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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Colossians 3:21
Church Retreat 2025
So we're gonna go, yeah, very well done. So now we're going to go into some teaching time, okay? So tonight we're going to consider the second part of this whole focus on discipleship in the home. This is not something I take lightly, and it's certainly not something I come to you in confidence to speak.
It's like when a preacher says, I'm here to teach you about personal holiness. It's like, am I really the one that can speak? How could I possibly do that? There is a certain intimidation of just how challenging this topic is personally.
It's not easy to be a parent. So it's intimidating to suppose that I would have other people listen to me on this topic when perhaps I'm in a room where I need to sit down and take notes from some of you.
So I certainly feel that personal intimidation. But there's also, not just my own personal intimidation, there's also the intimidation of challenging other parents in the room in these very things. It's intimidating, and part of that is because of how we feel the weight and how perhaps we react when our parenting is confronted, when our parenting is challenged.
And that is very intimidating to me as well. One of the greatest theological minds that America ever produced was Jonathan Edwards. And Jonathan Edwards, in part, was chased out of his ministry in Northampton because he confronted children, and he confronted the parents of those children.
And so it's intimidating to deal with these things. But we're talking about discipleship in the home. So I certainly come humbly and with some level of trepidation, but I also want to come off encouraging.
And I hope that you'll leave the session this evening feeling both challenged and encouraged, as I've been both challenged and encouraged, preparing and thinking through these things. We're talking about discipleship in the home.
We recognize that in many ways, the home is ground zero for the effects of the fall. If you don't believe me, read Genesis. The home, family life, is ground zero for the effects of fall. The effects of sin first rear their ugly head in the home, in the family life, ever since Adam and Eve.
And to this day, sin is never more prevalent and impactful to our lives than in the place that we spend the majority of our time, in the place we spend the majority of our energy, in the place we spend the majority of our resources, in the place we spend the majority of our hopes.
And that is the home. So in some ways, I come to you this evening to talk about parenting, and I say, who's gonna cast the first stone, right? Who dares speak on this topic? Every home is dysfunctional to some degree.
Every individual has indwelling sin, and every individual with that indwelling sin dwells somehow, in some way, in a home. So our homes are affected, are impacted by indwelling sin. Every home is fraught with challenges.
In some of your homes, you have absurd expectations of what you think your family life, your marriage will be like, your work, the very things that we're addressing. As we said earlier today, these passages pinpoint where the grind is, where the pinch is, where the real challenge and difficulty of our flesh, waging war against the spirit, begin to occur.
Every home has abrasive personalities at times, selfish attitudes, harsh words, long days, sleepless nights, dirty diapers, feuding siblings, and on it goes, but by God's grace, though the home is ground zero for the effects of the fall ever since Genesis 3, by God's grace, the home can become ground zero to the blessings and encouragements of life.
Some of the most profound joys will come in the home. And parenting, then, can become not just a calling, not just a chore, not just a burden, but a blessing, and that's the encouragement that we need to have as we embark on these things.
The verse that's guiding some of this discussion is from Colossians 3, 21. Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. Now, the parallel, we saw the same with Ephesians 6. The parallel in Ephesians 6, 4 is, and you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.
So you don't have provocation in either of these passages, but the provocation has a different reason attached to it. In Colossians 3, don't provoke your children because you don't want them to be discouraged.
In Ephesians 6, don't provoke your children because you don't want them to be angry. You don't want them to be full of wrath. So that's the passage in front of us that addresses parenting. Again, just like this morning, three parts that we're going to look at this passage, calling, character, and commitment.
So we begin with calling. Notice first that Paul speaks to fathers. Fathers. He does it here, he does it in Ephesians 6. Fathers, do not provoke your children. Why begin with fathers? As we'll see toward the end of the message, he'll have a lot to show about the role of the mother in the home, but here, in addressing children and addressing parents, he's speaking primarily to fathers.
Why?
Well, fathers set the order of the home. Ironically, they're not at home, many of us, not at home as much as the mother and the children, and yet the father sets the order of the home. Or at least we could say, the father must take ultimate responsibility for the order of the home.
The father is the one to whom God requires account. And this is clear from Colossians 3. This is clear from Ephesians 6. The father sets the tone. The father is the one where the buck stops, as far as the Lord is concerned.
But of course we recognize, and we'll have time to see, much of the substance of the home, much of the way the home is characterized,.
Belongs to the mother.
And that means that in parenting, the unity of marriage is pressed. Where a mother, where a father are not on the same page, are not working from a place of unity, are not finding their identity together as one flesh in Christ, the home will begin to take on all sorts of characteristics that flow out of that disunity, out of that disjunct.
The call within marriage and through marriage toward children is remarkably similar to the call that we have toward any others that we witness to. Let me say that again. The call within marriage and through marriage toward children is remarkably similar to the call we have toward anyone else that we're witnessing to.
Now of course with children,.
There's much more responsibility, much more emotion, much more energy. It's intimate, it's laborious, it's consequential. We feel the weight of that in a way we'd never feel it toward anyone else. But it may be helpful to think of parenting as a very intensive form of disciple-making.
That's what you're doing, mom and dad. You're making disciples. You happen to have a captive audience. Unlike the coworker or the person on the street, they can't just politely ignore you, right? They live with you and they depend on you.
They're a captive audience that you are engaged in forming as disciples, as followers of the Lord Jesus. So it may be helpful to think of parenting in this way. In this relation, you are being used by God to form a human soul and direct them toward the ways and the word of God.
Now by extension, that's what you do to anyone else that the Lord puts in your path by his providence. You just do it in an intensive and more consistent way with your children. The reason this is difficult is because believing parents instinctively feel the weight of responsibility, more or less, and then they're tempted to centralize their identity with their parenthood.
