A Father's Discipline and Instruction
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· 7 viewsBiblical fatherhood and how we should raise our children
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Happy Father’s Day! I hope you all have something special planned for the father’s in your life today. We have a great steak lunch prepared after service for the dad’s who are here today. We are going to jump over to chapter 6 in Ephesians and focus in on verse 4 that deals with the duties of fatherhood.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
When it comes to raising children, there seems to be so much information out there and so many different ideas on how to sleep train, educate, feed, potty train, and even entertain our children. I don’t know if you have ever seen a child watch Baby Shark by Pink Fong but there is this weird hypnotic influcence this song seems to have on kids and if I was a young parent again, I’m not quite sure how I would feel about what this song might be doing to my baby’s brain. Maybe that’s the least of our worries because there is so much to be wary of in our modern world.
I was sharing my thoughts about how in the recent past, it felt like society and government helped in the protection of children. Something as simple as limiting cartoon programming for a couple hours in the morning and afternoon and few hours on Saturday really helped parents regulate how much time kids spent on media. But with the growth of Youtube, Netflix, and countless other streaming services, it feels like these companies are trying to create addictions in the vulnerable minds of our children and sadly the governnment seems helpless to regulate what is happening. And in some ways, in order to combat the problems created by our quickly changing world, we have this glut of information for worried parents to consume and something as simple as this ancient verse from Ephesians seems like it would be unable to deal with the complexities of parenting in the modern world. But I beleive it would be a grave mistake to ignore the timeless truths of the Scriptures in exchange for the passing fads of our culture.
There is so much in this short verse to unpack as it relates to learning how to become a good father and parent. There are two main points that we want to look at in the rest of the message:
1. What provokes our children to anger?
2. How do we discipline and instruct them in the Lord?
The two halves of this verse give us both the negative and the positive demands of fatherhood, basically the do’s and the don’ts of parenting. And on the surface, it would seem that the bar for fathers has been set pretty low by the Apostle Paul in this verse, just try not to piss your children off. But the beginning half of this verse can be more broadly translated as don’t exasperate your children, don’t cause intense frustration that leads to resentment. As young parents, this seems like this is a pretty easy problem to avoid but at least from counseling adults, people seem to have more resentment built up towards their fathers as opposed to their mothers. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard someone say, “I love by mom but my dad....”
And you can fill in the blank with a host of issues ranging from my dad was not emotionally available, he had addiction problems, he had an affair, he had problems with his temper, etc. And I’m not saying that women don’t have these issues but from my observation, men seem to struggle more in these areas of life that can cause a lasting resentment in the hearts of their children. Obviously, no father begins their relationship with their newborn thinking, I am going to make life hard for my baby but sometimes these things happen if we don’t proactively guard ourselves against our own demons.
Half the battle in being a good father is actually found in just being a good husband. Though Paul appears to set the bar for fatherhood at a fairly low level, the biblical standard for husbands is incredibly high.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
Though we don’t see the direct connection between being a good father and being a good husband specifically in these verses, we do see the connection more clearly in the book of Malachi:
Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth. “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless.”
When we fail to be good husbands, we don’t just fail our wives, unforuntately we fail our children. God invests his Holy Spirit into every Christian marriage, because his desire is that through this union, if physically possible, you would bring about godly children into this world. And perhaps one of the worst things men can do to harm their child’s development is to deal faithlessly with their wives.
On the way home form Hawaii, I was watching the Tiger Wood’s documentary which is a classic example of the damage a good father can have on his child simply by being a bad husband. Tiger and his father, Earl Woods, were incredibly close as father and son. Earl was the driving force in his son’s success, they spent countless hours playing golf together, and honing the skills that would one day make Tiger the most famous athlete on the planet. He is the one person that could make golf exciting.
But according to the documentary, Earl had his vices and while Tiger would be practicing, he would be chasing women and in plain sight of his son, he would have a number of extramarital affairs. As Tiger grew up, he became more resentful and angry towards his dad becasue of this and yet we all know how Tiger’s life ended up. At the height of his success, his own problems with sexual addiction would be exposed and he was never the same after that. There is a biblical principle that plays out in this dynamic between fathers and their children.
‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but he will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generation.’
Though God is loving and compassionate, there are natural consequences for our sin and perhaps the most heartbreaking, the most devastating is the impact that our sin has upon our own children. We can try to protect them from all the dangers of the world, and not realize the danger that our own sins create in the home. Loving our wives keeps us out of a lot of trouble and helps us not to provoke our children needlessly.
But not only should we ensure that we don’t create resentment in our children, we should also have a positive influence on them by disciplining and instructing them in the Lord. In our day and age, there is not much attention given to the proper disciplining of children. And I would suggest there this is more cultural than biblical and here is why: At the turn of the last century, there was movement in child psychology that reacted to the strict authoritarian parenting styles ot the time. Many people struggled with the pain and emotional damage in their own lives from fathers who were too strict and too discipline oriented even to the point of physical and emotional abuse. So the natural response of the generation was to remove discipline from the home and to allow children to grow up free from the fear of punishment and consequence. This had support from secular psychologists, educators, and even many Christian leaders because on the surface it seemed like a grace based method of child development.
