FATHERS DISCIPLINE WELL EPHESIANS 6:4

Worshiping the Ancient of Days

Goldie with Goldie, let's sing. I declare Your throne, I put Your throne in worship. You'll be exalted, O God, in Your kingdom. O ancient nation by the ship, You'll be exalted, O God, in Your kingdom of tears.

Your kingdom, Your kingdom shall reign over all the earth. Well, none can compare to Your matchless work. Oh, every tongue in heaven and earth shall declare Your glory. Everything shall bow at Your throne in worship.

You'll be exalted, O God, in Your kingdom. I will be unto the ancient.

Hey, welcome. Welcome to the Lord's Day Gathering. Are you excited to be here? Yes, I'm excited. We've come together to worship, as Daniel referred. And Daniel 7, as we just declared, the Ancient of Days.

And some of you may remember that song. We brought a very old song back. To some of you, it may be new. But that is an old song the church has been singing for decades now. Basically, what this means, the Ancient of Days is acknowledging that our God is the preexistent, everlasting creator of all.

There is none before Him. There is none after Him. All other so-called gods being worshiped today had a beginning. Our God, the one true triune God, is the beginning and the end.

Amen? Amen.

The world may not want to acknowledge that fact. They suppress the truth in their unrighteousness, as some of our saints came yesterday and saw downtown as they paraded sin. And many of our brothers and sisters came here to pray and then also went out there to share the good news of the gospel.

And we pray that that was fruitful. Many don't want to acknowledge God for who He is, Bo, but for those of us, saints, those of us that have tasted and seen that He's good, through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit awaking in us, bringing us from death to life, through the power of the blood of Christ redeeming us, we now see Him for who He is.

We acknowledge Him as being the Ancient of Days. And for those of us who are in Christ today, we come boldly before Him, don't we? We get to come before that Ancient of Days, the one true triune God, the creator of all things.

He is no longer, if we are in Christ today, hear me, saints, He is no longer your judge and executioner. He is your heavenly Father. That's good news. That's good news. We can come and worship Him as such.

Praise God, there are no others all over the world that there are saints just like us gathering to worship us as we try and acknowledge every single week as we pray for a local church. And today we would love to pray for one that we've prayed for in the past, First Baptist Church of Lepanto.

As a matter of fact, if you look around, Pastor Jeremiah is not here today. He is actually filling the pulpit for RJ over there. His good friend, Pastor RJ Platts is the pastor at First Baptist. And RJ is on a mission trip and has asked if we could fill the pulpit there.

And Jeremiah has gone over to do so. And so we wanna pray for those saints this morning. We wanna pray for Pastor Jeremiah as he's preaching. And we wanna pray for them that God would work in their midst, pray for their leadership, for Pastor RJ and all involved.

So if you wouldn't mind, please, before we start our worship, let's bow our heads, let's pray for them. Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you. Thank you for your gracious mercy in our lives. We thank you for redeeming us and bringing us into the household of faith with a Heavenly Father that loves us, with a Savior who redeems us and allows us his righteousness so that we can be made sons and heirs.

Lord, we pray this morning for our brothers and sisters at First Baptist Church there in Lepanto. Lord, I pray you be with them. I pray that you work in their hearts, that you sanctify them, that you who began a good work in them would see it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus as you promised.

Lord, we pray for Pastor RJ as he's on his mission trip or keep him safe. Allow that to be fruitful there. I believe he's in Guatemala. Lord, I pray that you open up gospel opportunities for him to speak the truth and awaken those hearers.

We got to pray for the brothers and sisters that are here at the church there in First Baptist and that you would mature them, grow them, guide them, give them discernment. We have Pastor Jeremiah as he proclaims your word to them today.

I pray that you give him boldness and clarity of thought. I pray that you would speak through your word, mold and guide. Do the work that only you can do, Lord. We thank you for them. Help them to know our great love for them that feeds from your great love for us.

In Christ's name, amen.

Amen.

You may be seated. We actually have something before we get into a call to worship. We have an exciting time. Spencer and Angela, come on up here. We're gonna squeeze up. This may seem like deja vu to some of you old ones here.

Spencer and Angela were members of 12 .5 near the beginning. We were over at the old building. They're meeting it on our property and they were committed members. Spencer had been playing the cajon and the band.

It basically for a while, it was just me and you and then me and you and Karen. But God moved them to Memphis and they thought, man, we're gonna go to Memphis. We're gonna find a good, healthy church.

And how many churches did y 'all attend? Numerous ones, right? Five or six and researching. And they kept calling me like, hey, what do you think of this one? Let's, I wanna look into this one. And then God blessed them with an expansion of their family, right?

