Instructions For Fathers (Ephesians 6:4)

Welcome: Please turn with me in your Bibles to the sixth Chapter of Ephesians, beginning in verse 4. Our text this morning will be simply the fourth verse of Chapter 6, which you can find on the very bottom of page 1162 in the navy blue Bibles found in your pews.

Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

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

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God.

B. Recap from Last Week

Today we begin the sixth and final chapter of the Book of Ephesians. As you might recall last week we talked about a command to children, to obey their parents, and that this comes with a promise.

Today, in verse four, Paul addresses Fathers. And I wish I could tell you I fixed it up this way so that this would land on Father’s Day. I really would love to take credit for that kind of timing. But it just happened, God is kind, and very clever.

Now, You might have heard me talk before about a kind of imbalance I observe in traditional Evangelical sermon patterns on mothers’ day and father’s day. And that is that we tend to praise on Mother’s Day and scold on Father’s Day. Mothers we tell you that you are great. And Dads, we tell you to get your act together.

That’s dumb and if you were here on Mother’s Day you already know that I talked about temptations of Moms and overbearing mothers-in-law, so Moms got admonished and encouraged. And so it will be today with Fathers.

So before I give you the three points of the sermon this morning, I want to give you three things this text is about. These are not my points, but they are my themes.

This text is about three things.

It’s about Dads It’s about Anger It’s about Education

Paul writes here to Fathers. He tells them not to provoke their children to Anger, and he tells them—instead—to bring their children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. More on this later. But for now, we will summarize that as Education.

And so I want to show you at least three things from our text this morning.

1. A Command for Dads 2. An Alternative to Anger 3. A Program of Education

Point 1: A Command for Dads

Our text begins with a straightforward command to Fathers. In Paul’s typical fashion throughout this letter, it’s the negative command followed by its positive replacement.

Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

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

Now the first and most obvious question is why are only Fathers addressed here? Is it because Mothers don’t have anything to do with bringing up children? Well that question is so absurd it’s hard not to start laughing through it.

And we know that in other places in Scripture, a mother’s direction and wisdom and discipline are vital to a child’s upbringing. For example,

Proverbs 1:8–9 (ESV)

Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.

And also, of course,

Exodus 20:12 (ESV)

“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

So while there is a reason why Paul addresses Fathers here in Chapter 6, it is not because he is exempting mothers from these kinds of responsibilities.

So why is he addressing Fathers? Well, one reason (perhaps the most obvious one) is that he has already back in Chapter 5 identified husbands as covenant heads of their home, so a counter-question might be why wouldn’t he especially address Dads? That seems obvious.

But another reason is—if you will remember—that as we have already seen in Chapter 5:

God gives commands according to our weaknesses.

Look, the reality is that the overwhelming majority of mothers don’t need to be told to be invested in day to day life and education of kids. Most educational systems that involve children are female-dominated. “Homeschool Mom” has become common parlance in our congregation and many others. And the local PTA meeting is usually not a boys club.

So this command comes especially to Fathers for two reasons. One is according to their office as head of the home. And the second is according to their weakness, in the way that they tend to disengage from the education of children. We will say more about this later, but I want us to focus now on the nature of the command itself.

Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

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

So this naturally takes us to a question, doesn’t it? Do fathers ordinarily provoke their kids? Provoke their kids to anger, even? Is this a common temptation for dads? And the answer, unavoidably brothers has to be “Yes.”

How?

That is a question a good amount of time thinking about together. And we should. But where I want to start is by saying that Fathers provoke children to wrath when Fathers don’t do their God-given job. Children are designed to love and trust their Father. (“Do you mean their heavenly Father or their earthly father?”—Yes.)

And some fathers make that very difficult. Because they leave. They abdicate. Have you ever noticed how fatherlessness and anger issues go together?

Some children are indeed provoked to wrath because they don’t have the hands of their earthly fathers building proper boundaries around their desires and their anger and their passions.

Additionally, some dads make obedience difficult. Fathers, if the rules are unclear in your home, you need to tend to that. Don’t ask your children to complete tasks or chores that you would never do yourself. That’s a good way to provoke them to wrath. Even if they obey.

You can also be overly harsh. Overly critical. Do your children think of you as hard to please or easy to please? Do your children know for certain that you are pleased with them? That is one of the most important questions of Fatherhood. I know that for certain because God the Father went out of his way to make sure that His Son had His Father’s approval.

Matthew 3:16–17 (ESV)

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Dads if you want to know how to affirm your children, there’s your model right there. Your kids need to hear “You are mine” and “I am proud of you.” And you need to say it in front of other people.

And the final way, and I think a few of you brothers you really need to hear me on this. A way that a lot of Dads provoke their children to wrath is by teasing them too much. Joking is good as part of a family culture. But if you are constantly picking on your kid, minimizing their accomplishments, trivializing their efforts, and mocking their work, you will provoke them to great anger and bitterness. I’m not saying you can’t joke with them. I’m saying that if your son or daughter does not have absolute confidence in “This is my kid, and I am well pleased with them” stop teasing them. Today. Teasing is a privilege of a relationship with strong trust.

Application–Don’t provoke, but set the pace.

