This sermon was preached on July
19, 1988 at the Southeastern Reformed Baptist Family Conference.
Now may I urge you to turn with me in your Bibles once again
to the sixth chapter of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, Ephesians
chapter 6, and I shall read in your hearing tonight as I did
last evening the first four verses of this chapter, Ephesians 6
and verse 1. By the way, there seems to be
clear indication from this passage that when the assembly at Ephesus
gathered, Paul assumed the children weren't shunted off somewhere
in junior church. They were present to hear the
epistle. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. For this
is right. Honor your father and your mother,
which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be
well with you, and that you may live long on the earth. And you,
fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but nurture
them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. Now this evening
we move on in our study of this text to take up the second major
division of the text and of our theme, namely, the task defined. Having considered the task assigned,
and he fathers, we now move to examine the words in which the
task is defined. And those words are these, provoke
not your children to wrath, but nurture them. And in this task
defined, we have the negative injunction, provoke not your
children to wrath, the positive direction, but nurture them,
And we have them both in what I am calling the assumed framework
of that task. And God helping us and time permitting,
I hope to trace out those three heads tonight, the negative injunction,
the positive direction, and the assumed framework. First of all then, the negative
injunction. No sooner has Paul, by the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, captured the ears of the fathers in the
assemblies at Ephesus, but that their ears receive a clear negative
injunction. Now I know we live in the day
in which everything is supposed to be positive. There is a great
antipathy to anything that is couched in the negative. And
this whole climate is just another manifestation of the growing
and increasingly unashamed hostility to the whole fabric of biblical
revelation. When God reveals His mind in
such things as the Ten Commandments, He mixes the negatives and the
positives. He has His thou shalt not, and
His thou shalts. And as we shall see, God willing,
in subsequent studies, under the heading of godly admonition,
the overall flavor of admonition is negative and not positive.
And in the very nature of training unformed and inexperienced children,
there is infinite wisdom and compassion expressed in this
dominant negative motif of the admonitory sections of the Word
of God. But we notice that Paul begins
with the negative injunction. And you fathers, provoke not
your children to wrath. With a realism born of an honest
and accurate assessment of human nature, and of the sin which
cleaves to the best of Christian men, Paul begins his definition
of the task assigned to fathers with the negative injunction.
Now we must of course begin with the question, what do these words
mean? When Paul wrote by the inspiration
of the Spirit, Fathers do not provoke your children to wrath,
what precisely did he mean? Well, you'll remember, if you
were here last evening, that we noted that the structure of
this entire section is one in which we have three couplets
of divine directive, starting with a directive to an inferior
and then balanced with a directive to the superior. And in this
section, Paul begins with addressing children with respect to their
duty. Children, obey your parents in
the Lord, honor your father and your mother. And then in this
particular couplet, he does exactly what he does when he treats wives
and then husbands, subsequently servants and masters, and what
he does is this. Having given a specific directive
to the inferior, He then gives explicit directives to the superior
which will make the compliance of the inferior as delightful
and as easy as possible. So having said to children, obey
your parents, honor your father and your mother, he begins his
definition of the task of godly parenting by telling fathers
to secure a climate in which they are not unnecessarily provoking
their children to anger. For it is only in such a consciously
created climate that the compliance of the child in the realm of
obedience and honor will most likely be secured by the enablement
of the Spirit of God. And so what God is saying to
fathers in this negative injunction is this, Do not, in the administration
of the training of your children, do not unnecessarily provoke
them to carnal anger. Do not carry out the administration
of your nurture in such a way as to create a climate that is
constantly stirring up this passion of anger in your children. Now he does not say don't ever
make your children angry. Some of you might go home and
say, oh boy, that's great. Next time dad tells me I gotta
be in at 11, I'll say, that makes me angry. And Pastor Martin,
preach, you're not supposed to make me angry. I'll come in at
1. No, no kids, doesn't work. He does not say, don't ever do
anything that'll make your children angry. What he is saying is,
do not provoke them to anger. That is, do not unnecessarily
create situations which will either stir up in them the sinful
passion of anger, or even stir up righteous anger, because the
moment there is anger, there is an adversarial relationship. and the nurture of our children
cannot effectively be carried on in an adversarial relationship. Now, for further light on what
he means, we turn to the parallel passage in Colossians 3, which
brings in another nuance that is most helpful. In the parallel
passage in Colossians 3, we read in verse 21, Fathers, Provoke not your children that
they be not discouraged. Now, the word he uses for provoke
here is a word that can mean to stir someone up to a virtuous
or a vicious or sinful attitude or action. In 2 Corinthians 9,
2, he speaks of how the Macedonians' generosity provoked other Christians. It stirred them up to the virtue
of open-handed generosity. But now, he says, fathers, do
not stir up your children that they may not be discouraged,
literally. Provoke not your children that
they lose heart. That's a much better rendering
of the word. Do not provoke them in such a
way as to cause them to lose heart. Now bring the two things
together and what do you find the apostle emphasizing? you
find him emphasizing on the one hand that in parental molding
of our children we are always prone to do things or fail to
do things which will unnecessarily stir up a climate of anger and
create an adversarial relationship or we may provoke our children
to lose heart And instead of an adversarial relationship,
we find a relationship in which they are utterly without spirit. And so the adversarial relationship
and also the relationship in which there is discouragement. I can never please Dad. I can
never please Mom. Why? Try. is a climate in which
godly nurture cannot effectively be carried on. So we must avoid
that which unnecessarily creates either the adversarial or the
non-motivational climate of godly nurture. Now, having established