Believing parents instinctively feel the weight of responsibility, more or less, some more than others, and are tempted to centralize their identity as parents. Now there's something right about that.
You are a father, a mother. If you're a parent in this connection, there's something gloriously true about that. This is part of who you are in the Lord. The Lord has a lot to teach you. Part of you being his disciple will actually flow out in these very ways.
You'll learn a lot more about God and a lot more about yourself as you seek to be a mother and a father to children. This is part of your path of discipleship as well. There's something gloriously true about the fact that your identity has as an aspect the fact that you are a parent.
This is something that indelibly shapes your life. C .S. Lewis said, the homemaker has the ultimate career. And notice what he's saying here. He doesn't even say the parent. It's much broader than that.
The homemaker. The homemaker, he says, has the ultimate career. In fact, every other career exists for this one purpose only. It is to support the ultimate career. And prior to the Industrial Revolution, it would be absurd to think that a plumb man was going out to sow seed or harvest crops and had in his mind, my wife, my children, everything back at the homestead simply exists for me to be able to sow seed and harvest these crops.
He would have never thought in that way. My wife, my children, my concern as a parent, my joys, my hopes, my needs, my fears, all of those things in the home, they really exist just to support me out here in the farm.
Of course, it would have been obvious. The farm, the sowing, the harvesting, all of that exists to support the homestead, to support the parenting, to support the next generation. And all that is bound within that.
So C .S. Lewis is tapping into that. The homemaker has the ultimate career. It's the ultimate end. The 250th anniversary that took place in Concord and Lexington. I noticed that the website for that had a little shop.
And one of the things they sold were little baby onesies. And on it was this logo for the 250th anniversary. And it said, revolutions start here. That's a gloriously true statement. It's ironic that they're selling baby onesies in a dark blue state like Massachusetts.
But nonetheless, they had this right sentiment. Revolutions start here. And the irony is it's on a baby shirt. That's a right way to think. This is where change occurs generationally. And it comes down, bears upon the shoulders of mom and dad.
The proverbial saying, the hand that rocks the cradle shakes the world. So how do you regard your children? Again, we're speaking positively here. We're gonna look at another aspect of this in a moment.
But just as a baseline, how do you regard your children as a parent? Do you view them as God's blessing to you? Do you see them as an integral part of the way he is now discipling you, even as you seek to make disciples out of them?
Have you let your children know that this is your desire for them? Have you told them how much you thank God for them, for the work that he's done in your life as a result of having them? The fact that their presence in your life has opened you up to find all new ways of God's presence in your life.
Not to give them a princess complex, but to instill in them this glorious fact that they were created by a loving and sovereign God for his purpose, not for your own, not even for their own, but for his purpose.
That's the glorious positive aspect about this aspect of identification as mom and dad. But there's a temptation and a danger. The temptation and the danger is to find your identity in your children rather than in Christ.
That's what chases Jonathan Edwards out of the Northampton congregation. Parents that were so identified with children, so identified with the fact that they were parents that they couldn't handle any sort of challenge, any sort of exhortation, anything coming between them and their children.
How dare you?
And the temptation and danger is that a parent will find their all in being a parent. A parent will so identify themselves with their children that they no longer identify themselves as in Christ. And in Christ, raising children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
To the degree that we struggle in this area, we may be far more easily offended, far more prone to vindicate ourselves when it comes to our children. It may touch on the fact that something idolatrous is lurking in the way you conceive of parenthood.
You're not thinking fully rightly about what it means to be a parent in light of Christ. A symptom of this would be anything negative about them automatically means something negative about you. Now, of course, there are areas where parents need to take responsibility and they need to deal with those things that they see in their children, that perhaps others see in their children.
But let it be said, it should come as no surprise that we are parenting sinners. We're not making sinners. We're parenting sinners. Remember what we said this morning. There's two ways to live, not a fork in the road that you're looking at which side you wanna go.
You're just born on the wrong path. You're born in Adam's sin. The only way to get off that path is to actually repent and believe on Christ and begin to follow him along the path of wisdom that leads to life.
Well, the same idea is our children weren't born neutral and then because we're such lousy parents, we're making them sin. It's not to exonerate the fact that parents have a responsibility to deal with sin, but you're not making sinners, you're parenting sinners.
And may you be reminded, you're parenting sinners as sinners. And so you start to see how pivotal it is to identify yourself in Christ. This will come back to you at several junctures in this talk. I was reminded of a video of an interrogation room.
So you have law enforcement officers, right? And they're trained when they're interviewing suspects, they're trained with all sorts of responses to try to have a psychological effect. And one of them, I've probably watched way too many of these.
I don't know why, it's kind of an odd fascination. But I'm always amazed that an interrogator can spend like six hours slowly drawing out information from this master strategy that they have. And in these videos often, they're dealing with someone who's a suspect for a triple homicide.
And almost invariably in that interview, they say, you know, I can tell you're not a bad person. I know you're a good person. And I know you wanna tell me where those victims are, right? It's like, you're not a bad person.
It's like, if this is not a bad person, nobody's a bad person, right? Now, of course, it's manipulation. They're trying to sort of help them think, well, there is something redeemable I can do here. I can at least confess, right?
That's the desire. On some ways, parents can be so identified with their children and so cover over sins rather than deal with sins that essentially everyone in their life has to go, everything's really good, right?
Or a parent can't deal with their child in that way. No, it's all fine. I can tell they're actually really good. The call of a parent is to deal with the truth. Dealing with the truth means, who am I in Christ?
But dealing with the truth also means, who is my child outside of Christ? I'm parenting a sinner. My goal is to bring that sinner up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and to such a degree, call them to say, come to Christ.
But I can't do that if I'm not dealing with truth. If I'm identifying myself with them, then I won't be able to deal with them rightly. I need to identify myself in Christ and I need to understand my child is presently outside of Christ.
