to honor your father and mother goes away.
So we have to consider it like this.
As a young man becomes a young man, the father has to step back and allow him to become a man.
The mother has to step back and allow him to become a man, same with a young lady.
Now, you still provide instruction and discipline and love and mercy and grace and all of those things, but as they grow, because you've got to prepare them for the next step.
And what's the next step of life? For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother.
Guess what? They're leaving.
I can't even imagine it.
Like I said, I got 25 down to 10 months.
I imagine the 25-year-old will probably leave first, and when she leaves, the structure of her life will change, and the structure of obedience and authority will change.
I'll tell you one of the most difficult things I find in marriage, and this is in 20 years of doing counseling, and I have been doing marriage counseling even before I was a pastor.
I was doing premarital counseling and doing weddings and stuff back when I was a youth pastor, and I was ordained at that time.
This has been 20, I got ordained in 2004.
I'm coming up on 20 years.
In all of those years, there's three things that bring the most problem in a family.
Faith, people who don't believe the same.
Finances, people who can't control their spending.
And family, and it's usually the extended family.
He's got to leave his father and mother, cleave unto his wife.
Those two become one flesh.
They still have a relationship with the parents.
They still honor their mother and father.
And guess what honoring includes, beloved? Caring for your aging parents.
Jesus said that in Matthew chapter 7.
I preached it a week ago.
If you want to go back and listen to our Wednesday night lesson, because Jesus talked to the Pharisees, and he said, you've created a rule.
It was called the Corban rule.
He said, you've created a rule where people don't have to care for their aging parents, and you're denying the word of God.
Because the word of God says, honor your father and mother, and that includes caring for them as they get older.
So that doesn't mean you abandon mom and dad, but you do have a new, amen, you do have a new structure.
The structure changes.
Like I said, I got a lot to say, and I'm running long on point one.
So kids, you come to me, you say, how long do I got to obey my parents? You're going to honor your parents until you die.
If you're a believer, you better honor your parents until you die.
But there will become a structural change when you become a person who is able to be autonomous, meaning you're able to live on your own.
You're able to provide for yourself.
You're no longer underneath their roof.
You're no longer underneath their rules.
But you're still in relationship of honoring your father and your mother.
And the big change comes when you say, I do.
Because for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, shall join unto his wife.
It was, let's say, you leave, I'm sorry, yeah, you leave, you cleave.
Man shall leave his father and mother, shall cleave unto his wife, and the two become a new family.
The two become a new family.
So now let's go to verse 21.
We've seen the children's command, obey your parents.
Now let's look at the father's command.
It says, fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.
And if you just happen to flip over to Ephesians, it says, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
In English, it parallels.
Both of them translate the word provoke.
But there are two different Greek words.
In the Colossians passage, it uses a derivative of the word aris, which means contention, strife, or wrangling.
And in the passage in Ephesians, it uses a word paragizo, which means to rouse, to wrath, or to irritate, or to infuriate, or to, and here's a good one, antagonize.
I think that would be a good translation.
Fathers, don't antagonize your children, because that's what provoking is intending to mean.
As I said before, fathers, you have to remember your children are people.
They're not personality-less pods.
They're little human beings.
They can be embarrassed.
They can be humiliated.
They can be angered.
They can be frustrated.
They can be sad.
They can have a bad day, just like you.
And you expect them and your wife to give you grace when you have a bad day.
But do you give them grace when they have a bad day? Now, I want to say this and say this clearly.
When Paul says, do not provoke your children, he is not saying, do not discipline your children.
If that is the translation you take from that, that Paul saying not to provoke your children means that you're not to discipline your children, understand you are missing everything the Scripture says about being a dad.
Because one of the roles you have as a father is to discipline your children.
And if you're not disciplining your children, do you know what the Bible says? It says you're not loving your children.
He who spares the rod hates his son.
We always hear, spare the rod, spoil the child.
No, he who spareth the rod hateth his son.
People say, oh, I love my child too much to discipline them.