the meaning of the words in the negative injunction, with the
parallel passage shedding its peculiar nuance and light upon
it, now let us ask this question. What things are most likely to
provoke our children to anger or to provoke them to lose heart? You know what I wish I could
do at this point? Because we have children here, I wish I
could turn the one-way communication into a class and say no one over
18 can open his or her mouth. And I want you kids with Judgment
Day honesty and you young men and women who don't like to be
called kids anymore, and so I won't insult you, you young men and
women, to have you tell us what is it that most frequently has
provoked you into an adversarial relationship with your parents
or provoked you into a non-motivational attitude in which you said, I
won't even try to please them, it doesn't work. But since I
can't do that, though I'd like to, let me suggest from observation,
from trying to listen to kids, from the painful discovery of
my own heart and the painful input of my own children as I
sought to rear them with an open climate in which they could tell
their dad when he was unnecessarily provoking them to anger or to
become dispirited. What are some of the most common
ways in which even good and godly fathers, and often mothers taking
the clue from the fathers, or fathers taking the pattern from
their wives rather than correcting their wives and being the pace
setters in such a godly climate, rather they become the ones who
engineer a climate marked by adversarial and dispirited relationships,
among the children. Well, let me say that, first
of all, children are most frequently provoked to anger when, in summary,
we cease to be like God in the totality of our parenting experience. You see, God is the great and
perfect Father. And He is the model of what we
are to be as fathers. And this is established in so
many passages. One is embarrassed by the richness
of Scripture, but think particularly of Psalm 103. Like as a father
pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. He
knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. He will not always chide, neither
will He keep His anger forever. God is not unreasonable in the
venting of His righteous parental anger, nor is He unreasonable
in the extent and in the intensity of His chastisement. And God,
you see, calls upon us to be fathers like unto the pattern
of Himself. And all of these things that
I will mention, and they are only a selective list, they are
things in which, at the bottom line, we are not like God our
Heavenly Father in His treatment of His children. Fathers, do
you want very quickly to provoke your children to anger? Then
indulge, first of all, in patterns of excessive discipline. Matthew
Henry said, discipline is medicine, but he who feeds his child with
medicine as his normal fare will find soon that the medicine has
no effect upon him and the child has no appetite for wholesome
food. And there are fathers who either
out of a distorted view of what it is to nurture their children,
or out of a horribly unmortified strain of carnal meanness, are
excessive in the discipline of their children, and children
even in their fallen state have an innate sense of fairness. And when you've stepped over
that boundary of fairness again and again in excessive discipline,
you inevitably provoke those children to anger in direct violation
of this negative injunction. Then there is, secondly, the
horrible sin of partiality and favoritism. You see it exemplified
in Genesis 25-28 in the case of Jacob and Esau. You see the horrible effects
of it in the case of the sons of Jacob. It's as though Jacob
learned the pattern and passed it on. And that favoritism openly
displayed to Joseph before his brothers provoked them to anger,
not only against their father, but against their brother, and
set up problems not only in the parent-child relationship, but
in the sibling relationships. You see, God is no respecter
of persons. Fathers be like God! Do not show
a sinful, carnal partiality and favoritism based upon the natural
chemistry between you and one child or another that predisposes
you to be more lenient and to be more considerate of one as
opposed to another. You'll provoke the neglected
one to anger in direct contradiction to the Word of God. Most often
our children are provoked to anger by hypocrisy and the double
standard. Hypocrisy and the double standard. They see you ready to put the
belt or your hand upon their backside when they have wronged
one of their siblings and you force them to say, I'm sorry,
I was wrong, will you forgive me? And yet they hear your angry
words to your wife, And they never hear you saying, honey,
I was wrong. I sinned. Will you forgive me? They never see you gathering
the family together saying, kids, we know you overheard mom and
dad having heated words. Dad is the one who provoked that
situation. I sinned against God. I sinned
against Mommy. I've asked God's forgiveness
and sought it in the blood of Christ and have obtained it.
I've asked Mommy's forgiveness and she has granted it. Children,
will you forgive your dad for that outburst of carnal anger? They see you demanding of them
transparency and honesty and the willingness to humble yourself,
but they don't see you doing it in your own relationships. And when you lay upon them a
burden that you will not bear, you provoke them to anger in
direct violation of this injunction. Furthermore, in the fourth place,
you provoke children to anger by a pattern of neglect and insensitivity. A pattern of neglect and insensitivity. There are times when in the strange
development of the independent judgment and will of a child,
that the child pushes to know whether or not there is a wall
of protection around him that will say, thus far and no further. And if you want to provoke your
children to anger, just neglect the child so you don't feel when
he's pushing and your antennae are not out picking up the signals
when they're asking for attention, when your son just wants to have
a walk with you to try to find out what's going on in his mind
and in his body as an emerging teenage boy. When all your daughters
want is their beginning to merge into manhood and psychologically
and emotionally and physiologically are being prepared to be a wife
and a mother, they just want to feel the strong arms of a
loving man around them with no eroticism. And they send out
signals. They plop down next to you in
the couch and all you do is squiggle away and put the paper down between
you. Shame on you, Dad! You're sending
that girl back to her room angry and bitter. You're violating this injunction.
Fathers, provoke not your children to anger by excessive discipline,
partiality and favoritism, hypocrisy and the double standard, neglect
and insensitivity, and closely akin to it in the fifth place.
by weaving about yourself a cocoon of silence. The non-verbal pop. How many a child has been made
angry and bitter because dad simply won't talk. He had a dad
who never talked. He felt the anger, he felt the
frustration, he felt the irritation, and rather than reject that pattern
and cry to God for grace to establish a new one, what is he doing?