The problem is our joy ought to be tied to this and it rarely is. Our joy ought to be tied to the fact that our children, one day, Lord willing, will be able to walk in the truth and to some degree, at different turns and in different ways, you begin to see your children take small steps in the path of faith.
3 John 4, the apostle says, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in truth. Again, John loves to talk about the church as children. And he says, my chief joy is that my children walk in truth.
That's my chief joy. I'm able to have that joy because I've told them the truth from the beginning. I told them the truth when they weren't walking in the truth. I've always identified myself with Christ.
My greatest joy is secure in Him and there's no greater joy I have as a parent than to see my children walking in His truth. So for parents, that's the chief joy. That's another way of checking the symptoms of how you understand yourself, how you understand the call to parent.
Some parents have Christian children.
Who are walking in the truth.
And it's not even in the top three of what would be the chief joy for them. Yeah, I'm glad they're Christians. I just wish they could be a little more successful in life. I wish that they were following through on their potential.
I wish that they had a little more acclaim. I wish that that relationship worked out. Their greatest joy is not that they're walking in the truth. It probably says something about how they're identifying themselves as a parent and how they're identifying their child.
This is the greatest joy, but this great joy only comes with hard labor. In another place, Paul the Apostle in Galatians 6, he gives a maternal image. He often does this at a few places in his letters.
He says, my little children, he's speaking to the Galatians, the church, my little children for whom I labor until Christ is formed in you. So he wants the joy too of seeing them come to this path of truth.
And he says, I labor until that comes. So it's hard work to identify yourself in Christ and call your children to come to Christ, to labor in prayer, to labor in faithful display of the gospel in such a way that Christ will be formed in them.
That's labor. But as we said earlier this morning, you must continue in the things which you've learned. If that's true for children, it's certainly true for parents. You must continue. You must continue in these very ways.
When Paul was writing that to Timothy in 2 Timothy, and he said, you must continue in the things which you've learned, the things that you've known from your childhood, when you had scripture being given to you.
He reminds Timothy that that was first received by his grandmother and his mother. When I call to remembrance your faith, which is in you, he tells Timothy, I remember it first dwelt in your grandmother and in your mother.
And I'm persuaded it's in you also. That was faithful labor. That came from Lois and Eunice being identified in Christ and calling Timothy to come. Come, follow Christ. That's the calling of parents. The calling to call.
That's the discipleship of parents. The discipleship to disciple. And he's going to use that calling to sanctify you. Just like he uses all of the difficult labors for the sake of the next generation toward the advance of his kingdom.
Part of this, when you remember your calling, God is never going to bring you to a task or call you to a duty that he's not also giving you what you need to do that. He himself goes with you in the things he sends.
So secondly, let's talk about character.
That's the call.
Identifying yourself in Christ, recognizing your children are out of Christ. You are trying to make them into disciples as you raise them in the fear and nurture of the Lord. Let's talk about character.
We talked about the character of children. What about the character of parents? Well, child experts have a lot of articles and books and blurbs, and they write a lot of statements about what parents ought to do and how parents ought to be.
I can tell you, generally speaking, child experts are the farthest thing from child experts. Just run for the hills if someone says,.
I'm a child expert.
I'm here to help you with your children. That's like a chef who has no taste buds and has only ever seen pictures of food telling you, I can tell you everything about how to cook. It's like, I don't think you could tell me the first thing.
About how to cook.
Of course, what they miss is what we know to be true. We must raise children in the grain of reality. We believe that's true biologically in the way the world does not. We also know that to be true spiritually.
Reality consists in a particular beginning with a particular end. God created us and the world and the flow of history in a very particular way. And so part of recognizing that truth, part of what the character of the parent has to begin to exude, is this recognition that my child's character flows out of their condition.
That was the point we made this morning. My child's character flows out of their condition, their condition as a fallen human being, their condition in Adam. That's where my child's character begins. So you're not just dealing with sinful behavior as a parent.
You're dealing with the condition that causes sinful behavior. You're not just dealing with isolated acts of disobedience and sinfulness. You're dealing with a fallen human nature that can only but do these very things.
It is what is inside your children, not first what is outside, that defiles. It's a point that Jesus makes. It's not what comes out of the mouth, what goes into the mouth that defiles the man, that corrupts the inner man.
It's what comes out. It's what's inside that is corrupting, that is defiling. The condition inside your children is more dangerous to their souls than the temptations outside of them. A parent who seeks to raise their children in the truth, who's identifying themselves with Christ, recognizing my child is outside of Christ, I'm calling them to come to him, must know the things within my child, the things they have conditionally from Adam are more of a threat to their soul than any of the temptations that surround them.
Which means if you're viewing little Johnny as an angel in your eyes, you'll never deal with him in truth. I just have to keep little Johnny from a few naughty neighborhood kids and a few bad cartoons, and my little angel will float into the kingdom of God.
If little Johnny is an angel in your eyes, you will never deal with him in truth. You'll never be able to minister to his God-given conscience with both grace and truth. And that's what Jesus came as our example to be, full of grace and truth.
A parent who's not dealing with the reality of a sinful condition will neither be full of truth or full of grace. We're gonna come back to that point a little bit later. Remember Paul's parental concern for the church.
I don't write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children, I warn you. Paul understands one of the tasks of a parent identified with Christ, calling for the children to come to Christ, is to warn them.
The path you're on has a certain end. The way you're living, the things you're hiding, the way that you operate has a certain end. I'm warning you. I won't cover for you. I won't vindicate you. I'm not so bound to you that I think your sin is a reflection on my sanctification.
And that doesn't mean parents don't deal with sin. Parents must deal with their children's sin. But parents are dealing with sinners. Your child's condition, of course, not only flows out of their, your child's character not only flows out of their condition, but as we saw this morning, it also corresponds to their conscience.