One pastor tells the story of one father at the church that didn’t believe in any sort of discipline and instruction because that would not be like Jesus. And so he told his kids that he would take their punishment every time they were disobedient and not eat dinner. The rationale was that he could draw out the goodness of his children by having them see his suffering. As you might expect, that experiment didn’t last that long and for the sake of his health, he had to go back to disciplining his kids. The Montessorri schools are largely based on these educational theories of non-discipline and moving further down from that off shoot, we have parenting styles that today refuse to guide even their children’s sexuality. From day one of their lives, these parents purposely avoid assigning a gender to their children thinking they are doing the best thing for their child’s development.
And although we might not take these modern ideas that far, the family is no longer seen as an institution where children are to receive discipline and instruction. In rejecting the old authoritarian method of parenting, we simply went to the other extreme where our children are given permission to rule over our lives and everything is essentially centered around them. When little Johnny has to take a nap, the entire world has to stop no matter what is going and we never consider the fact that children are amazingly resilient and can learn to sleep almost anywhere. When little Sally is throwing a tantrum instead of being firm and nipping this type of behavior in the bud, we cave into her demands. And in our hearts, we know this doesn’t work but because we are afraid to discipline them, we don’t see any other alternative. Yet this is the furthest thing from a loving style of parenting.
for the Lord reproves him whom he loves,
as a father the son in whom he delights.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
And it is here that we see the biblical balance. The world moves from one extreme to the other but the Scriptures calls us to discipline our children in the same way the Lord deals with us.
Discipline should be controlled - Just as the Lord is slow to anger with us, we should also be slow to anger with our children and avoid disciplining our children from a place of anger. The anger of man does not lead to the righteousness of God.
Discipline should be consistent - We cannot discipline our children for one thing one day and then turn a blind eye the next time it happens. There is a steadiness to parenting that brings about a clear understanding of right and wrong in children that will serve them well in the future. You cannot just laugh off your children’s sin when they are young and cute and then decide to correct them when that behavior continues into their older years.
Discipline should be compassionate - Theirs this old adage that when we have to discipline our kids, it should hurt us more than it hurts them. It is with a heavy heart that we should discipline our children. Out of that compassion, we should forgive and show as much grace as God has shown us.
Discpline should have appropriate consequences - Small mistakes should have minor consequences while major transgressions should have more severe consequences. The punishment should fit the crime. Consequences for bad behavior are things that parents should talk about with one another to make sure that they are appropriate.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
Some tips on the spiritual instruction of children:
Display godliness in your own life. Show them the goodness of God through your own life. Make Christianity attractive to your children so that they say to themselves, I want the same relationship with God that my parents have.
Pray with your children. Make it a habit of praying for them. Pray together at least once a day for a meal. Try to do a weekly family devotional. It doesn’t have to be long.
Teach your children about God, the stories of faith, and what Christ has done for us through the gospel but don’t press for a decision too strongly until they are ready. A decision to believe in Jesus at age 5 or 6 often times is as symbolic as infant baptism. The vast majority of children will say yes to their parent’s faith when they are young. A decision by your child means very little without the regeneration of the Holy Spirit. Our children are not born again by the will of man but by the will of God through the work of His Spirit. Remember that God only has direct sons and daughters, He does not have grand children. And you might be thinking, “My children say no to me all the time.” They say no to broccoli and no to going to bed but how many children say no to Santa Claus, not many. Wait until they can distinguish the difference between a fictional character like Santa versus the reality of the living God. Don’t let then ever confuse the two.
Conclusion
Conclusion
If marriage is about learning to live with someone, fatherhood is about learning to live for someone. Inherently, I am a selfish person. I am always looking for how I can personally benefit from relationships. Marriage to be has been a blessing because in exchange for taking out the trash and vacuuming once a week, I get my every need taken care of. But fatherhood on the other hand is a totally different story, there is no real personal benefit in raising a child and much about parenthood is about sacrifice. When Jeremiah was an infant, my wife and I sacrificed the thing that most of us love the most, sleep. Literally for about 3 months, we got two or three hours of sleep a night because he woke up at least five or six times a night for feeding and diaper changes. It felt like a perpetual finals week because I would get 3 hours of sleep, wake up at 7:00 to go teach high school, and then take go to class at Talbot. I remember one night, I was feeding Jeremiah about 3 o’clock in the morning and I just started crying because I was so tired. All of that work and I will never even get a thank you from him. But as I see him grow, apart from my relationship with God, there has been nothing more fulfilling than fatherhood. It’s hard to describe the depth of love that I have for my son and there is nothing that I would withhold from him for his well-being, not even my own life. And maybe some of the ways I look at fatherhood comes from the fact that I want to be for Jeremiah, the father that I never had but to a large degree, I would say that many men share this same outlook on fatherhood including many of your own fathers. Maybe they can’t express it or they feel uncomfortable sharing that with you but I know most men feel the same way that I do.
Now as we reflect on the depth of love that a father has for his children, we begin to see a small glimpse of how much our heavenly Father loves us. But making that connection from our earthly fathers to our heavenly Father is not an easy thing. In the Institutes, John Calvin writes that a view of God as our Father is not a natural view of Him. It is only by special revelation that we can come to understand God as our Father. In fact, no other religion in the world makes that connection except Christianity.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,
RT France in his commentary explains these verses in this way, “And the more nearly any fatherhood, natural or spiritual, approaches in character to God’s perfect fatherhood, the more truly does it manifest fatherhood as God intended it to be.”
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