He's just pushing the buttons in the computer, and what was
programmed into him over the years is now coming out dictating
the patterns of his own parenting. And then he hides behind the
fact, well, it's just my personality. Personality schmality, my friend.
It's nothing to do with personality. It has to do with biblical principles.
God is the great communicator. He no sooner made Adam his first
son, and Adam is called the son of God, the first thing he did
after he blessed them was to open his mouth and talk to them.
And the image of God created he them, male unto him, the male
and female created he them, and he blessed them, and he said
unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and have
dominion. And all of these cocoons of silence
ultimately have their own materials in Eden after the fall. It is sin that has given us the
fabric with which to weave the cocoon of silence that cuts us
off from our children and makes them angry. Then, fixedly bitter
and demeaning words and deeds provoke our children to anger.
You remember that little ditty we used to say as kids, when
one of the neighbor kids said, Hey, old big nose, Or when they
found out I had Swedish blood in me, they'd call me Blockhead.
The same way when we'd find out someone was Italian, we'd call
him Dago or Wop. We lived in a sort of little
United Nations up there in Connecticut where I lived. That's why We
had very little hang-ups. We had our little Italy, our
little Ireland, our little Sweden, our little Scotland. We laughed
at our ethnic differences, and when we got mad we called each
other's names, but then we always hugged and made up and went down
to the park and played ball together. We are all hung up about this
business, everybody afraid to say anything ethnically. We didn't
have that. But there was that little ditty
that really isn't true. When someone was trying to really
dig at us and say things, we'd say, sticks and stones will break
my bones, but names can never hurt me. Not true. Sticks and stones may
break my bones, and all I need to go is to an orthopedic doctor
and have him set the bone, and in six weeks I'm good as new.
But names from a father, demeaning words from a father, fit the
description of Proverbs where it speaks of words that pierce
like a dagger. And there are adults sitting
in this place tonight who have inward weeping wounds inflicted
from a father or mother who is a dummy, stupid, klutzy. You want to provoke your children
to anger? Indulge in demeaning, bitter
words and deeds. You want to provoke them to anger?
Be imprecise and unclear in what you expect of them, and then
clobber them as though your expectations and directives were as clear
as the noonday sun. Many a child is provoked to anger
when he is summarily disciplined before the court of father and
mother's law. When that law was not made clear
and precise, it wasn't a matter of willful disobedience, there
was imprecision. And they are angered because
they know they have been wronged. And then you want to anger them.
This is particularly true as they begin to develop into their
pre-teen and teenage years. You smother them with inordinate
control over every burp and hiccup. You're so determined they're
going to come out right that you don't give them room to breathe.
And they enter adulthood crippled. You have not given them enough
rope to know how to wrestle with decision-making principles, and
make a wrong choice, and skin their knees, and bump their head,
and learn from it. And they sense that they are
growing into adulthood, but you are smothering them with an inordinate
control, and they become angry. They want to bust out of the
whole thing. And then one of the most common
ways that children are provoked to anger is this, when frustrated
parents who've never submitted to the will of God for their
own lives, dictated by providence, attempt to live their unfulfilled
frustrations through their children. Living your own fantasy life
through your kids. You heard this morning about
how nature teaches us certain things. Doth not nature itself
teach you that sometimes that son that you wished would be
born with your athletic ability is born with just a modicum,
and lo and behold, it's your daughter that's got more native
athletic ability than your son? I speak from experience. I do. I never forced my son into
athletics. When he showed little interest,
I didn't push it. Much as I wish I had a son who would have loved
athletics, no. But his interest lay in working
with his hands, and I encourage that. But my daughter Beth, all
I had to do was to teach her at age seven or eight how to
put her feet and how to hold a bat, and she hit frozen ropes
every time. The best natural swing of any
kid I've ever seen. And so every day when she'd come
home from school, In her preteens, dad would take 15 minutes to
go out in the backyard, not with his son, but with his daughter.
And pitch it, and I mean she's a natural hitter, everything
hit back towards second base, line drives one after another.
The other day she hadn't touched a bat in years, we're in the
backyard, she's now married. She said, dad, I got an itch
to hit the ball. I said, come on, let's go out. I mean, frozen
ropes, boom, boom, boom, one after another. In my age, it
takes me 50 minutes to even begin to get anything like a stroke
back, to get the hips and the shoulders. She goes out there,
pow, pow, pow. Tremendous amount. But you see,
there are fathers who can't hack that. And what do they do? They push their sons to be something
God didn't make them. God made them with the hands
of a pianist, not a shortstop. God made them with the coordination
to be farmers. and not football players. You want to make your kids angry?
Then you live out your unfulfilled frustrations and fantasies through
them. First upon them what you wish
you had been, not what the Word of God says you ought to have
been and you're determined they shall be, but what your own carnal
desires wanted you to be. Well, these
are just a partial list, or this is but a partial list. Have I
struck home with some? Then listen to me, men. Stop
it. This is a present imperative verb. And when a present imperative
comes, it means if you're doing it, stop it and don't ever start
it. Do not provoke your children
to wrath. First of all, setting unrealistic
standards for them. Setting unrealistic standards
for them. It's being unlike God. He knows
our frame. He remembers we are dust. To change the imagery, God squeezes
no blood out of a turnip, only turnip juice. And yet at times
we set unrealistic standards out of personal pride, out of
competition with someone else's kids, and our desire to maintain
respectability with their parents. There's all kinds of infrastructure
among parents upon which alter the lives and the wholesome psyche
of children are sacrificed. Don't provoke your children to
lose heart by setting unrealistic standards. Picture the kid who
goes out the first day of track tryouts and he says, you know,
coach, I've been told that I got the build of a high jumper. And
I think maybe I fooled around a little bit in the backyard
and someone taught me how to do a scissors kick in the old
Western roll. I haven't tried to flop yet.