One of the things a parent must do is learn how to raise their children to become sensitive and responsive to their God-given conscience. This is absolutely vital. A child's condition has fallen. Their conscience, therefore, is guilty.
As time unfolds, as moral agency bursts into control, we realize that we cannot use our authority. We cannot use a loud voice. We cannot use a wooden spoon. We cannot use much to convey the spirit of God.
We can make appeals to the law of God. That can provoke the conscience. That can stir up guilt. But even that does not convey the spirit of God into a child's heart. In Galatians, Paul says to his little children in Galatia, he says, I only want to learn one thing from you.
What a beautiful prologue. Let's just, let's clear the table of all this discussion. Listen, just tell me one thing. Did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by the hearing of faith? Did you receive the spirit because you externally conformed?
Did you receive the spirit because you were so faithfully molded into a life of external discipline? Or did you receive the spirit by the hearing of faith? A parent who does not wield the scalpel of a child's conscience so that he can be raised in the nurture and admonition that he can be dealt with full of grace, full of truth is a parent that's likely expecting the works of the law to convert their child.
Of course, our children need God's law. The law is a schoolmaster. It leads to Christ. We don't know sin, but apart from the commandments of God, our children need to know the law. Their conscience must become sensitive and responsive to the commandments of God.
We saw that this morning. Do you obey your parents? This is the command of God. How does your conscience answer you? But behind that all, a faithful parent identified with Christ, calling their children to come to him, knows that he cannot or she cannot expect the law to do what only the gospel can.
The law is not a faith. The law is not the gospel. The law came through Moses. Grace and truth through Jesus Christ. So the law cannot save your children, though the law is indispensable to raising your children.
The law cannot save your children. You may, for a time, gain obedience. You may have order in your home. You may even begin to experience a hollow form of blessedness, a cheap taste of the good life held out by two ways to live.
But again, behind this all, a faithful Christian parent knows if righteousness could come from the law, Christ died for nothing. Righteousness cannot come through the law in my life. It certainly cannot come through the law in little Johnny's life.
Now the Christian recognizes, but how do I maintain control? Remember the hymn that we considered this morning. I was a wandering sheep. I loved the far to Rome. I was a wandering sheep. I would not be controlled.
The issue is control. As we saw this morning, one of the foundational issues in the character of every child is authority. And how a faithful Christian parent wields their authority matters very much across this gospel law dynamic.
How do you utilize,.
How do you employ your authority as a mother, as a father, in light of the fact that the law is not the gospel and the gospel is not the law? What does it look like for you to use your authority? The goodness of God's authority is shown in that he deals with us in both terms of the law and terms of the gospel.
Both terms of truth and terms of grace. There's consequence and there's mercy. This is how God uses authority in his life. And those who have been blessed by it confess that that is a good authority. Faithful parents model good authority to their children.
A child learns,.
I can see just from how my parents raised me, I need a shepherd. And I see my parents being shepherded. I recognize that I'm so prone to wander and with grace and truth, with discipline and mercy, they pursue me and seek to guide me.
I was a wandering sheep, I would not be controlled. No shepherd in seeing that situation says, well, what can I do? The sheep doesn't wanna be controlled. That's a wandering sheep, what are you gonna do?
Bill, you're down to three sheep.
What's happened?
There was 80 this morning. Well, they wouldn't be controlled. What do you want me to do? You're a shepherd, do something about that. All right, there's an issue of authority, an issue of control. No shepherd thinks, what can I do?
A shepherd realizes, I must do something. I must gain control. Proverbs 25, 28 puts it this way. Whoever has no rule over his own spirit is a city broken down without walls. So self-rule, self-control, rule over one's own spirit begins with parental authority, begins with control.
The first thing I have to say about this is parental control, the possibility of actually reigning in your children, the possibility of establishing a certain discipline and rule over your children is always more possible than you realize.
I have four children. With every child I've learned, they're far more capable than I ever realized. If I had four more children, I'd learn that four more times. Children are far more capable than you would think, far more alert and aware than you would realize.
You can put things on them. You can put expectations on them. And in the back of your mind, you're like, is it right for me to think at this age they're capable of this? And lo and behold, they are, they are.
Rule over one's own spirit begins with parental authority and parental authority always has more potential than young parents tend to realize. North Korea, if you watch other documentaries when you're on a road trip, North Korea exerts an incredible amount of control over their toddlers.
It's eerie, not in a good way. When they have Westerners come in, they love putting on these worker party pageants and part of what they do is they say, look how prodigious our children are in our system, in our glorious party because of our dear leader.
Look how prodigious all of our children are. Look at what they're capable of. And so you have the older kids doing acrobats and marksmanship and all sorts of stuff and then it goes all the way down to two-year-olds.
The two-year-olds all march out like cyborgs and they pick up violins and accordions and they begin to play like this perfect music. It's like, what am I watching?
Are these animatronic children?
A two-year-old is capable of that?
My two-year-old would just eat the instrument.
They wouldn't be able to play it. But what you realize is there's a happy medium between raising your children to be North Korean propaganda puppets on the one hand or little Tarzan swinging through the jungle on the other.
You realize these are false alternatives. You don't need to have an animatronic toddler or a Neanderthal swinging the club in the living room. There is a path between those two extremes. So we seek to shepherd our children.
Our children have a condition. It flows, this condition flows into every aspect of their character and at root is this heart of disobedience, of rebellion. I don't want to be controlled. If I take control, I'll be happy.
If I take control, my life will be good.
I'll make things right.
A shepherd knows you're going headlong into a ditch. If you go out there, wolves are gonna tear you into pieces. A shepherd knows if I don't control you, you're doomed. Life will eat you up. Jesus comes to us in the gospel as a good shepherd who goes long ways to find the straying sheep that would not be controlled, that love to far to roam.