And so that, you know how that is parents. That kind of changes your perspective. And they thought, man, Jonesboro is a place we wanted to get away from. We wanted to go to a bigger city in Memphis and then realizing church, the massive importance of a church body and a healthy church.

And correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not sharing y 'all story, right? I'm just trying to give a synopsis of it. And in the meantime, He would call, they would come over, they'd spend time with us and chat until finally they were like, we gotta move back.

I don't know what we're gonna do for work. We don't know how we're gonna do this, but we're gonna move back because we wanna be a part of a healthy church body. And I'm grateful. I've been praying that that would happen, but God had changed their hearts through circumstances and through seeing that there is a drought, there is a famine in the land of healthy church.

And King Jesus is worthy of a healthy church, is He not? And so I'm not saying we're the pinnacle of church. 12 .5 has its warts, trust me. We are only redeemed by Christ. But we are seeking to say, okay, what does King Jesus say to do?

How does King Jesus say to structure? How does King Jesus say to function? Let's try that. We're not gonna do it perfectly, but we're gonna try to do that. And He's drawn Spencer and Angela back. They wanted to go through the new member class again, so we did a one-on-one kind of condensed thing.

And unfortunately, I'm not giving you another Bible. That's not happening, right? We're not, you're not getting that. I've told them jokingly, they only moved away so that they could come back and get another Bible.

But that's not gonna happen. But we as the elders, we would love to present Spencer and Angela back to 12 .5 for affirmation to become covenant members once again. They've signed the membership covenants again.

They know exactly what they're stepping into and the commitment and involvement in that. So members of 12 .5, if you affirm Spencer and Angela becoming part of this covenant body, once again, please stand.

Amen.

Guys, I'm excited to see how God works in y 'all's lives now. You're in now. You gotta move back at this point.

By the way, yes,.

They are driving from Memphis every weekend to come be here on Sundays until they can get moved over. So be in prayer for them. But let's pray for them now. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your grace and mercy.

We thank you for how, King Jesus, you are raising up and growing your church. Lord, you have gifts and specific unique people that you have called to come be a part of this particular body. And Lord, we ask that you would be with Spencer and Angela.

Lord, bless their families as their family is growing. Lord, give them wisdom and discernment. Lord, I pray that we could be a great blessing to them because I know they are going to be a great blessing to us.

We thank you for your providence in Christ's name.

Amen. Amen.

Awesome.

Welcome, guys. Everybody, you can stand. Let's start off our service. Let's get to it.

Are you ready?

I'm ready to worship. We gotta start with a call to worship. We're not just gonna say, oh, well, we're just gonna start. We're gonna start with his words and a read in response. And our call to worship comes from a portion of Psalm 119.

Don't worry, we're not doing the whole of Psalm 119, only a few of the verses. But there's a section in here, verses 89 through 96, that we want to remind ourselves of the glorious truths of the God that we worship this morning.

And the Psalm, it says, forever, oh Lord, your word, your faithfulness endures to all generations. By your appointment, they stand this day. If your law had not been my delight, I will never forget your precepts.

I am yours, save me. Oh, the wicked lie in wait to destroy me. I have seen a limit to all perfection. Oh, your commandment is exceedingly broad. There's a limit to all other things. There is no limit to the creator God.

We worship this morning. Let's pray a prayer of adoration to that great God who is broad and limitless. Dear heavenly Father, we bow before you once again. Oh God, we humble ourselves before you because we are but the creature.

You are the creator God. There is no limit to you. Your precepts stand and are forever. They are good. Your law is good and righteous. For you are good and righteous. It is merely a reflection of you.

We long to know you more today. Oh, Father, I pray that you would grow us in the fear and knowledge of you. Mold our hearts and minds that they may be renewed by your truth and your word. I pray that as we sing these truths about you, that our hearts would just be exuberantly excited for the glory of who you are.

I pray that as we look around, as we sing, we're to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to each other. This isn't one-on-one time us and you, Lord. This is corporate. This is your children, the brothers and sisters, coming together to worship your great name.

All creatures of our God and King call upon the name of our Lord. All creatures. And we, as your children, long to be among the stars that declare your glory, the mountains that declare your magnificence, the ocean that declares your immense glory.

Oh, but we, being your image-bearers and then adopted as your children, what great mercy. May we worship you all the more.

The Lord Disciplines Those He Loves

All creatures of our God and King voice them with a sea. Praise him, alleluia, son of the golden king. It comes from Hebrews chapter 12, verses 3 through 11.

It says, consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son who he receives.

It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them.