I feel I need to be taught, but I think I maybe could make the
track team as a high jumper. What do you think, coach? And
he looks him over and he says, yeah, I think maybe. Then he
goes over and he sets the bar at seven foot six. He says, now
if you've got a high jumper in your kid, let's see. Now this
is what I want you to do. I want you to run up to the bar. This
is the way you approach at this angle, this many steps. This
is your takeoff foot. And when you do this, boom, boom,
boom. Six times. And the poor kid, all he does
is manage to get up high enough to hit his head on the bar and
knock it off. And he goes home and says, I'll never be a high
jumper. What happened? Unrealistic standards. What will
a wise coach do? He'll set that bar low enough
for a toddler to get over it. And he'll give him the basics
of how to get the technique. And lo and behold, the first
time he tries, he clears it by two feet. He feels like King
Duck reborn. He says, boy, that's great. Coach says, wonderful. Let's
set it up higher. He sneaks it up just two inches.
He said, now try it again. Well, by the time the guy's cleared
the bar ten times, a sense of confidence, a sense of identity
is entered. Why? There were realistic standards
set for him, and what did it do? It fed that thing called
heart. Without which, all the native
ability in the world will never make a high jumper out of him.
The difference in athletic competition at the highest level is usually
not raw ability. Raw ability is pretty well a
washout. It's heart! And God says, do
not provoke your children to lose heart. by setting unrealistic
standards. Secondly, by failure to give
verbal reinforcement and praise for well-doing. You see, some
parents, the only time they communicate is when they're pointing out
faults. There can be ten specific duties that you had to do in
a given day. You did nine of them reasonably
well according to your parental directives, and lo and behold,
you blew one of them. The only one you hear about is
the one you blew. And when that goes on week after
week, what happens, kids, tell me? You figure, what's the use? You lose heart. Listen, if the
Apostle Paul can write these words to that messed up church
at Corinth, there's usually something in your kids you can praise.
He could write in chapter 11 and verse 2 these amazing words,
having already had to deal with so many abnormalities and more
yet to deal with, I praise you that you remember me in all things
and hold fast the traditions even as I deliver them unto you.
If Paul can find something to praise in the Corinthian church,
you can find something to praise in your children. Fathers do
not provoke them to lose heart by setting unrealistic standards,
by failing to give verbal reinforcement and praise for well-doing. Do not make them lose heart by
nagging and harping on matters. Everything the Bible says about
a contentious wife being like the dripping of a faucet. Better
it is to dwell in the corner of a rooftop than in a wide house
with such a woman. The principle is the same with
a child dwelling with nagging, harping parents. constantly reminding
of their foibles and their faults until they lose heart. And now
I'm going to say something some of you won't like, but I don't
care. It's biblical, and your controversy is with God and not
with me if you don't like it. By robbing your children of the
physical and verbal expressions of affection which you owe them, Many a child loses heart because
mom and dad, and particularly dad, the authority figure in
the home, never touches, never hugs, never embraces, and never
says, I love you. I tell you men, if we were to
be fathers like God, God has opened his mouth and told us
again and again of his love. I have loved thee with an everlasting
love. O Ephraim, how can I give you
up? You're so degenerate an apostate. If I'm to be true to the covenant,
I must give you up. But I'm so bound in covenant
love to you, how can I give you up? God's not ashamed to say
to His people, I love you. And all the pictures of His embraces. God uses the figure of the intimate
relationship of the shepherd who takes the lamb in his There is the physical intimacy
of the shepherd with his sheep. The Scriptures give us such pictures
of God showing His love in deed as well as in word. And when
John says, my little children, let us not love in word only,
he's assuming that's the easiest and the normal, but in deed and
in truth. One of the most moving experiences
I had at the last conference was after touching on this issue.
A 20-year-old young man came to me, son of a preacher. His
face was glowing. And he said, oh, Pastor Martin,
I've got to tell you something wonderful happened today. After
you preached this morning, I preached this aspect of it in the morning.
He said my dad came to me after the sermon with tears and threw
his arms around me. First time he's ever hugged me
since I was a baby. And he said to me, son, I love
you. First time he's told me that
since I was a baby. 20 year old kid whose spirit
was disheartened because his dad couldn't say, you son, I
love you. You say, I feel funny, so what? Do it, it won't kill you. Try
it, you may like it. You say, that's effeminate. Show
me from this book, was it effeminate? When the prodigal, frozen in
his tracks by his shame, had the father run to him, read the
text carefully, the father threw his arms around his neck, and
the father kissed him. He was paralyzed in his shame
and self-reproach. All the overtures had to come
from the father, and that's a picture of our Savior. I'm not at all
ashamed to say my 27-year-old son would no more think of shaking
my hand in church in front of five or six hundred people than
spitting in my eye. I'd feel insulted if he gave
me just a handshake at the door. He's my son! And he hugs me. And every time he hangs up the
phone, his last words are, I love you, Dad. And you know what? The son that he adopted at age
five has picked up the same pattern. I love you, Pop Pop. And lo and
behold, the little two-year-old granddaughter. I wobble, Pop
Pop. And there's a climate of the
verbalization as well as the physical expression of love.
If we were disembodied spirits who could float in the ether
and simply communicate in some super terrestrial manner of our
affection, fine. But we are not disembodied spirits. We have nerve endings and we
have auditory nerves which can hear words. Fathers, do not provoke
your children to be discouraged. And especially as they come into
those preteen years and teen years and they don't know who
in the world they are. Between zits and funny feelings,
once girls were always yuck. And then they began to be hmm.