No, you love yourself.
Because it's hard to discipline your kids.
It's hard to make them mine.
It's hard to make them do right.
It's so much easier to not do those things.
And then you wonder why they're incontrollable, uncontrollable when they get too big for spankings.
I know what some of you just, I know what just crossed some of your mind.
Ain't never too big for spanking.
Don't take that away.
That's not what I was getting to.
So what's the difference between provocation and discipline? Provocation means that the father encourages the anger of his son with unreasonable demands, undue harshness, and constant nagging.
I'll say it again.
Unreasonable demands, undue harshness, and constant nagging.
I have watched fathers ridicule their children, scream unrelentingly at their children, constantly and incessantly nag their children.
And I've also watched those children become discouraged with life, discouraged with sports, discouraged with school, and sadly discouraged with faith and discouraged with church.
Because their fathers were provocateurs rather than disciplinarians.
I'm having trouble understanding the difference.
When Andy and I were teaching through Proverbs on Wednesday night, sometime this year, I remember a few months ago, I had the blessing of getting to preach Proverbs 13.24.
Proverbs 13.24 is the passage, whoever spares the rod hates his son.
But it goes on.
It says, Proverbs 13.24, whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.
You know what the word disciple means.
We talk about Jesus and his disciples.
A disciple is a learner.
Jesus said a disciple is not above his teacher.
So you have teachers and you have disciples.
The word discipline comes from the word disciple.
And therefore, our discipline to our children is an exercise of instruction.
It is not an expression of anger, but an exercise of love.
Proverbs 23.13, do not withhold discipline from a child.
And it goes on.
If you strike him with a rod, he will not die.
I like it when people say, oh, the rod here, this isn't talking about spanking your kids.
I've read whole articles about this.
When I taught, when I preached this on Wednesday night, go back and listen.
There's an hour long sermon just on that.
And I read from articles which said, oh, well, the rod here, this is the shepherd carried the crook and he had his rod and the rod wasn't for striking the sheep.
No, it was for guiding the sheep.
And we should never strike our children.
We should only guide our children.
Listen to it again.
Do not withhold discipline from a child.
That is sanctified sarcasm.
Because he's literally saying, if you spank the kid good, it ain't going to kill him.
You don't know what the difference is.
You all know I do.
I teach karate.
I've taught karate for 20 years.
No, 30.
I'm coming up 30 years in karate.
Started in 1994.
And this is a rule that I have.
I've had this rule forever.
When you practice, it should hurt.
But it should never cause injury.
Two people get in and practice together.
If you practice karate together and it don't hurt, you ain't doing it right.
What's the difference? Injury lasts.
Injury is a torn ligament, is a broken bone, is a black eye.
That's injury.
I think that's a pretty safe rule for discipline.
If you spank your kids and it don't hurt, why are you doing it? As my old instructor said, pain makes believers, right? If you spank your kid and it don't hurt, don't spank them.
Do something else.
You ain't doing it right.
But if you are injuring your child, you are abusing them.
And there is no, no excuse for that.
And if you don't know the line, come talk to me.
I'll show you the difference.
I'll get Mike to show you the difference.
He and I both will throw you on the ground, not hurt you.
Unless we want to.
And we won't cause injury unless we choose to.
And a parent who chooses to injure his child is not loving his child.
And discipline can include pain, but it will never include injury.
So I'm giving you, I'm trying to give you some practical things here.
This is very practical in my mind.
Because when Paul says, don't provoke your children, if you interpret that as don't discipline your children, you are going to have children that are unruly.
Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child.
I didn't write that.
Solomon did.
What else? The rod of correction will drive it far from him.
Understand this.
I'm going to put this, I actually had this on the screen, so I'll put it up here just for you to think about.
When we think about this subject of discipline, we think about love.
Sorry, I let it go away, but I do want to show you this.
Discipline is required in love.
If you don't discipline, you don't love.
Therefore, we are to discipline in love.
When we discipline our children, we are to do so in love.
