Now, most of you, I am sure,
are aware that the announced subject for the four evening
sessions that have been assigned to me was that of the life of
Daniel. And up until about a week ago,
I had every intention that I would be fulfilling that commitment,
and already I can sense some disappointment from some because
you know I am leading into an announcement that I will not
be preaching on the life of Daniel. Personally I had become very
excited about the prospect of preaching on the life of Daniel
because by a combination of influences I believe in the past year for
the first time a haunting question about the book of Daniel was
answered in my own mind. And as I was well into background
reading and listening to the tapes of other servants of God
who have preached on the life of Daniel, there was a growing
excitement about the prospect of bringing all of that together
for these four sessions. However, concurrently with preparing
to preach at this conference, I was preparing to preach at
the Bluffton Conference, which was completed just a week ago
this past Friday, on the subject of the biblical training of our
children. And as I approached that subject,
determined not to consult any old notes or sermons, but come
afresh to the Word of God, I was very conscious of the Lord's
help in the preparation of those sermons, and then even more conscious
of his help in the delivering of them, and the response from
the Brethren at the Bluffton Conference was both encouraging
and in some ways shocking, because I believe on some fundamental
issues I assumed altogether too much concerning the measure to
which people in our circles have a solid, well-grounded, biblical
grasp upon their divinely mandated task of training their children. And other factors that entered
in, such as an unexpected funeral and other demands that I will
not go into, brought me to the conviction that it perhaps was
God's providence shutting me up to preach on that theme that
I preached on at Bluffton, but since I'm a man under authority
when I come here, I consulted with one of the elders who in
turn consulted with his fellow office bearers, who in turn talked
with some of the men whose churches are represented heavily at this
conference, and there was a general consensus that in the light of
all of the factors that I should be given permission to take up
the subject of the biblical training of our children. Now you who
are singles who had come perhaps more expectant because of the
subject of the life of Daniel, may I assure you at the outset
there will be many arrows with your name written on them. So away with your disappointment. And for those of you who feel
all you've heard and need to hear and have read all you need
to read, if nothing else, perhaps God will underscore things you
already know and enable you to implement them with greater efficiency
in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so my subject for these four
nights will be the biblical training of our children. And we're going
to approach it by concentrating upon one particular text of the
Word of God, and looking at that text in its immediate and larger
setting, so that when we leave, I trust we will not have a disjointed
smattering of acquaintance with the biblical witness to this
awesome responsibility, but that we will have, as it were, close
to our hearts a central and pivotal passage well understood inscribed
upon our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit to be our
constant companion through life. Turn please in your Bibles to
the sixth chapter of the letter of Paul to the Ephesians, Ephesians
chapter 6. And I shall read in your hearing
the very familiar First, four verses of this chapter. 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 upon the earth. And
you fathers, Do not provoke your children to wrath, but nurture
them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord. Now it is verse
4 of Ephesians 6 that will be the focal point of our attention
in these four expositions. I am sure that there are very
few, if any, who would challenge the statement that the subject,
the biblical training of our children, is a most appropriate
subject at a Reformed Baptist family conference. It seems to
me that Reformed Baptists are second only to old-time Catholics
in the number of children that they bear. We have as elders
at times jokingly said that we ought to have a sign, professionally
done, placed in our foyer, which says, Attention all visitors,
contrary to all appearances, this church takes no official
position on responsible family planning. But seriously, we are delighted
that in a day of zero population, and the madness of independent
career pursuits, in which people regard children as a luxury to
be held off until one's late thirties, and then to use every
kind of bizarre means to have a child after one has pursued
his career, many of us are delighted that the biblical concept that
children are an heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb
is His reward is abundantly manifested in our circles. But then there
is a second reason why I believe this subject is peculiarly appropriate
in this context, and it is this. Those who have been designated
as Reformed Baptists, or who have taken that name to themselves,
have been marked by a desire to have every area of life brought
under the constant reforming influence of the Word of God. Many of you are familiar with
that Latin phrase which translated means, the reformed church is
the reforming church. And we rightly bear the name
Reformed in terms of all that it has come to mean historically
only so far as we continually stand under the scrutiny of the
Word of God as touching every facet of our lives. But there
are two areas which seem to have become the watershed of the most
intense concern for biblical reformation. One is in the area
of the life and ministry of the Church, and the other is in the
whole matter of the conducting of our family life in the light
of the Word of God. And in that setting I say I believe
it is appropriate that this subject should be addressed and addressed