And now they're hmm. And they don't know what to do
with all of this. And suddenly the nose that they
never even examined, now it feels so big and it ain't shaped right. And they're for sure convinced
they're the ugliest thing. Oh, they need one place where
the words, I love you, and where the arms that say, I love you,
keep them from being disheartened. That's your job, Dad. Don't provoke
them to anger. Don't provoke them to lose heart. Last night, after the meeting,
I sat with a woman in her early thirties who said, when I went
off to school and left my dad, all I got was a handshake and
good luck. Everything in me longed to have
him hug me, tell me he loved me. I tell you, it makes me want
to weep. to think of all of the dispirited
children produced by dads who will not say, I love you, and
will not express it physically. Now it should be evident, dear
men, if we are to obey this injunction, this prohibition, that we as
fathers and our wives, with us in a supportive role as mothers,
must increasingly know our children. They are not static in their
identity. They are developing. And elements
of personality will burst out at age four that you never saw
at age three. And others will seem to be submerged
for years and then will break out. And the thing that provoked
them to anger at age four won't touch them at age six. But then
there are things that will provoke them to anger at age six that
never entered the picture at age four. You've got to constantly
pray, Oh God, help me to know my children with holy discernment. It means you've got to establish
verbal communication. You've got to be willing to talk
about every silly, banal thing sometimes for an hour before
they feel loosened up enough to really tell you what's down
here. You see, the thing that's eating at their gut is here.
But then there's about four pints of just froth on top of it. And
you gotta sit and wait and get all that froth pumped out, pumped
out, pumped out, pumped out, until you feel, Lord, if I get
one more ounce of froth, I'm gonna barf. But you hang in there
and you realize my grace is sufficient for thee. And you say, Lord,
give me grace to hang in there. Something's in her gut. Something
is in his gut. He's eaten, Lord. They haven't
got it out yet. Lord, give me grace to even look
interested. There are times I can remember
as a parent, Lord, give me grace to even keep an interested look
on my face. But then the thing that was eaten,
then it came out. For others, don't provoke them
to wrath. Don't provoke them to wrath.
It means you're going to have to increasingly know your children. They change. And if you're to
know them, you must be with them. There must be meaningful communication,
constant observation. Secondly, we must know ourselves. We change. You know what will
be the most frightening thing? I look out in the faces of many
of you men. A quarter of you, a fifth of
you older than I, but the majority of you younger than I. And you
know what's going to shock you? But you mark my word. There are patterns
that were evident in your dad and you saw them as a teenager
and you didn't like them. And you said, if I ever become
a father and I got teenage kids, I'm never going to be like that.
But listen to me. That stuff was so programmed
in by the power of example, that unless you take specific, concentrated
measures to mortify those things, you get to that stage in your
life with your kids, and without trying, those patterns will start
coming out of you in ways that will shock you, will humble you,
and will drive you to your face in brokenness before God. You've
got to know yourself, and hear me men, if you've got a godly
wife, She is your best mirror next to the Bible. And have the
spiritual courage to sit down with her periodically and say,
honey, what am I like in the eyes of my kids? I tell you,
some of my most heart-wrenching, sobering judgment day, tearing
up spiritual upheavals came when I sat at the kitchen table with
my wife and I said, honey, I know You've got something you want
to tell me, something that's about to lay it on me. You say, well,
honey, the kids have been coming to me. Oh, yeah. What have they been saying? They've
been saying, Mom, what's bothering Dad? And when I've asked them,
I'm now speaking as she is. What do you mean, what's bothering
Dad? Well, I noticed for the past week, every time he comes
out of the study, he's got a frown on his face. And I noticed that
when I tried to send out a signal, he's not picking up on it. And
then if she saw the pattern beginning to emerge, she became my in-house
Nathaness. And she said, Albert, end thou
art to man. And when she did, I had to do
one of two things. I either had to follow the impulse
of my unmortified male ego and try to argue around her observations,
and rationalize under, and carnally try to manipulate, but thank
God she wouldn't be argued around or manipulated. She'd just quietly
listen if I made that attempt, and when I was all done, look
me straight in the eye and say, Honey, they're right. and hold her ground with reality
until I got in touch with reality and repented before God, repented
before my children, and amended my ways. Oh, you dear wives,
don't be intimidated by your husband's ability as a debater. Go to his conscience and stick
at his conscience, even when he gives you a string of arguments
that would seem to carry a court of law. When he's all done and
you can't answer all his arguments, go after his conscience and stick
at it until he humbles himself. That's being a helper, answering
to his need. What's he need when he's rationalizing? Not a wife
that's a pushover. A wife that will lovingly point
his chin out and hold her spiritual finger under his nose until he
bends. Now you wives, you've got to
learn the holy art of putting a little perfume on your finger. You've got to learn the holy
art of getting to his conscience, if necessary with holy subtlety,
like Nathan got to David's conscience. If he'd have walked into David,
grabbed him by the thigh and said, Listen, I know all about
your affair with Bathsheba. He might have had his head taken
off. So he says, David, I've got a story to tell you. Remember
your old days as a farmer? I'm going to tell you a little
agrarian story. And before long, with subtlety given of the Holy
Ghost, he got to his conscience. So man, if we're to obey this
injunction, we must increasingly know our children. That means
we've got to be with them, we've got to observe them, we've got
to listen to them. It means we've got to increasingly
know ourselves and what are the patterns that we are falling
into that may be provoking them to anger or provoking them to
lose heart. And here we must be willing to
be vulnerable to our children. How many of you Sit down periodically
with your children and ask them to evaluate you as a parent.