Bo, but he disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

This is God's word. Oh, and it's good saying we are, if we are children, Christ Jesus is disciplining us. Our father is disciplining us. The Holy Spirit is disciplining us and he is working within our hearts.

If you are not dealing with discipline from your sin, then maybe we need to reevaluate because he chastens those that he loves. And you know what that implies, guys? The writer of Hebrews putting this in here that we are disciplined.

What are we disciplined from?

Sin.

There's therefore no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. We never suffer the condemnation of sin. Oh, but we are chastened from a good father that is loving us. But what are we chastened from?

What are we disciplined from?

Sin.

Meaning you and I keep sinning. That's the fact, isn't it? I do, you do. That's why we often like to pray a prayer of confession and assurance when we come together, reminding ourselves we must confess our sins.

We must acknowledge them. Oh, but, oh, there's assurance and we are chastened in them. And we learn from it. And we seek to be more like our Savior Christ. So please bow with me as we pray this prayer of confession and assurance.

Father, we come before you once again. And now we want to acknowledge our frailty. We want to acknowledge this flesh that is warring within us. We do the things we don't want to do. We don't do the things we want to do.

Oh, who will deliver us from this wretched flesh? Oh, we sin. We fall short. Oh, but God, your chastening, loving, gracious hand does not allow us to stay in it. You discipline us. You care for us. You pull us back in.

You go, you leave the 99 and you go after the one. And you bring us back into the fold and you care for us. Oh, we are so grateful because we stand righteous. We hold fast to the fact that you promise there is no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus, covered by the blood of Christ this morning.

And that leads us to want to just confess our sin even the more. You've already forgiven it. But there's already perfect forgiveness. You've thrown it as far as the east is from the west. And you work in our hearts.

And we thank you. And we'll be honored in our worship this morning as we are confronted with that great truth. For you are a great God. You are good and kind and gracious. And we long to sing of your greatness this morning in Christ's name.

So grateful for this opportunity.

This chance Lord that you've blessed us with to come and gather as brothers and sisters as saints Lord and worship and praise you Lord. Lord, I'm so grateful and thankful for my salvation. That I cannot be moved.

Perfect salvation. Lord, I pray this morning Lord that you would just continue to bless this service. Lord, I just pray that you would just use Pastor Nathan this morning as a mouthpiece and speak through him Lord.

And just give us open hearts and open minds and open our ears Lord. Lord, I pray that you would bless our offering this morning as we take it up Lord. I just, we're so grateful.

We praise you. We love you.

We ask all these things in your son Jesus precious and holy name. In Jesus name, amen.

Fathers Must Not Provoke Their Children

To the seventh and final week of our little mini series here God's design for the family as we've been working through Ephesians and come to this section. And I pray that for those of you that have been able to be here as part of it that it's been beneficial for you.

I know it has been beneficial in my life as I've prepared for these. And I've spoken with many of you in here who have shared with me just some, maybe some changes and even some repentance in your own lives for falling prey to the world's distortion of God's good design.

And you're seeking to align your lives to his truth, to his precepts, to his good design. And praise the Lord for that. I see the Holy Spirit working in many of your hearts and lives and in your families in that process.

However, today is the final one. I want to give warning. There is a danger when teaching on matters such as this. There's a great danger and that is our flesh are legalistic, self-righteous, do better, be better, follow the rules propensity that often overrides and are overwhelming, never-ending dependence upon the Spirit.

As Paul had said back in chapter five, to be being filled with the Spirit, not other things. And we forget that often. All of this designed by God for the family, husbands leading and loving well, wives submitting and honoring, children obeying are in no way in and of themselves principles of promise, success, and happiness.

You get that, right? They are in no way principles of like a promised guarantee of happiness and success. As a matter of fact, I've said it before, for those of you that maybe are not regenerate, that are unbelievers, you are completely incapable of following it at all.

Unbelievers can't even follow these principles. If they were principles of promise, even unbelievers would gain the benefit from them, but they are incapable of following. Fathers who are unbelievers cannot love and lead.

Mothers who are unbelievers cannot respect and honor. Children who are unbelievers cannot truly honor and obey as God has called them to do. Only those who have been freed from sin, and hear me out, freed to righteousness, that's a key, because once you're freed from sin, you're freed to righteousness.

You don't even have the capacity to follow God's precepts, yet. Even though we have the capacity, we know that we don't always do it. And sometimes we think we're doing it, we're doing it outwardly, and we're doing it from wrong motive.

Because we still have this warring flesh within us, don't we? Always combating and always allowing the distortion of the world and sin to affect how we see things. Meaning, for example, I want my family to function as God designed so that my family can be healthy, productive, and happy.