early in the history of this conference. Now what I propose
to do is very briefly to sketch out the overall structure of
Ephesians 6-4 and tell you where we will be going with the text
in the four messages and then God helping us we will take up
the first heading tonight. In this text, we have, first
of all, the task assigned. The task assigned. And you fathers. Here, a task is assigned to fathers. And that will be the subject
of our meditation in the Word of God tonight. Then, God willing,
tomorrow night, we take up the second major heading of the text. We have the task defined. And you fathers, provoke not
your children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition
of the Lord. The task assigned, you fathers. The task defined, first of all
in its essence, and then in its major means. In its essence,
what is the task? Negatively, do not provoke them
to anger, but nurture them. That will be message number two,
God willing. And then, what are the major
means put at our disposal to perform this task? Two of them. The chastening of the Lord, message
number three, and the admonition of the Lord, message number four. So hopefully when the week is
over, you will have this text clearly understood and as a constant
reference point to this tremendous and awesome responsibility and
privilege of providing biblical nurture and training for our
children. We come then to the first heading
tonight, the task assigned and you fathers. And as we approach this first
heading, we're going to ask three very simple questions of the
text. We're going to consider the who
of the command, secondly, the why of the command, and thirdly,
the what of the command. Who, why, and what. First of all then, who is given
the command to take on the task of godly training? Well, the
text is very clear in its answer, and you fathers. It is evident on the very first
reading of the text that the Apostle Paul lays upon fathers
the fundamental and primary responsibility for the godly training of their
children. Now, it is not because he had
forgotten the word for parents, for if we look up at verse 1,
we see he has just used it. Children, obey your parents. And he uses the standard word
for parents that applies to both the maternal and the paternal
overseers of the family and of the home. So it isn't as though
he had a lapse of memory and said, oh, what's that word? Well,
our fathers will do. Not only is that incongruous
in the context, it would be an undermining of our understanding
of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. Furthermore,
in verse 2, he had spoken specifically of fathers and of mothers. Honor
your father and your mother, which is the first commandment
with promise. And so the apostle, for some
reasons or other, is specifically focusing upon fathers, and he
is laying directly upon the shoulders of fathers the primary responsibility
for the task of the godly training of their children. In the task
assigned, it is fathers who stand front and center stage with all
the spotlights upon them. Furthermore, in the parallel
passage in Colossians chapter 3, he does exactly the same thing. If in the parallel passage he
simply said, and you parents, We would then reason by parity,
I'm sorry, by the analogy of scripture, that he was putting
a special emphasis upon fathers, but that he was including mothers
basically in the same category of responsibility. But you'll
notice he does not do this. We read in verse 20 of Colossians
3, Children, obey your parents in all things, there's our word,
parents again, father and mother, for this is well-pleasing in
the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your
children that they be not discouraged. Now if we believe, and we say
we do, in the plenary, that is, the full and verbal, that is,
God's inspiration extends to the very words of Scripture,
then this text establishes as a non-negotiable axiom that the
primary responsibility for the godly training of our children
rests down squarely upon the shoulders of fathers. Now in our day, just that simple
statement based on a very clear observation of a straightforward
statement of Holy Scripture is nothing short of radical. In
the context of late 20th century American society and family life,
the notion that the father is the primarily assigned agent
in the hand of God for the molding of his children is nothing short
of radical. But as radical and as shocking
or as strange as it may seem, this is the word and the will
of God. In assigning the task of providing
biblical training to our children, the assignment comes to fathers. Now, if this is so, then we must
face the fact that the primary responsibility does not rest
upon mothers. The notion abroad in our day,
in our culture, and in many of our churches is this. As the
father, I am to pay the bills, and wash the car, and change
the oil, and paint the house when it's peeling, and occasionally
swap the behinds of the kids, and then alas, make out the bills
for their college tuition payments, and then I can sigh a sigh of
relief and look forward to my retirement. But this matter of
being concerned about all of the intricacies of the personality
of my children, all of those nebulous at times dimensions
of what makes them tick when they're little toddlers and then
preteens and then when their whole world is taken up with
the problem of their zits and they got bumps and bulges where
they wish they didn't have and wish they had more where they
don't have and all of the rest. I mean, I've got responsibilities,
man. Let's be reasonable. I'm putting
in 8, 10, 12 hours a day. And that's the job of the mother.
She's to get herself embedded into trying to sort out the peculiar
psyche of that child and to bring the Word of God to bear upon
the little ones. And she's to be concerned with
the patterns of their interest and all the rest. That's mom's
job. Listen to me, dad. Show me not
from the word of God. Show me where God says your job
is done, when you bring home the paycheck, and when you change
the oil and paint the flaking house, and once in a while to
show you're still chief honcho swatter behind here or there.