It's humbling, but I tell you it's salutary. What have you
got to lose except a little pride that ought to be nailed to the
cross anyway? What have you got to lose except some unmortified
carnal pattern of life that ought to be put to death anyway? Do not provoke your children
to wrath. For a suggestion of how broad
this category is, I turned up the sermon of a preacher of another
generation on the text in Colossians. Fathers, provoke not your children
that they be not discouraged. Listen to his words. When is this mandate violated? First, when parents deny them
a just allowance in what is necessary to maintain them suitably to
their birth, the Apostle is judged this so enormous a sin that he
hesitates not to say that he who commits it has denied the
faith and is worse than an infidel. Secondly, fathers provoke their
children when they give them unrighteous and inhuman commands,
as when Saul would oblige Jonathan his son to hate and persecute
David, a very virtuous and innocent person, upon which this generous
son, most unworthy of so bad a father, was vexed and inflamed
with anger. If the daughter of Herodias had
any spark of this good nature, she would have been in the same
manner offended at that cruel and barbarous command her mother
gave her to ask of King Herod the head of John the Baptist
on a charger. It is also provoking a child
when, without any necessity, he compels him to perform sordid
and servile actions such as are beneath his birth. In this rank
I put those too who, without cause, assail their children's
ears with contumelious words, as is the big word for demeaning
words. whether they are inspired by
present passion or an ill-favored custom has habituated their tongues
to such venomous conduct. And then he goes on to demonstrate
what in his day were the ways in which fathers provoked their
children to wrath. You see, Paul by the spirit was
a great realist and he knew If the relationship to our children
was marked by the adversarial climate or the dispirited, non-motivational
climate, we could never give them the positive nurture which
they need. I love the realism of biblical
psychology. Dear people, may I give you a
warning? Beware of being tyrannized by the experts. Don't live in
addiction to Dr. Dobson. He's basically someone
molded by humanistic psychology. And though I have no doubt he's
an evangelical Christian, Dr. Dobson is not a biblical theologian. You will know more about how
to rear your children if you live in the Word of God than
if you're addicted to Dobson. Provoke not your children to
wrath. Provoke them not that they lose
heart. But now we have the positive
direction. We've looked at the negative
injunction and obviously we'll only be able to begin the positive
direction. But I told Pastor Fortner, I
came determined that I would not just run through material,
but seek to discharge what I trust is the constraint of the word
upon my heart. The positive direction, what
is it? Look at the text. It begins with
what the Greek grammarians call a contrasting or an adversative
particle, a strong adversative particle. You fathers, do not
be provoking your children or them, your children to anger,
but in direct contrast to all of the effect of doing that,
but, and then the whole task positively is set forth. in these two words, nurture them. I love God's economy with words. I wish I knew how to master it
as a preacher. God puts the whole task in its
positive frame by saying, nurture them. And therefore we have in
those two words the objects of this directive, and then the
substance of this directive. Who are the objects of this directive? Nurture them. You have a pronoun,
and you good English students, I hope they still teach this
in English, that you look when you have an indefinite pronoun
to its immediate antecedent. Who is the them? of the passage. Well, if you look, it's very
clear. We are told, children, obey your parents. We are further
told, we are to honor father and mother. And then the apostle
says, fathers, provoke not your children, but nurture them. So the objects of this directive
are our children. Nurture them. All that them is,
is to be the concern of our nurture. It doesn't say, nurture their
souls, nurture their bodies, nurture their minds, nurture
their psyches. It says, nurture them. Now hear
me out. Packed in that little word, then,
is God's pointer to the fact that every Christian parent ought
to have a well-grounded biblical understanding of the nature of
what a child is. If you do not understand what
a child is biblically and theologically, you cannot practically fulfill
the task of nurturing them. You've got to know what them
is in order to nurture them. And in the time that remains,
that's as far as we'll go tonight, I want us to look at the objects
of the training. What are they? What are these
children we are to nurture? Well, they are, first of all,
creatures made in the image of God. They are not little well-planned
biological successes of our own sexual union, nor are they unplanned
biological accidents of our carelessness or of a theology of no conscious
family planning. No, they are creatures made in
the image of God. Genesis 1, 26 and 7 is clear
that man originally created was the image of God. In his body,
soul, psychosomatic entity, he was God's image. And hear me
now, though the fall has affected and marred the image, it has
not destroyed nor changed man's essential identity as image-bearer
of God. How do we know it? In Genesis
9 and verse 6, God says, Whoso sheds man's blood, by man shall
his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he him. Sinful men who murder other sinful
men are yet image bearers. And the same truth is brought
out in James 3 and verse 9, where it speaks of people who curse
their fellow men, and in so doing they curse those who are made
after the likeness of God. You say, what's the big deal
in the nurturing of my children if I know they are image bearers
of God? Oh parents, listen, it means
from the time that they are conceived, Until we first hold them in our
arms, and you mothers nurse them at your breast, and you dads
dandle them upon your knee, they have that noble, exalted dignity
of being image bearers of the living God of heaven and earth. They have all of that unique
capacity to know God and hold communion with God. They have
moral accountability and they are stamped with immortality. They shall exist forever as body
and soul entities in heaven or in hell. But image bearers they
were conceived and image bearers they will be even if they burn
in hell forever. as the marred, distorted image-bearers,
they are in hell, because they are of such dignity as to make
hell a necessity. There is no hell for beasts.
