EPHESIANS 6:4 - How To Exasperate Your Children

Introduction

We never tire of pointing out how greatly blessed we are at Bethel to have so many kids running around—I’ve heard it said by others—and I agree—that one of my favorite sounds in the world is the sound of little ones during quiet parts of the worship service.

I’ve had conversations more than once where members have said to me that they are grateful for having so many children here at Bethel because “They are the future of the church”. Now, I understand what we mean when we say that—but if you’ve had this conversation with me you know my ready reply to that statement: Our children may represent the future of Christianity—the future of this church is assured through evangelism. But we cannot sit back and say that because we have a ton of ankle-biters running around the building today that they are all going to be the leaders of Bethel Baptist Church in fifty years.

Lest you doubt it, allow me to demonstrate: By a show of hands, how many adults in this room grew up going to the Primary Sunday School class downstairs as kindergarteners? You see, if the leadership of Bethel Baptist Church fifty years ago had looked at that overflowing Sunday School and said, “Here is the future of Bethel Baptist Church”, there would be (x) of us here in this room this morning.

Most of the kids I went to Sunday School with back in the Seventies left Bethel—they moved away, they got jobs far away, they married a spouse from another part of the state, they went to school and never came back to Jefferson County. That’s the way of things, and there’s really nothing wrong with it, either.

But there are other kids—too many of them—who didn’t leave because they went to college and met a spouse and moved away, they didn’t relocate to get a job somewhere far away from here. They left because they were leaving the faith. In the 2011 book, Already Gone, Britt Beemer and Ken Ham document how up to two-thirds of kids in an evangelical, Bible-believing church will leave the church and the faith altogether by the time they are eighteen years old. While Beemer and Ham make the case that the secularist agenda in public schools play a major role in that apostasy, I want to suggest that there is another reason so many children walk away from the faith—and it has to do with our text this morning:

Ephesians 6:4 LSB

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

This verse presents us with two possibilities—there are only two options when it comes to raising your children. You are either raising them “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord”, or you are provoking them to anger. Far too many adults want nothing whatever to do with Christianity because of the way they were raised as Christians.

I believe that the counsel the Apostle Paul gives here in this verse—inspired by the Holy Spirit Himself—is absolutely critical to have driven deep into our bones as parents, because it is the difference between faithful, believing sons and daughters and angry, resentful apostate sons and daughters. There is certainly much more than this when it comes to raising believing children, but this verse sets the absolute bedrock for everything else that must follow.

And so the way I want to present the main argument of this verse is that you are called to

Raise your CHILDREN the way your HEAVENLY FATHER raises you

There is a stark divide between the two halves of this verse—drive your child to anger, or else raise them in the Lord. So to start off, let’s consider some

I. Tips for raising an ANGRY child

So what are some of the ways you can make sure that you raise a child who will someday walk away from the church? How can you go about provoking your child to wrath? Here are a few suggestions. First,

Enforce COMPLIANCE at all costs

Whatever you do, make absolutely sure that your children adhere completely to the standards of being a Christian. As Steve preached about a couple of weeks ago, make sure that your family checks all of the boxes: They are first in the door every time the church is open and last out. Do not let them out of your sight for a minute at church—you don’t want someone else saying something to them that you can’t filter (more about that in a minute). Make sure their dress code reflects the proper amount of holiness; haircuts, jewelry, makeup, hemlines, necklines, exposed skin—these are the marks of holiness. Make sure your children hear—at least once a day—a sentence that starts with “Christian kids would NEVER...” or “Christian kids must ALWAYS...” The moral and religious standards you set for them must be rigid, unyielding and inescapable.