Point 2: An Alternative to Anger

Let’s return to the text and I want us to focus on the Contrast.

Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

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

The contrast here puts forward a principle

Fathers who do not provide discipline and instruction will raise angry children.

Now this pairing together of anger and instruction I think is really important. Because what happens in a lot of marriages and a lot of families is that a chief temptation for husband is to retreat and to abdicate his responsibilities and to become very passive in his leadership. He becomes tolerant when he should be the one moderating things. At first, this isn’t a problem. The kids aren’t breaking anything after all. But as the evening goes on they get louder and more obnoxious, and Dad, without getting up mumbles a half-hearted “Settle down now, you kids.”

And believe it or not, that isn’t really effective. So the kids keep carrying on, until something breaks or somebody screams at somebody else, and something snaps in Dad.

And all of the sudden he has located all of his leadership ability. The problem is he is leading from anger. And a lot of men only know how to lead from anger. They are passive, passive, passive, and then when things are really going off the rails, they fix it with anger. They stand up and say “Now you kids are in big trouble, now you’re really going to get it! (etc).”

What’s happening there is that a Father who has failed to lead from responsibility is trying now to overcompensate by leading from anger.

I see the same thing happen in marriages. Total passivity, until she does something that annoys him. Then suddenly he knows how to lead.

So this brings me to a question. Does a teacher yell? Does a teacher rage? Some do, I suppose. But we don’t think of them as good teachers. Paul says

Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

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

Translation: Don’t get mad. Teach.

See, some dads think the way to raise young men is by making sure they are terrified of you. Is that how you want your sons to relate to God? By servile terror?

Fathers, you have a responsibility in your home to teach your household how to regulate their emotions. Your children should have the confidence that My Dad gets angry when there’s something worthy of his anger, and otherwise, he’s actually really hard to tick off. Really hard to trouble. Really hard to offend. Really hard to annoy.

Dads, can your kids say that? Do they think of you as hard to annoy or frustrate, or that the smallest thing will set you off?

Fathers, if you don’t want to provoke your children to wrath, you must not model being easily provoked to wrath yourself.

So what should this work look like instead?

Well, here’s an example. Let’s say your 13 year old son is in the kitchen, talking to Mom. You’re in the living room. Sitting on the couch. Scrolling on your phone. And you sort of hear things in the kitchen starting to get heated. A nice little argument is brewing. Some back and forth. Some high irritation. And you don’t say anything. They’ll work it out.

But it starts to escalate. He starts to get especially rude. And then you hear him just disrespect his mother and tear at her in the rudest way ever.

So what do you do?

There are a lot of men at this juncture who think the best thing to do is to sprint into the kitchen, grab that little punk by his shirt collar, and say “How dare you talk to my wife that way!”

That almost sounds heroic, doesn’t it? It’s not. Young men generally do not respond well to being ripped apart. They respond to direct correction that they know flows from love.

Fathers,

Don’t get mad. Teach.

Take all 5 foot whatever of yourself, move your body into that kitchen, and physically insert yourself into that conversation. Step between son and Mom, get eye to eye and say “Son, is that how we speak to our mother?”

Don’t get mad. Teach.

Now I am not saying that in the case of children, broadly speaking, you cannot use corporal punishment, the Bible affirms that as a wise method of discipline. But make sure you are qualified to discipline.

If you are raging, you are not qualified. You are certainly motivated! But you are not qualified. And the hardship is when you are qualified to discipline, you don’t feel motivated. But you must, because it flows from love.

Now let me also repeat something I said last week—Dad’s don’t be afraid to apologize and repent to your children when you screw this up. You will. I will, we all will. Don’t be afraid to apologize and repent to your kids. However. However.

Do not provoke your children to wrath by never shouldering your responsibilities. (What do I mean?)

I’ve seen men who fail to repent and apologize to their children. It’s not good. And I’ve seen men who are leading from their anger every day and apologizing for it—big dramatic apologies—everyday. That’s also a great way to provoke your children to wrath. You don’t want it to be said “Oh yeah, Dad has no problem apologizing. That makes his guilt go away so he can do it again 15 minutes later.”

Point 3: A Program of Education

Let’s look again,

Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

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

So Dads are teachers. Well what are you teaching. Paul says you are teaching discipline and instruction.

These are two Greek words: Paideia (discipline) and nuthesia (instruction).

Here’s a fun fact for you. This word did not just mean correcting them when they do wrong. Paideia was the Greek word for the entire Greek education system. Which included not just education, but enculturation. It was a big word. A really big and important word.

You know, the 4th of July is coming up. So imagine that on the 4th of July, someone said to you “On this auspicious occasion, I’m going to ask you to give a toast at the Family Barbecue and to give a five minute speech on the meaning of freedom and democracy.”

Well, sheesh…that’s a big word, and in an American Context it’s got 250+ years of history behind it. Where do I begin?

For the Greeks of Paul’s day, Paideia was kind of like that. In fact, one scholar has written a three volume series just on the meaning of that word in ancient Greece.

But now bring that back to our text...

Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

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

Imagine these Greeks hearing that. The Paideia…of the Lord? That would be like someone saying “Fathers teach your kids about the democracy of God.” Well. That’s kind of a civic and educational term, not really a religious term, Paul.