There is no hell for the most wild, vicious beast that slew
a whole village, because the beast is not an image-bearer
of God, and hell itself is witness to man's uniqueness as image-bearer
of God. Secondly, they are creatures
made with God-designed and God-wrought individuality. You've got to
understand that. You see, you weren't there in
the womb when all of that mysterious selection was going on from the
gene pool. that was going to determine the
basic elements of their physiology, the basic elements of their mental
capacity, the basic element of their native personality stamp. But there was someone there in
the womb. Psalm 139 makes it plain. If you have not heard
Pastor Huffstetler's tape from the Bluffton Conference several
years ago, I commend it to you on Psalm 139, the biblical doctrine
of self-image, a masterful treatment of this principle. David says,
God was there when, and then he uses the imagery of a weaver
in his shop. And He is taking one strand after
another, and upon the loom He is making that fabric which represents
the expression of His own artistry and aesthetic sensitivity. Though
you, Mom and Dad, were not in the womb overseeing and superintending
all of that selection, Almighty God was. And when we as parents
recognize that, then we're prepared to accept, hear me now, even
those abnormalities that are woven out of the raw materials
of man's fallenness. For God says, who maketh a man
blind or deaf or dumb or maimed but I, Jehovah? And you and I,
in nurturing our children, must recognize that we are nurturing
those who are creatures made in the image of God. Secondly,
creatures made with God-designed, God-wrought individuality. Thirdly, creatures fallen in
Adam. And that means two basic things. They are sinners in general,
or they are generic sinners. And they are sinners in particular,
that is, they are particular sinners. And what do I mean by
that terminology? Simply this. Romans 5, 12, As
through one man sin entered into the world, and death passed upon
all men, for then all sinned from the moment of conception.
They are liable. With that horrible condemnation
of their organic unity with Adam, he is the federal head of all
humanity. And when they are conceived,
their age of accountability is come and gone. Do you hear me? It's come and gone
the moment they're conceived. David said, Behold, I was shapen
in iniquity and in sin did my mother conceive me. Therefore,
they are born condemned, born spiritually guilty, born spiritually
blind, born morally perverse. They go astray from the womb,
speaking lies. The foolishness is bound up in
the heart of the child from its conception. Contrary to all modern
psychology that says all forms of potential for nobility and
goodness and altruism and the good of humanity are bound up
in the child. Let the experts and the social
manipulators surround this bundle of inherent goodness and we will
see it blossom into the new world system. Rubbish! Folly is bound
up in the heart of the child. And I'm sick and tired of hearing
Christian parents say, well, this is a stage. This is a stage. This is a stage. My friend, no. It's just another bundle of its
folly being untied and manifested. That's what it is. Not a stage. The terrible twos. The tribulating
threes. by its sinful folly, by degrees
manifesting itself. They are sinners in general in
the whole biblical doctrine of our organic unity in Adam, Adam's
federal headship. We need to know that as it applies
to our children. But they are not only sinners
in general, guilty, depraved, morally perverse, spiritually
blind and impotent. It seems to me that this is an
aspect too often overlooked. They are sinners in particular.
And what do I mean by that? Just this. There is woven into
the texture of the soul of every child peculiar tendencies to
special sins as a result of the whole state of fallen humanity. Some children in their conceived
individuality have a conduit of potentiality for a vicious
temper far out of proportion to another child conceived in
the same womb, equally guilty in Adam, equally depraved, equally
blind, equally perverse, equally spiritually impotent, but uniquely
predisposed to have a trigger temper. And you've got to understand
that as a parent. Others are uniquely predisposed
to thievery. Others uniquely predisposed to
deceit and cleverness and manipulation. And listen, some are uniquely
predisposed to become sexual perverts. Now listen to what
I did say and don't go out and say I said something I didn't.
I did not say anyone is conceived with a mechanistic necessity
of becoming a lesbian or a homosexual. But I am saying that some are
conceived because of the influence of sin upon humanity and its
subtle and pervasive insinuation into the totality of the stream
of humanity that from conception Some are more predisposed in
the direction of sexual perversion as some are more predisposed
to lechery with those of the opposite sex. Some are more predisposed
to pride and selfishness. Look at it in the Scriptures.
Jacob by temperament felt far more at home watching Mama make
pancakes while Esau was out hunting rabbits. Jacob had a more feminine
strain in his temperament that could well have predisposed him
to be a pervert. That's what I'm talking about.
You better have your eyes open, parents. asking God, Lord, help
me to see what specific areas my children are more predisposed
to this or that sin. For if I am to nurture them,
then surely in those areas I must concentrate my energies and my
prayers. But then, fourthly, they are
creatures who come to us moldable and undeveloped. They do not
come to us with their lives fixed and hardened into patterns of
thought and behavior. Their psyches and their minds
and their souls are like their bones. Their bones come relatively
flexible. Thank God that the head bones
slide or they'd never get through the birth canal. And as they
grow older and the bones fix and become hardened, that's the
great truth of Proverbs 22.6. I do not know the proper translation
of Proverbs 22.6, and I certainly don't know the proper meaning
of the text, but this much is clear. Train up a child in the
way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from
it. The contrast between the moldable
child and the unmoldable adult is undebatable in the text. That's
clear. Train up a child, and when he
is old, he will not depart. The child, flexible, moldable,
the old man fits the old woman. hard and petrified in his patterns. And dear people, we need to understand
this or we'll never, never, never know how to nurture our children.
And this is more beautifully displayed in the Lord Jesus than
anywhere else. You see, it was not sinful for
Jesus to be moldable and immature and pliable. Imagine the first
time Mary entrusted him if they used forks and spoons in Palestine. Of course, as far as I know,
they didn't after Archon, but let's contemporize the situation. And she feels it's time to go
from putting the food into his mouth and let the Lord Jesus,
the baby, the young child Jesus, sitting in his high chair. This
is his coming out day when he's going to have his first bowl
of spaghetti and he's going to try to get it in his mouth with
his own fork. You think the Lord Jesus hit the target every time?