But at the same time be sure that enforcing that compliance to your Christian standards doesn’t go too far in your direction. At the same time as you are enforcing compliance at all costs, be sure to

Cultivate your own HYPOCRISY

A wonderful tool for provoking anger in your children is the old phrase “Do as I say—not as I do...”. Always keep in mind that the really important thing is that your wife and kids are presenting the perfect picture of Christian uprightness—the benefit of that is that it really kind of lets you off the hook in your own walk. Clearly you’re doing something right—look at how moral and pious your kids are, after all! You sacrifice so much to lead them in righteousness, you shouldn’t have to keep such a rigid set of standards as they do. If you want to unwind with a movie you would never let them watch, well, that’s different because you’re an adult—so long as they watch nothing but PG movies. If your husband needs to hear a piece of your mind at some point because he is not cooperating with you, that’s fine—but the kids should never ever ever disrespect their father. Remember—your own Christian walk isn’t the priority here; theirs is!

Another fantastic strategy for provoking your kids to anger and driving them away from the faith is to

Be THIN-SKINNED

At some point your kids are going to catch on to your game—they might even come right out and say that your behavior sure looks hypocritical. It is absolutely essential at this point that you do not let them get away with it. Make sure to tell them that they are being sinful for questioning you, and in fact you are hurt by the suggestion that you are not a faithful Christian parent. Emotional manipulation is a marvelous tool for inculcating long-term resentment and anger in your kids! Don’t worry about actually engaging with your kids’ questions about the Bible; just make them feel stupid for asking! Make sure they know how much it hurts you to find out that they have doubts about Christianity.

And if they come to you with questions that they heard from their friends or classmates that question the Bible or your preferred theology, don’t bother trying to answer their objections—just set some boundaries and tell them they’re not allowed to talk to them anymore! This will produce a fine source of resentment in your children when it dawns on them that all of your emotional manipulation is just a dodge because you don’t even know the first thing about the faith you are forcing on them!

Here’s one more tip for producing an angry child—this one is specifically for fathers and sons. Dads, if you want to provoke your sons to anger,

Never be PLEASED by their EFFORTS

Your son comes pre-wired to want one thing more than anything else in his life: to make you proud of him. So what you must do—and do in everything—is never pass up a chance to tell them what they did wrong. No matter how hard they work, no matter how carefully they try, there will always be something you can point to that shows them how they screwed up. If you are going to raise competent sons, they need to learn how to be better. And how will they ever learn to be better if you don’t point out everything they messed up? Don’t make them soft by telling them “Good job”—unless you follow up the compliment with three examples of how they should have done it better. In fact, most of the time you’ll probably want to stop them in the middle of their task and take over—they’re only going to mess it up, and you can do it in half the time it’s going to take them. If you are on your game and paying attention, you will guarantee that they spend the rest of their lives hearing your voice in the back of their head telling them that they don’t have what it takes, that they are a hopeless screw-up.

Keep these four tips in mind, and you can be assured that you will raise angry children who will not only walk away from the faith but will probably stop coming around for Thanksgiving.

This is the first part of Ephesians 6:4—Paul is warning Christian parents not to provoke their children to anger. Instead, he writes,

Ephesians 6:4 LSB

... bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

So let’s leave behind all the tips for raising an angry child and instead focus on

II. God’s call to NURTURE your child

We do not want to raise angry children—we do not want to drive our children away from the faith, but establish them in it. And so we are called to “raise them up” in a certain way. The word translated “raise them up” or “bring them up” has to do with feeding or nourishing. And Paul uses two words to describe how that nourishing is to be done—what are we to nurture and feed and cultivate in our children?

God’s Word says that nurturing our children takes on two aspects: We discipline them (the word in the original language has to do with training, educating and instilling character), and we instruct them (the idea in the Greek means to warn or admonish.) And this is discipline and instruction of the Lord—in other words, we are to teach and warn and build and edify and train our children the way the Lord instructs us to.

The most notable example we have in Scripture of this kind of training is of course the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs is specifically written by a father to his son, and is full of teaching character:

Proverbs 6:6–8 LSB

Go to the ant, O sluggard, Observe her ways and be wise, Which, having no chief, Officer or ruler, Prepares her food in the summer And gathers her provision in the harvest.

And also full of admonishment and warnings:

Proverbs 6:32–33 LSB

The one who commits adultery with a woman is lacking a heart of wisdom; He who would destroy his soul does it. Wounds and disgrace he will find, And his reproach will not be blotted out.