We seek to shepherd our children in this very way. Again, the pivotal foundational aspect of their character, of their condition is the fallen patterns of disobedience. Parents understand raising children in a way that they're identified with Christ and they're calling their children who are outside of Christ to come to him means they have to employ authority, discipline, higher expectations than they might think their children are capable of.
That's the first point I'd make. But let me quickly qualify that. How we seek to shepherd children with godly patterns of control must be weighed and practiced very carefully. As we've said, the gospel is not the law and the law is not the gospel.
You use and exercise your authority full of grace and full of truth. That means that as a parent, you're not RoboCop. As soon as your child takes something out of their sibling's hands,.
A metallic arm doesn't burst through their bedroom,.
Infraction, and now you must face your sentence. It's not RoboCop parenting. Think of the atmosphere that kind of attitude brings about in the home. There's no reward, there's no sense of encouragement.
I can only enforce. Dad's getting stressed because he doesn't have control. Dad doesn't like that. RoboCop mode is the answer. I'm gonna get control. I'm gonna have stability and peace.
This house will be ordered.
Even if I have to kill everyone in the house to do it. That's not being full of grace and truth. At the same time, we see the civil magistrate being commanded by God, not just to punish evildoers, but to reward those who do good.
There's a way that the atmosphere of the home can be about maintaining this atmosphere of discipline and control, and if you've done everything, you've done just what's to be expected, there's no sense of reward or encouragement.
I think it's to this very dynamic that Paul says, don't provoke your children. Don't let them become discouraged. A good father knows how to reward his children. A good father knows how to give good gifts.
If we expect our children to be obedient so that they may be well-pleasing, not just to the Lord, but even to us, a big part of that is the kind of reward, the kind of countenance that shows how well-pleased we are with them.
No robo-cop parenting. No, speaking of law enforcement, no good cop, bad cop parenting. Dad is the bad cop, maybe. In some family situations, dad's the good cop. Mom makes us brush our teeth and get dressed in the morning.
Dad gives us ice cream and lets us run wild, right? Sometimes dad is the good cop, and mom is the villain in the home, because mom's actually concerned about the children's health. But generally speaking, parents can be so disunified that there's a good cop, bad cop dynamic, and the atmosphere in the home is unstable.
A child never really knows what they're gonna get. Am I gonna get Dr. Jekyll or Hyde? There's not a wholesomeness. There's not a stability. The family life becomes fractured, volatile. The answer to that, and the good cop in this scenario would often be tempted in this direction.
They wanna be a buddy more than a parent. Those child experts, they love things like this. Sammy, let me come down on your level. You know what?
What do you wanna do today?
Do you wanna just throw things on the ceiling? Okay, you have as much say in this house as I do. It's like, what?
Are you insane?
Are you insane? You're a parent, not a buddy. Mom or dad can be friendly, but they're not a peer. None of these things leads to good authority. None of these things actually achieve the kind of control that belongs to raising children and the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
The goodness of God's authority is to be modeled out in our lives as parents. And that requires a very specific understanding of what that control looks like. How does God control us? Remember, as we're saying, the gospel is not the law, the law is not the gospel.
The goal of parenting is not merely to control behavior. The goal of a Christ-believing parent is for their child's heart to be changed, for their life to be transformed. That's the goal of a Christian parent.
I can get little Johnny to jump through my hoops, but what good will that do on that day when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead? I don't want Johnny just to play to my tune. I want Johnny to repent of his sin and get a new heart and begin to walk on a path that leads to life.
His obedience is important. His responsiveness to his conscience and my control is a part of that. But if that's all that I'm resting in, if that's all that I'm seeking, I am woefully deficient as a Christian parent.
When children are very, very young, basic control, responsive obedience is the top priority. That's almost all you can expect out of a child at that age. But as a child grows, control is only one aspect that shows the condition flowing into their character.
Godly character requires a lot more than just a form of obedience. As I said, those who are devoid of the Spirit of God generally grow into one or two outcomes, a worldling or a Pharisee. Godly character requires a lot more than just an external form of obedience.
If your highest goal as a parent is to have control over your children, to somehow conform their behavior to your liking, rather than to transform their heart and their very character, you will be woefully falling short of what God would have you seek and labor and pray toward.
Let me get at this in a different way. As a child grows and the responsiveness and the control that you've worked so hard to accomplish is there, now everything gets ratcheted up a notch. Though you could rest on your laurels because at least you have peace and order in your home, in fact, now's the time to be that much more intensive, that much more prayerful in searching.
Now's the time to actually give attention to pruning selfishness in your child. Selfishness flows out of a lack of self-control. I can't control myself and so I'm consumed with myself. Everything I wanna do, I do on a whim.
I do without thinking, without remorse. So a parent begins to turn their attention to pruning selfishness. But at the same time, as much as they give attention to pruning selfishness, they also give attention to rooting out self-righteousness.
A parent who's not identifying themself with Christ, who's not calling their children to come to Christ, a Christ-believing parent who's satisfied with the external form of obedience will have no real motive to root out spiritual pride or self-righteousness in their child's life.
And let me tell you, spiritual pride is one of the most deadliest, one of the most subtle snares that Satan employs in a Christian home.
Spiritual pride.
When I think through my former acquaintances that I grew up with in church, most of them had real seasons of zeal. And if I look back objectively, I could say real seasons of arrogance and superiority and pride.
And scripture says for a reason, pride goes before the fall. Spiritual pride is a subtle and deadly snare. Satan almost works in one of two ways. If you've guarded your children's ear gates and eye gates, if you've helped them to be sensitive and responsive to their conscience, if you've controlled them and shepherded them in a way that they're responsive to your control and actually walk in a way that is ordered and manifest in a godly direction.