Let's be honest, when we come to precepts in Scripture, these outworkings of the theology that we study, when we come to them, sometimes we want to follow them because we're hoping for some sort of external outcome.

That's our motive. Instead of, I want my family to function as God has designed as an act of worship from a heart of thanksgiving to my God and Savior. So that he and he alone may receive the glory and honor from my obedience.

Knowing that the result of that worship through my obedience will be a family that is healthy, productive, and joyful. You see it? Because it's God's good design. So saints, hear me now. This is essentially my warning.

Don't get the cart before the horse. Do not make his precepts your God. Do not make them the object of your attention. Do not fixate on the gift and lose sight of the gift giver. We see those gifts and we see these precepts and we are to do so in proper order.

Why do you love God's good design for the family? Why do you love what we've been talking about over the past seven weeks? Why do you love these things? Many of you have come to me and said, man, I love this.

This is great truth. This is great truth. I'm not reading into your heart. I'm asking the question. Do you love it for what it does for you and your family? Or because it's a reflection of him? There's a big distinction between those two.

One of them, you're actually walking in those precepts and the other you're not. You're just giving some sort of an outward adherence to them. The intentions of our hearts are rarely as exposed in this area of idolatry as they are in our topic and verse for today.

As a matter of fact, open your copy of God's word, Ephesians chapter six. Ephesians six. We're going to be looking at verse four. Two weeks ago, we saw verses one through three. We talked about children obeying your parents and the Lord for this is right.

And then he talks about the commandment of honor your father and mother that your days may be long and you may be blessed essentially. And then by the time he gets into verse four here, he kind of switches gears a little bit.

He's no longer talking to the children. He now turns his attention to the father. And then in verse four there, chapter six of Ephesians, he says, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

This is the reading of God's perfect, holy, inspired word. I would ask that you would pray with me once again, that our hearts and minds would be illuminated to its truth. Oh Lord, as we do every week, we bow before you.

And we acknowledge our frailty and our propensity to distort your good, clear, precise words. We misunderstand them. We read our perspective into them. Do not allow us to do so today. Guard us from that.

Guard my lips from error. I pray that I do not overstep, that I only speak what is truth from the text. Lord, be with those here. Guard their ears. Help them to be discerning. Lord, Holy Spirit, illuminate our hearts and minds to your truth.

In Christ's name, amen. Well, as I said a moment ago, this topic of discipline, specifically involving our children, it really has a way of exposing our idols in a unique way. And it's probably because of, let's be honest, how much emotion.

For those of you that are parents in here that have children, there's so much emotion and love and compassion that's all wrapped into it. There's tension, right? You know what it's like raising children.

There's tension at times. It can be intense. There's a lot of expectations in it because this is your child. These are your children. You want what's best for them. All of these things are intertwined within our relationship with our children.

So much so that some of us even make idols out of our children themselves. The human heart is a perpetual idol factory. We're constantly placing things on the throne of our heart that don't belong there.

And sometimes we place our children there. After all, Scripture speaks of children as a gift and a blessing. And I think of Psalm 127. Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb, a reward.

Children are a gift, a good and amazing and wonderful gift to a parent. So it's only natural that our love for them and our desire for their well-being is a driving force in our lives. But again, we must not disproportionately elevate the gift above the gift-giver.

We're constantly guarding ourselves as Christians from this. And since children are such an amazing gift, that even Scripture acknowledges what an amazing gift, that temptation is great. I will acknowledge that.

There's a great temptation for us. And what does our flesh do when we turn a good thing into an ultimate thing? You get what I mean by that, don't you? We take a good thing, meaning a good gift like children, and we turn it into a God that we worship.

We turn a good thing into an ultimate thing. What happens to that gift? When we turn a good gift into an ultimate God, what happens to that gift? We destroy it. You realize that, right? What you worship, you destroy.

That gift cannot bear the weight of being your God.

It can't.

Your child cannot bear the weight of that worship. Your neediness will destroy that child. Their shoulders can't bear it. Only the gift-giver, the creator God, is worthy and capable of your worship. That's it.

Everything else will be crushed under your neediness. And even when our children are not our idol, because they're not always. Some of us don't struggle in that area. Some may not. Some may at different times.

But even when they're not our idol, they are still a reflection of us. That's how we perceive them, right? When your child is acting out in the grocery store, what do you feel? You feel embarrassment.

You feel a reflection on you because your child is a reflection of you. And so, whatever you worship, whatever your God is, whether it's your career, whether it's your spouse, whether it's your image and your reputation, whether it's your church, whatever it may be, whatever your God is, we will demand that our children conform to the image of that God.

That's just the reality, isn't it? You will demand that your children conform to the image of the God you worship. They're a reflection of you. You don't think that's true? Just look around, guys. Look in your own lives.