One of the most common refrains in Solomon’s teaching for his son is found in Proverbs 3:1-6 - you can turn with me there for a moment (page 528 in the pew Bible)

Proverbs 3:1–6 LSB

My son, do not forget my law, But let your heart guard my commandments; For length of days and years of life And peace they will add to you. Do not let lovingkindness and truth forsake you; Bind them around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good insight In the eyes of God and man. Trust in Yahweh with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.

You don’t hear any enforced compliance there, do you? You see, to nurture your children in the Lord means to

Train them in a DELIGHTED OBEDIENCE (cp. Prov. 3:1-6; Psalm 119:35)

Solomon does not just compel his son to obey the standard; he teaches him to LOVE the standard! Show your children why God’s laws are lovely, why obeying them brings joy and peace and blessing to your life. When Solomon tells his son to write God’s lovingkindness and truth on his heart, he is telling him to love God’s laws! To obey God not out of fear or coercion or threats of punishment, but out of sheer delight! To sing with the psalmist

Psalm 119:35 LSB

Cause me to walk in the path of Your commandments, For I delight in it.

And here of course we must understand that in our own flesh, such delight in God’s commands is impossible. We must possess the New Birth that comes by our repentance and faith in Jesus Christ; the old futile mind darkened by our sin will never be able to delight in obedience.

But mark it well—your children will never be trained in delighted obedience to God’s laws if they have not seen it in you first! If all they see is your hypocrisy and thin-skinned bluster and emotional manipulation and personal disregard for God and His Word, then that is what they will learn from you.

So if you are to bring up your children in the discipline and instruction of the LORD, then

Demonstrate your STEADFAST PURSUIT of God (cp. Psalm 42:1-2)

Your children will learn more from what they see you do than what they hear you say. A dad can tell his sons to go to church with their mother every single week for eighteen years, but as soon as they are old enough, they do what he does—they find any and every excuse in the book to drift away from attending worship. It doesn’t matter how many Children’s Bible Storybooks they grew up with, if your own Bible is sitting under a layer of dust on a shelf somewhere they will never grow up loving God’s Word.

Do your kids see your delight in God and His Word? Is it a common sight for them to see you with your Bible open on your lap? Do they know that Mom and Dad are praying for them regularly because they regularly see it taking place? Is the gathered worship of God’s people together on the Lord’s Day the highlight of your week—not because you need to be seen there and want to polish your image of good faithful Christian piety (as Steve so powerfully warned against in Colossians a couple weeks ago)—but because you genuinely love to enter into God’s presence? Would your kids recognize you in Psalm 42—

Psalm 42:1–2 LSB

As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; When shall I come and appear before God?

The things that your kids see you love will be the things they love. If you are a hunter or a fisherman—if you love to tinker around with cars or play football or whatever it is—how much of your love for that pastime comes from doing it with your dad? Nurturing your children in the Lord means letting them see your steadfast pursuit of God; your delight in Him, His Word, His people, His sanctuary.

You know, in Luke 2, we have the account of Jesus sitting in the Temple. We typically take His statement in Verse 49

Luke 2:49 LSB

And He said to them, “Why is it that you were searching for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?”

—to be a statement of His Heavenly Father’s house—the Temple. And surely that’s true. But in light of what we are told earlier in Luke 2:41, that

Luke 2:41 LSB

His parents would go to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.

—that Jesus grew up seeing the Temple as a place that His father Joseph loved as well. When Jesus spoke of His “Father’s house”, He was speaking of a place that both of His Fathers—earthly and Heavenly—loved dearly. And that love was powerfully instilled in His heart as well.

Raising your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord means training them in a delighted obedience. It means demonstrating your steadfast pursuit of God. And it also means that you

Disciple them the way your FATHER in HEAVEN disciples you (cp. Luke 15:10-23)

Have you ever noticed that highly competent and motivated men—men who are productive, industrious and skilled—so often have sons that are absolute washouts? (It’s possible that this phenomenon is actually more common inside the Church than outside). It’s puzzling—you would expect someone growing up with that kind of father would follow in his footsteps of being motivated, self-starting and industrious, but more often than not they are lazy, limp and sullen, with no motivation or interests in life. What is going on there?