And Satan realizes, ha, I can't draw them into rebellion. I can't draw them into abject worldliness. I guess I'll make them spiritual snobs. I guess I'll so pad their fruitfulness, their goodness that I'll puff up their head and boost their ego until they look down on everyone around them and think somehow they are God's gift and they no longer can associate with the lowly.
And in fact, they have contempt and they sort of scowl at anyone who even remotely looks beneath them. And a parent who's already so infatuated with their children's obedience will not be able to shepherd their heart toward the kingdom in this way.
Think of it in this way. A parent who's not thinking through very carefully about pruning selfishness and rooting out self-righteousness may have a poster child, but that poster child may be the rich young ruler.
I often think of that story, the rich young ruler, he has a lot going for him. And the first thing we read about him is that the Lord loved him. Isn't that great? The Lord loved him. Clearly the Lord loved him.
Look at the kind of upbringing he had. Look at what was poured into him. Look at the fruit of that. He was confident. He was engaged theologically. He was going up to Jesus to ask a theological question.
When I read that story, I think how proud his parents must have been. Our little Johnny, we did everything right with him. Look at him now talking to the rabbi. Is there any young man that's even in his league?
Good, he avoided those lepers and those seedy people on the left. Our little Johnny, he makes our hearts swell with pride. He has everything going for him. He's a poster child, but they never engaged in rooting out the selfishness and self-righteousness of exposing the spiritual pride.
And so the result is when Jesus actually calls that rich young ruler, follow me, become a disciple of me, come to me, he goes away.
He can't do it.
He won't do it.
So in the end, despite his beaming parents, despite his outward righteousness, he refuses to be a disciple of Jesus. Remember what we said this morning, right? I just said it a moment ago. Devoid of the spirit, a child will generally become a worldling or a Pharisee.
Remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees. Tax collectors and prostitutes enter ahead of you. You are so superior, so moral. You had so much worked out. Everyone patted you on the back. You thought so highly of yourself that you couldn't find the narrow path.
Tax collectors, sinners, the repentant, they enter ahead of you.
You don't enter.
Shepherding with control becomes shepherding with sensitivity. Shepherding, not just with the truth of the law, but shepherding with the grace of the gospel. Shepherding that's not satisfied with outwardly or docile obedience, but shepherding that wants to teach children the corruption begins within.
And Satan has many ways to make little children stumble and fall. Spiritual pride usually takes scores of promising children down into the mouth of hell, the gaping mouth of judgment. And so as a parent, you begin to ask the question, do I help my children esteem others?
Or do I often pat them on the back and help steer them in why they're so unique and not like the others? Stay away from that corrupting influence around you because you're so pure within. Do you help your children find ways to be thankful for, associate with others, even if those relationships are strained or messy at times?
Do you help your children become humble to the Lord and aware of self-righteousness and spiritual pride because you're flagging the forms of pride where they show up in your home? Do you expose it or do you aid it?
Do you cover what you ought to confront? Part of that is how do you view other kids? This is what makes it so hard to be a parent. You can begin to survey and measure and assess everyone else's parenting, everyone else's children, everyone else's behavior, and you somehow walk away with that going, our children would never do anything like that.
Well, my child has never even thought that. Now all of a sudden we're leading them away from the path of grace and truth. Remember, in the short moments across the short term, the things that you sow in all of those little moments of padding, of covering, of padding on the back will eventually sprouts, will eventually flower.
And what will come out of that long span of time is the tragic result of this truth, the Lord opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. Being a parent means you are teaching your children to be humble because you're raising them in truth and with grace.
And so you too as parents must oppose the pride of your children. The Lord opposes the proud. Parents that are identifying with Christ must oppose the pride of their children rather than add to it. And children who recognize that their parents are showing them grace must realize that that grace is really just coming from the Lord who gives grace to the humble.
A parent who is humble will rarely produce a child that is prideful and arrogant. You know, every year I go to the Scottish Highland Games. There's a big sense of ancestry and family lineage. And one of the things they do is the roll call when you all gather in the central court and all the bagpipers are massed together and they call out all the clan names.
And everyone, when they hear their family name being said, they all give out a war cry or a roar. And there's always some sense of who's gonna have.
The loudest roar?
Who's gonna have the most family pride? We all have to measure up against one another. Humble parents will be able to raise their children toward humility. So don't be a cheerleader where you ought to be a prophet.
Of course, there needs to be control. And as we said, that begins at a young age. If you don't, as a Puritan said, if you don't discipline your children to the Lord, the Lord will use your children to discipline you.
All right, discipline matters. Control matters.
But if that's the be all and that's the end all, you've missed it all. Discipline, of course, for this reason, will take many forms. Discipline as a child grows and as you shepherd their heart, knowing them, teaching them to be sensitive and responsive to their conscience, letting the law do its work as a schoolmaster to Christ, washing them over with grace and mercy as opportunities afford.
In all of these many forms and branches, you realize that discipline is never just a moment. It's a whole trajectory. Discipline is made up of several moments along the way, but it's never any one of those moments.
It's just the whole haul.
And children who grow up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, they don't remember the moments. They just remember the journey. They remember the long haul. And so you must not think this moment, this act has all the weight of the world on it.
What happens this day at this time? But you recognize what has all the weight is how consistent I'm being every day with every opportunity. From the time they rise up and as we go through the way and when we lie down at night.
Discipline, in other words, is about breadth. It's not punctiliar, it's about the whole, not the part. And you're reminded this is how the Lord deals with you. Isn't it so often the case that where you ought to be disciplined, you receive mercy?
Isn't that how the Lord deals with you? Can't you look back and say, I can't pinpoint any moment where the Lord did all of his decisive work of formation in my life. I can only say in and along the way, at every point through every season, he was working.