Look at others. Look at how families who worship financial success in their career disciple and raise their children. It's a reflection of them. Look at how families who worship athleticism disciple and raise their children.

It's a reflection of them. Look at how families who worship the church disciple and raise their children. Children obey their parents as we saw two weeks ago. What are the standards, expectations, and values that are to be obeyed?

That is what they are being disciplined and discipled in to be conformed to the image of your God. This is why I believe that Paul immediately addresses the fathers after commanding the children to obey to help us disciple our children into obedience to the right things.

That's important. And Paul does so with two approaches as Paul often does, as we've seen so far in this letter. He starts with a negative command, and he follows that up with a positive command. Let's look at the negative command.

The negative command. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. I think we've got some slides up here.

Yep.

Fathers Must Nourish, Discipline, and Instruct

Fathers, discipline well. A negative command. The first thing I want us to see as far as this negative command is a father's responsibility. Notice, it says fathers, not parents, not mothers. Now, this word in the Greek that Paul used, it can be translated parents.

As a matter of fact, we see it translated parents one other time in the New Testament. In Hebrews 11 .23, speaking of Moses' parents, it says, by faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his.

And it's the same Greek word that we see for fathers over here, but it's translated parents in this passage. However, this, like I said, is the only other time this word's translated into anything but father.

And it's done so because of the context referring it in the plural. Meaning, because the passage goes on, it says, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.

So this word was translated to parents here. But in almost every other case in the New Testament, this word is referring to fathers. Now, does that mean that mothers are exempt from this command? Of course not.

That's not what it means at all. As a matter of fact, we see all through wisdom literature and the Proverbs, hear my son your father's instructions, and forsake not your mother's teaching. The mother has a role.

This is repeated all through Proverbs. A mother most certainly has a responsibility to teach and disciple and discipline her children. And there are cases where a father is not present in the home. We know that.

And the mother assumes full responsibility of this. We understand broken situations, yet that is not God's good design. The design is that the father, the patriarch, is the one that God has given the great responsibility of leadership within that home.

As we pointed out a few weeks ago, husbands are the head of their family, whether they like it or not. It's not a recommendation. It's not even a command in Scripture that the husband is the head of the household.

It's a given. It's a fact. They are either a good leader, or a bad one. But a leader nonetheless, right? And so when Paul addresses the fathers here, he is assuming that the father is the one who is setting the pace, the values, and the culture in that home when it comes to everything.

You hear me, right? We don't see much of that today, do we? But even though you don't see it, and you see the mother setting the pace and the culture in the home, trust me, the father is actually the one doing it because his neutral passivity is creating that pace and culture.

So anytime it's the father, it's the husband. And specifically in this context of discipline. In my home, my wife has the authority to discipline and instruct our children. She does it every single day because she represents me in the home.

I've told my children many times, I'm like, if your mother says it, it is as if it came from my very mouth because we are one flesh and she is representing me in the home. Bad fathers shrug off this responsibility.

They leave it to their wives. Mom always has to be the bad guy when it comes to discipline. We see a lot of that, don't we? That's our culture's mindset. Dad is passive. These types of men have fooled themselves into thinking they actually love their children.

It's sad. They seem very loving fathers. They seem like they care for their children. They seem like they want to provide for their families. But scripture tells us otherwise. And I'm gonna go with scripture.

I'm not gonna go with what he's trying to convince me of. Proverbs 13, 24. Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. These types of men are selfish, hateful idolaters no matter how kind and loving they may seem.

They may seem like a good father, but if they do not discipline their children,.

Diligently, they hate their child.

They only care about themselves and their very own children are being delivered up as a sacrifice to that man's God. It's how much he hates them in comparison to his love of his idol. But a father who loves his children is one that sees his responsibility in light of the revealed will of God in his word and cares enough to guard his children from harm.

Through the means of discipline and training. That is a father's love. Anything short of that is hatred. The father under the headship of Christ and through the guidance of the Holy Spirit is responsible to set the trajectory of discipline in the home and the mother follows suit.

You get that, right? We've been hounding on that the past few weeks. This is the design by God. Nevertheless, us fathers often do it wrong. I do. I fall short a lot. Far more than I would like to just come up here and admit.

And I know you do too. We fall short. That's why we needed this negative command. That's why we needed this father's responsibility. And the second thing I want us to see about this negative command is a father's propensity.

Look at the text again. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. Over in a correlating text in Colossians 3, we've referenced it a few times, but Colossians 3, 21, Paul says the same thing, but he goes on, gives us some insight into what he means here.

He says, fathers, do not provoke your children.

Why?