The reason that a high-powered, Type-A dad often produces a dud of a son is because of what we alluded to earlier: the boy has grown up with a dad who is impossible to please. When you’re a kid, the first time you mow the lawn it is going to look terrible when you’re done. And the temptation for a hard-charging, no-nonsense father is going to be to impatiently kick his son off the lawn mower and do the rest of it himself. Or the first time he lets his son use the screw gun to drive decking screws into the new porch, the poor kid’s going to struggle with it and mess it up. And over time, what does the boy learn? “It doesn’t matter if I do it, because Dad’s just going to come along and re-do it anyway...” So he gives up trying, because he learns early on that his dad is impossible to please.

But brothers, this is not the way your Heavenly Father disciples you! He is extraordinarily easy to please! He delights in you, no matter how feeble or messed-up your works for Him are! The most powerful example of this comes from Jesus’ words in Luke 15. We see it in the way Jesus describes what happened in Heaven when you repented of your sins and came to saving faith:

Luke 15:10 LSB

“In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

We always think that this means that the angels are full of joy—but read it closely. There is joy in the angels’ presence! Who is it that sits in the midst of the angels in the Throne Room of Heaven?

What this verse is saying is that God Himself is the one rejoicing over your repentance! He is a Father Who is extraordinarily easy to delight, when you come to Him to repent in the name of His Son!

A bit further on in Luke 15 we have another picture of the delight of God over His son’s feeble and weak acts of faith. In verses 11-32 we have the story of the Prodigal Son. At the end of the account, when the son trudges back to his father’s estate dressed in rags and stinking of pig manure, does his father respond with a two-hour lecture about everything the boy did wrong? Does he make sure his son knows how badly he offended him? Does he emotionally manipulate him?

Not a bit of it—his father interrupts his son’s weak, feeble attempt at reconciling: “I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15:21) and calls for a feast to celebrate his return!

In the same way, beloved, your Heavenly Father is extraordinarily easy to please—He delights in you; He is overjoyed when you come to Him in faith through Jesus Christ. No matter how feeble your attempts to obey Him, no matter how badly you bend the nail He gives you to drive or how shabby the lawn He tells you to mow, He will always delight in your effort.

But know this—your Heavenly Father may be easy to please, but He is extraordinarily difficult to satisfy! The prodigal son’s father was overjoyed to see his son return home, but he was not satisfied until he had been washed, cleansed, restored and feasted!

Beloved, when you come to your Heavenly Father by repentance and faith in His Son, you have a Father who will not rest until He has accomplished His will for you:

Ephesians 1:4–6 LSB

...that [you] would be holy and blameless before Him in love, by predestining [you] to adoption as [a son] through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He graciously bestowed on [you] in the Beloved.

Your Heavenly Father will never be satisfied until you are a complete and spotless reflection of the holiness and perfection of Jesus Christ. He will love and delight in you every second of that process, but He will never give up and never be satisfied until He has accomplished His purposes in you. So you bring your children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord the way He brings you up: Easy to please, but difficult to satisfy!

You have come into the presence of your Heavenly Father this morning to hear His Word. And so what has His Word revealed to you this morning? If you see here that you have been provoking your children to anger, then understand that you have a loving Father who fills Heaven itself with His joy when a sinner repents—bring those sins of hypocrisy, emotional manipulation, legalism and pride that have provoked your children, name them for what they are, and lay them at the foot of the Cross. Because it was on that Cross that your sins provoked the infinite anger of a Father toward His beloved Son. And that Son bore the brunt of His Father’s wrath so that sinful fathers could be forgiven for provoking their children. He died on that Cross to wash away the sins of every tyrannical father, to wash away the sins of every resentful son.

Have you screwed up your kids? Come to Jesus. Have you hated and resented your father? Come to Jesus. At the foot of His Cross there is cleansing, there is freedom, there is reconciliation. The holy angels that fill the throne room of Heaven will be crowded out by the joy that resounds from your Heavenly Father when you come—and welcome!—to Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION

Ephesians 3:20–21 LSB

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

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