That's how he, as our Father in heaven, is conforming us, discipling us. That is how we ought to seek to disciple our children. For this reason, it is the atmosphere and time. This is probably one of the more important points I want to emphasize today.
For this reason, it is the atmosphere and time between moments of discipline that matters as much, if not more, than the moments of discipline themselves. Okay, let me say that again. It is the atmosphere and the time between moments of discipline that matters as much, if not more, than the moments of discipline themselves.
We're talking about the character of children and the character of Christ-believing parents in response to that. The only other area we need to talk about is the character of the home. You know, the character of the home is really just flowing out of the character of the parents.
Your character as a mom, as a dad, characterizes your home in a certain way. And the way that your home is characterized sets the tone. It sets a certain momentum in the way that nurture and discipline are going to run.
If you think of it, discipline, moments of discipline, are simply the outflow, the incursion upon an otherwise glorious, joyful, peaceful, stable order in the home. Sin, disobedience, they upend that, they disrupt that.
It must be dealt with. Dealing with it does not create the atmosphere of the home. Dealing with it restores the atmosphere of the home. It's very important that we grasp that. When you discipline a child, it is for the sake of restoring them.
You ask yourself the question, what am I restoring them to? As a pastor said when he was a young boy, and he did something completely out of color at the dinner table, and so his father took him downstairs to discipline him.
So here was this lovely meal, it was all put before him, he was about to dig in, and he does something provocative. Now the father has to interrupt the meal, and he pulls him away from the family, from the dinner table, from the warmth of the dining room, and now he's in this cold little basement, kind of fearful now he has to get disciplined.
And as soon as that was all dealt with and that was all over, his father said to him, are you ready to go back up to the table now? Just simple words like, okay, let's go back up now. But it was almost an existential moment.
Like now I can go back to that warm environment.
With that nourishing table.
And all of the good that's going to give, right? Now I can be restored to that. What characterizes your home? Discipline is the means by which you restore children to that character in your home. What characterizes your home is your own character as a Christian parent, as a Christian husband or wife.
These things have as much weight, if not more weight, than the moments and enactments of discipline themselves. Someone who's thinking in this way will not be a robocop parent, will not be a good cop, bad cop parent,.
Will certainly not be a buddy parent.
Even the Greek philosopher Plato said, whatever is honored in a country is cultivated there. Whatever a country honors, what they glorify, what they love, what they enjoy, they cultivate. What are you cultivating in your home?
That disobedience, that sin, is like this messy incursion that has to be dealt with just so that in mercy and in grace, a child can be restored back to the thing that is so enjoyable, the thing that is so good.
You want your children to be able to reflect in a positive way. If I ask the question of grown children or even of adults in this room, growing up, our home was full of blank. What would the answer be?
That's what you're cultivating. When you discipline, that's what you're restoring them to. Growing up, our home was full of... You can see that discipline has almost no weight, almost no leverage, almost no effect.
If you don't emphasize the character of the home in, around, between, and before the moments of discipline. Now lastly, and I know I have to be brief, our verse, we're talking about commitment now in the third part, our verse is simply this.
Do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. And here I think of something so instructive. If it's right that Paul is pinpointing the hardest areas in these relationships, the hardest area for a believing wife is to be submissive to her husband.
The hardest area for a believing husband is to actually love his wife in a Christlike way. The hardest area for a child is to just obey their parents. The hardest area for a worker is to work heartily.
Well here, fathers are commanded not to provoke their children. And attached to that is lest the children become discouraged. And Paul is showing us something that he's discovered as an apostle to the church of God.
I actually think he doesn't just have to say it here, he actually demonstrates what he's talking about in other places throughout his letters. He has the potential to discourage and provoke. He almost never pulls it out of his holster.
He rather finds ways to encourage, to motivate, to comfort, even as he's exhorting and charging. We find Paul doing this again and again, which means what? The power to discourage is profound. The power to discourage is profound.
And Paul says, fathers, don't go there. Don't go there. Don't be the kind of father that when he walks into the living room, it sucks the oxygen out of the room. Don't let your children be discouraged by you.
If we have the capacity to discourage, if the power to discourage is so profound, then we also have the ability to encourage. And the power to encourage is profound. What does that look like and what does it require?
Well, as we said, the home is characterized by the character of the parent. Let me show you how Paul spells this out. 1 Thessalonians 2. He says, you are witnesses, God also, how devoutly and justly and blamelessly we behaved ourselves among you.
So notice first, what characterizes Paul as a believer, what characterizes his authority is an example of godliness. You're witnesses, look how we walk, look how we lived around you. Devoutly, justly, blamelessly, we behaved in this way among you.
He says, you know, we exhorted, we comforted, we charged every one of you like a father does his own children. You see what he's saying there? It's a variation on Colossians 3 .21. What is Paul's theology of how a father deals with his children?
A godly character that in light of that godly character exhorts, comforts, and charges. Now, how do you imagine that? If it was just exhort and charge and we didn't have this whole idea of a father discouraging his children, you might be tempted to think that Paul has a father that's like a drill sergeant.
You know, exhorts, in charge, just like a father his children, and you think of that with furrowed eyebrows. You think the children are like, oh, the boss is here. The orders are being barked out and there's just a merciless enforcement for insubordination.
But Paul says, no, actually there's comfort in the midst of that, just like a father comforting his children. But again, all this emphasis on parenting, the household of God, where's the mother? What about the whole picture of the home?
If the home is being paralleled with the church, what's the picture of the whole thing? Well, he gets there in 1 Thessalonians 2 a little bit earlier. He says this, we were gentle among you, just like a nursing mother cherishing her own children, affectionately longing for you, well-pleased to impart to you, not only the gospel of God, but even our whole lives, because you'd become so dear to us.