Let me ask you a question.
When you discipline your children, how do you do it? Do you explain to them that this is something that you are doing, not because you hate them, but because you love them? Are you doing this in such a way that you actually explain to them what they've done wrong? Now, this changes as, again, as they mature.
The little ones may not understand the words that are coming out of your mouth, but as they get older, are you coming to an understanding where you're explaining to them that you're doing this for the purpose of glorifying God and building them up and nurture them in admonition of the Lord? Are you doing, are you, you say, I don't have to explain anything, it's my house.
Remember what I said, your children are people.
If somebody just came up and started spanking you and you didn't know why, you call the police.
Yeah, so we have a responsibility as fathers.
This is why, this is that, I go back to the definition of provoking.
Do we provide unreasonable demands? Do we use undue harshness? I remember a lesson I learned years ago.
My daughter taught it to me.
I don't mean to, I never say these kind of things to embarrass my children, so I hope this won't embarrass her, but when Ashley was a little girl, her and Cody were having a problem because they're not perfect and they were arguing with one another or something was happening.
Cody's two years her junior, so she has always felt like the boss and he did something that wrangled her real hard and she yelled at him and I heard my voice come out of her mouth and I didn't like it because I realized she was only responding to him and the way I had been responding to her and the voice that came out of her mouth was coming out of her mouth because that's what was coming out of my mouth and I learned a lesson about how my voice sounds to my children by hearing my voice being echoed by my children and I wish I could say I'm perfect today, I'm not, but I did learn a lesson that day about how I speak to my children.
Fathers, are you provoking your children or are you raising them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord? They're not the same.
Are you going to fail? Yes.
And when you fail, do your children deserve to hear you repent? Yes, they do.
As much as you can call your children and wives to repentance, they too should hear you repent and at times your wife needs to call you to repentance as well.
The position of authority you have is a great one.
You are bound by scripture to love your wife as Christ loves the church and you're bound to raise your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord and that is no small task.
Therefore, therefore we must always be going back to the cross and seeking God's grace in all of this and teaching our children to do the same.
When your children, your believing children fail, do you point them to Christ? And when your unbelieving children fail, do you remind them that there is a Savior who offers salvation to those who believe? This is our job, men.
This is our job, parents.
The relationship in the home is meant to mirror the gospel.
The father is not God but he does have a role which is meant to mirror the relationship of God to his people.
And often when a person has a godly father, they actually can understand better the love of God because they have grown up to experience the love and grace of a father who loves them and gave them grace.
We're called to love our wives as Christ loved the church called to raise our children in the discipline and admonition of the Lord, exercising patience, not provoking them but shepherding their hearts as God shepherds us.
Always pointing them back to Christ and to his gospel.
And the gospel is where we go to find our comfort when we fail.
Brothers, have we failed? Do we need the gospel? The Bible says if you will repent of your sin, confess it, he will cleanse you, forgive you of all unrighteousness.
I pray that we would all go to the Lord today and ask that he draw us closer to him, to his forgiveness, conform us to Christ and help us to trust him more.
Let's pray.
Father, I do thank you for the call of the gospel which says, that though our sins be as scarlet, you have washed them whiter than snow.
Though they be crimson, you have made them like wool.
So I pray today for all the men and women in this room who know that we fail and know where we can find forgiveness.
And I pray for the children in this room who know Christ, where they have failed in obeying their parents, I pray, Lord, that they would repent and that they would seek forgiveness.
Where relationships are broken or relationships are tenuous or relationships are struggling, I pray that you would bring them back together through forgiveness and grace.
And Lord, where there are unbelievers, I pray that they would understand that everything that has been said about the father and the home and all of these things all point to one great reality, and that is that we have a father in heaven who loved us so much that he sent his son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but will have everlasting life.
That they would understand that salvation is not predicated on what we do, but predicated on the work of God in our hearts, whereby we come to faith in the work of Christ and what he has done for us.
And we pray all this in Jesus' name.