I'm sure he had spaghetti from his ear to his navel. Yes! Why? Because the Scripture says,
and Jesus under the tutelage of Mary and Joseph was growing,
an imperfect verb, he was growing in wisdom and stature and in
favor with God in man. And he did all the klutzy things
a teenager does. When he hasn't caught up with
his appendages, I imagine more than once he botched up a job
in Joseph's carpenter shop. Not out of perversity, but he
was a klutzy dancer. You say, I never thought of that.
Well, the Bible says it. He was growing in stature. He passed through every single
element of prenatal development. I know of no Christian parent
here who would say that Jesus went from conception on Monday
to nine-month stage of gestation on Tuesday. No! It says that
Mary became great with child. And Joseph watched her tummy
swell and the stretch marks etched across the flesh. And the nine
months were there, she brought forth that babe with her groans
and her cries and her moans, and it came forth in the blood
and the mucus with which every baby is born. You see, that's
crass. That's biblical. And what was
true of his prenatal development was true of his development as
a little boy. He had to learn to coordinate
his hands. I imagine it was a beautiful
exercise when he was learning his Aramaic alphabet. Maybe he
had trouble with that Hebrew guttural the first time he tried
to pronounce it, and he couldn't say it. Maybe he had to say,
Mommy, help me. I can't get it down here enough.
Jesus, you must try this. He didn't get everything perfect
the first time. That's not normal growth in wisdom,
in stature. He didn't have perfect manners
at once. He grew in social graces. He never did anything that was
sinful, but he did a thousand things that were natural in the
maturation of ordinary humanity. Oh, my dear parents, nurture
them, but know what them is. Them is moldable. Them is undeveloped. Learn the difference between
the severe rebuke of the teenage son who deliberately and willfully
and with a high-handed rebellion breaks the curfew of eleven o'clock
on Friday night And the absent-minded teenager who literally, honestly
forgot to bring his watch, he was with his buddies, they were
in the middle of playing on their third game of hoops, and the
score was tied, and everyone was tired, and everyone was blocking
everyone's shot, and throwing up air balls, and the game went
on longer, and by the time they were done, one of them said,
hey, what time is it? It's quarter after eleven. Oh man, I'm in
trouble. And the kid comes home and before
he can even open the door, the father has told him, you're doxxed,
you're grounded, blah, blah, blah. You're not nurturing them. Do you forget as an adult? It's
a standing joke with my wife and me now. We've got the lost
glasses syndrome. Just before I left, I said, honey,
I've caught your disease. Where are my glasses? My ride
to the airport's waiting, can't find my glasses. She said, where
have you been? I said, oh, now I know. They're
down in the cellar. When I went down to have a little
exercise before I took my shower, I took my... all the time. Now,
is that sinful? No. It's part of growing old.
And there are things that are part of just growing up. that
are not sinful. All parents learn the difference.
Nurture them. What them is? I'll tell you what
them is. Them is creatures who come to
us moldable and undeveloped. And we need to recognize it.
And finally, they are creatures susceptible to the influences
of common and special grace. And I close on this note. They
are creatures susceptible to the influences of common and
special grace. What do I mean? Simply this.
It is part of God's glue to hold society together with a measure
of something short of sanity and anarchy, if people know common
decency. if they understand courtesy,
the symbols of respect and honor between men and women, and inferiors
and superiors, industry and frugality, and proper roles and modesty,
and a host of other things. We must recognize that our children
come to us susceptible to the influences of common grace, and
though we surround them with those influences and they are
never converted, We may merely send them to hell, respectable,
upright, responsible, productive citizens, but that's far better
than sending them to hell, dragging half the society with them. But
they are susceptible to special grace, and who knows but what
every one of our children may be elected. I abominate the teaching
that says there is in the Bible any warrant to presume or assume
that the child of every believing couple is elect. There's no shred
of evidence in the Bible. But I tell you there's nothing
in my Bible that says every one of my children may not be elect
either. It's one thing to say they must
be elect because they are my seed. That's presumption, no
foundation in scripture. It is going beyond scripture
to say, oh well, there's no way all of my kids could be elect.
Who says? God is often called the great
vast majority of His elect in whole families. And we need to
nurture them realizing they are susceptible to the influences
of special grace. And God's greatest conduit to
convey special grace to a child born in a Christian home is the
nurture. administered by a godly father
and a godly mother. Well, the positive directive,
the objects, them, that's as far as we've gone. God willing,
tomorrow night we'll look at the substance of the directive,
nurture them, what does it mean, and then the means at our disposal
in the chastening and in the admonition of the Lord. Let us
pray. Our Father, we're so thankful
for your word, that word which is a lamp to our feet and a light
to our pathway. We thank you we're not at the
mercy of the so-called experts who call light darkness and darkness
light and good evil and evil good. We thank you that we know
who we are because you've told us. We know what our children
are because you've told us. Help us. Help us, O God our Father. That we shall by your grace determine
that we will not provoke our children to wrath or provoke
them to lose heart, but that we will give ourselves to nurturing
them. That we will do whatever we must
do to nurture the totality of what they are, to become whole
men and women in Christ. to face the whole of their biblical
tasks when they come to adulthood. Oh God help us, the task is beyond
us, but your grace is pledged to us and in that grace we rest. Hear us and be with us in the
remaining hours of this night. May we rest to the refreshment
of body and mind and come to the new day. full of expectancy
and joy in the Holy Spirit, we ask in Jesus' name, Amen.