Or at least, that’s what we think the response would be. You see, the ancient Greeks saw their education process as not just passing along facts, but cultivating people. Our educational system tends to get reduced to downloading facts into heads so that the facts can be repeated by mouths and bubbled in on tests.

But the ancient understanding of education was “We are forming people.” In the case of Ancient Greeks, it wasn’t just facts about the Greeks, or history of the Greeks or mathematics as understood by the Greeks, but it was how to be Greek. How to be a citizen. How to be a responsible person. How to participate in the culture. How to talk. How to sing. And most importantly what to love.

And I remind you again, the text is addressed to Fathers. Because fathers are called to assume the spiritual well-being of their children. This is important. Because it usually gets outsourced to the mothers. We tend to assume that the moms are far more spiritual and pious than Dads, so Moms handle a lot of the spiritual discipleship of their kids. But fathers, the instruction is yours. To model God the Father to your children. To love what he loves. To hate what he hates. To speak His words. To love his people. And to do what God the Father has done for you—he has won your heart. So this means that the education that happens in the home is transmitted first through the godly example of Dads.

To put it another way, children are asking “What does the Gospel do to people? What does Jesus do to people? What does the Holy Spirit do to people?” Your children will begin to answer that question by what it does to you, fathers.

And so what this means is that Dads—you are the education director of your children, and you are building a family culture.

By education director, I mean it is your responsibility to make sure your children get a distinctly Christian education. That doesn’t mean all dads have to quit their job to be homeschooling dads from 8 to 4. It does mean that you know exactly what your kid is learning, and you are the guide and director of it. If your child is enrolled at a school, you know what’s going on, and you are helping to guide that. If it’s homeschool, all the curriculum is Dad-approved, and Dad is involved in the process.

As far as culture building, the reality is that In the conversations you have, in your daily attitude, in how you spend your time, in what kind of entertainment you consume, in how you relax, in how you treat your wife, you’re building a family culture.

And this is part of why you hear me often exhorting dads to build cultures of family worship. Because children will define reality by what happens at home. If you’re very good-humored and kind at church, but at home you’re a grumpy brute, home is the reality for your kids. If you’re confident and wise at work, but passive and foolish at home, home is the reality.

And if your children learn about Jesus, talk about Jesus, sing about Jesus, and pray to Jesus at church but never at home, home is the reality. Now it has to be done in gladness, not as a drudgery. Because, well, again, if church is a joy on Sunday, but family worship is a cold duty on Monday, home is the reality.

You are building a family culture, Dads. A whole family culture. Together with your wife you are building patterns, habits, inside jokes, traditions, catch phrases, and everything else.

And that is also what we are doing in the church. Not just building a membership roster or even building a community or a family. We are building a distinct kind of culture here. Where we worship together, eat together, pray together, sing together, and grow together.

I can just imagine Paul saying

Ephesians 6:4 (ESV)

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

And all the Dads going “The Paideia of the Lord? Paul are you insane? There’s no Christian paideia here! There’s no Christian culture here! I don’t know if you’ve noticed Paul, but my kid still walks past the Diana goddess statues when we go to the market together. There’s no Christian paideia here. No Christian culture here.”

And I have to think Paul would say “I know. Better get to work building it, then.”

Conclusion: Our Father Does Not Provoke Us To Wrath

And so what does that look like? It looks like a band of ridiculously hopeful people. Brothers, if you feel like this sermon was a discouragement, please listen to me now.

The reason why we have every reason to hope is that our Father does not provoke us to wrath. Our Father does not hold over our head impossible standards. Our Father does not tease us and mock us until our spirits our crushed. Our Father loves us and has kept absolutely nothing form us in his commitment to make absolutely certain that we are absolutely certain of his love for us.

The fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead means that our Father is in the resurrection business, not the despair business.

So you must keep that in mind, brothers.

To you who wonder if you have ruined your kids with your pride and arrogance, your Father is in the Resurrection Business and he writes cliffhangers that resolve into glories.

To you who wonder if you will ever be able to overcome the sin patterns of your own fathers, your Father is in the Resurrection Business and he is not intimidated by curses. He breaks them by the blood of his own Son.

To you who wonder if you will ever be able to get a handle on your anger, your Father is in the Resurrection Business, and nothing is too hard for him. He has already saved you at the worst cost to himself. So it is that your healing might come at a cost to you. You might have to repent of your pride. You might have to confess it to an Elder. You might have to seek help and counsel. You might have to sacrifice time in your schedule and make a little less money so you can actually do your first job.

To you with grown children, and you wonder if it’s too late. It is never too late to recognize failure, repent of it, to bear fruit in keeping with that repentance and to cause your wife and children to say “Wait a minute, what happened to him?”

Why can you dare to have such hope?

Because your Father does not provoke you to wrath. He is in the Resurrection Business, and your story is not yet finished. You have not been authorized to despair or give up. That’s not the story you are in. Rise up and be ready to work, for your Father is faithful and to you he says “You’re my Son. And I’m pleased with you” and in that confidence we live and work and build.