So here's how Paul concedes of the home. Here's a glimpse of what Paul thinks should characterize the home in a way that would spill over and then characterize the church. Mothers being gentle, like nursing mothers, cherishing their children, affectionately longing for their children, come to Christ, pleased to impart the gospel to them.
Not just the gospel as some post-it note on the fridge, but sharing and imparting a whole life with the child. And the father coming into that scene, the father entering into that home is one who exhorts and charges, directs all the things that the mother is cultivating, and in the midst of that also comforts the child.
That is a home where children will not be discouraged, will not be unsubordinate. That is a home where children are being nurtured and raised in the admonition of the Lord.
Exhortation.
Exhortation doesn't characterize the home. It's exhortation and comfort. It's gentleness. It's cherishing. It's longing with affection. It's imparting the gospel and the life, which means time and efforts and labor.
This is how Paul conceives of the home. Is this what characterizes your home? We said on the one hand, don't be a cheerleader where you ought to be a prophet.
In other words,.
Don't let spiritual snobbery get a pass. But on the other hand, don't be a sniper where you ought to be a good physician. Don't take pot shots and bounce around with your weight and your frustration and be a source of disgruntlement in all of the household relationships.
Be a physician. Exhort, charge, comfort, long, compel, pray, labor. This is how we work in light of the home. Well, let me close with perhaps a word of encouragement. The law has its place.
The law is a schoolmaster.
The law is that which reveals our own sinfulness, our need for a savior within us. The law and all the control of the law is not a savior. And let me say this to you, parents. The law is not a savior and neither are you.
The law is not a savior and neither are you. Maybe you originally thought because you adopted these principles, these doctrines, because you had received so much and had worked out so much, and even on the way to marriage, you had all these principles.
About how you would get it all right.
You had the wisdom to discern everything that every other parent was doing wrong and having amassed in your mind this perfect philosophy of parenting, you would be the ones that would finally get it right.
The perfect balance, the perfect mom, the perfect dad, the perfect little angelic Johnny. But now you don't feel so fruitful. And now that stirring vision of Psalm 128 looks like olives that are withering on the vine.
Maybe you thought it would all have come naturally. Maybe you thought if you could just get the right formula or find the right blog or listen to the right podcast, everything would then finally click and fall into place.
Well, let me remind you that though you pray, though you labor, though you control, though you direct, though you exhort, though you charge, though you comfort, you are not the Savior of your children.
You are not the Savior of your children, which means where you cannot labor, where you cannot do the work that only the Spirit of God can do, you must learn to rest. Where you cannot labor, you must learn to rest.
Where you cannot do the invisible work of grace that is beyond your reach and beyond your knowledge, where you acknowledge salvation belongs to the Lord and though you sow and though you water, you recognize the growth belongs to God.
There in that place, you learn to rest. And you rest in the mercies and you rest in the hope of God. Why can you do that? It's because you're not identifying yourself with your children. You're not identifying yourself as the parent of these children, covering, vindicating, defending them, trying to protect their allegedly pure interior from all the snares of those evil children around them.
No, you've identified yourself with Christ. You belong to Him. You're His disciple and you have this little one in your midst that you're seeking to make a disciple and you're saying, come, come follow me.
I charge you, I comfort you, I pray for you, I long for you, I cherish you, I weep for you, but I can't save you.
Come to the one that can.
Come to Him. You rest in that one. As a mom, as a dad, you rest in Him. And the mercy is when you rest in Him, when you're being fulfilled and satisfied by His mercies, by His grace, when His presence is sustaining you and comforting you, you will be able then to actually offer something to your children that you could never otherwise offer.
Resting in God will not only help you to persevere, it will also give you the kind of patience, the kind of peace, the kind of joy that then you can impart and share to your children. So let me remind you, and I'd have you think on this as we close, you cannot offer to your children what you have not received.
Would you have your children find peace and rest and satisfaction and delight, identity and meaning, fullness of joy, inexpressible? If you would have your children find that, you must find it resting in Christ.
You cannot offer to them, you cannot display to them what you haven't received from Him. We should all be encouraged by these things. Even as we recognize that the Lord has to do the building, and unless He builds, we build in vain.
And so we pray, Lord God, help us as mothers and fathers, help us as a church, help us to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Help us to be parents that guide them in their conscience, charge them and comfort them, deal with them gently.
Help us to be ministers of grace and truth. Help us not to provoke our children lest they become discouraged, amen.
Let's pray.
Father, we do pray you would help us. Lord, there's so much to say on this topic, Lord, and so much of it is just from our own heartache and failure as parents. Help us, Lord, to help one another. Help us even as by your spirit, Lord, you show us those areas that we need to more faithfully sow and water, more faithfully pray and labor.
But even there, Lord, may our hope not be in the sowing or in the watering, may our hope be in you, the God who gives growth. May we labor from you and rest in you. May we do all these things for you, Lord.
May we stand with you. Not aligning or identifying ourselves with any but you, Lord. Help us. I pray for the children in our midst, Lord. I pray for young parents that are going through the really challenging early years, looking for help, looking for answers, Lord.
Might you be merciful, might you help us. Help us as a church to be a source of encouragement. Help us to be exuding the kind of humility we want to see replicated in our children, to become a certain form and guide for them, a benchmark of what it means to be humble before God, thankful and thoughtful for one another, to be servants and stewards of all that you've entrusted to us.
Help us, Lord, to not only prune selfishness, but to root out spiritual pride. As judgment must begin in the house of God, so, Lord, these things must be dealt with in our lives first. Planks that must be removed from our eyes if we would go to the eyes of our children and those around us.
And so help us even in these things, Lord. Convict and guide and bless your people in these ways. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.