Show me from this book where all of the intricate involvement
with your children from the womb is mama's task. You can't do
it, dad. You can't do it, dad. And ye fathers. I don't mean to be coarse, but
becoming a father genetically is the act of a moment of passion.
Being a father biblically is a taking up of the cross of self-denial
every single day of your life from the womb until you stand
one day and hand your daughter over to a young man or stand
and witness your young man taking to himself a bride. You fathers,
it is not primarily the task of mothers. Furthermore, it is
not the task of the Church. There is in our day, in broad
evangelicalism, and it continually is banging on the door of our
Reformed churches, that the Church must nurture the child at all
the stages of its development. So we've got to have nursery,
then junior church, and then we've got to have young people's
activities four or five nights a week. We must have the church
nurturing our children, meeting their spiritual needs, their
psychological needs, their social needs, and even the needs of
their physical development with gyms and bowling alleys and swimming
pools as part of our church plant. Where do you find in the Bible
that says, and the church, or ye elders, nurture the children? It is not the church's task to
provide the general nurture of the children. It isn't. And I
don't care if all the churches in America do it. We turn to
the Word of the Living God. And it says, you fathers, you
fathers, nurture them. And certainly it is not a job
given over to the state. And in our day it's assumed,
Uncle Sam owes us daycare centers to care for our children, to
nurture our children, so that we can have the luxury of going
out and having an independent career and paying for a lifestyle
that is not essential, but is one that we have idolatrously
said we must have, even if we must sacrifice the rising generation
upon the altar of our carnal ambitions. While we read with
horror the practice of offering babes into the fiery lap of the
heathen god Moloch, I tell you there's a more subtle form of
offering up babes into the God of Mammon. Hand them over to
daycare centers. I don't care whether they're
Christian or pagan. It doesn't say, ye daycare center leaders.
Ye preschool toddler daycare center leaders. No, ye fathers! Ye fathers, nurture them. And
certainly we're not to leave them to their peers. The whole idea of the herd mentality,
just sort of let the kids herd together and do what comes naturally,
and we're certainly not to leave them to the TV. And alas, many
professing Christians have done it. No, I think the point is
clear. In assigning the task, who is
given the command to be the chief administrator and burden bearer
of godly training? It is fathers. And this is beautifully
illustrated in Paul's own pastoral experience. He assumes that this
would have been the case in the church there at Thessalonica,
for he likens his pastoral ministry to that of a father who is taking
the lead and bearing the burden of the nurture of his children.
Look at 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. He draws upon the imagery
of a nursing mother in verse 7. And there is a problem of precisely
how to translate it, and it all rests upon a textual problem. Just one or two different letters
in the original text would make the rendering. We were gentle
in the midst of you as when a nurse cherishes her own children. He was not ashamed to use female
imagery of his pastoral tenderness and intimacy with the Thessalonians. Here's a wet nurse. She loves
babies so much she's willing to keep one alive at her breast
that didn't even come from her womb. And he says, we were as
gentle among you as a wet nurse, a woman who so loves children
that she'll nurture the life of another at her breast. What
must she feel when she's bonded to the child at her breast that
also shared her womb for nine months? He says, we were that
gentle. But then, he says in verse 11,
and you know how we dealt with each one of you as a father with
his own children, exhorting you and encouraging you and testifying
to the end that you should walk worthily of God. Not only did
you see in us love and gentleness, all of the
chemistry of a nursing mother with her own child at her breast,
but you saw that manly, noble, glorious standard of a father
who was walking under his divinely mandated burden to be the provider
of nurture for each one of his children. You know how we dealt
with each one of you as a father. Now we've answered the question,
who is given this command to godly training? It is fathers.
But now we address the second question to our text, why? Why
is the command to godly training given to fathers? In the assigning
of the task, who is assigned this task? Fathers. Why fathers
in particular? And I would say that the answer
is to be found by three observations in the very context in which
the command comes. First of all, because of what
I am calling the divinely structured treatment of the superior-inferior
relations in this section of Paul's epistle. Now, when I say
superior and inferior, I'm not speaking of dignity, of personhood,
or of any dimension of redemptive privilege. I'm speaking of superior
as the one who leads, and inferior as the one who is to be led and
to follow. The one who gives directives,
and the one who follows. And there is a very specific
and inflexible structure in this section. I want you to notice
it. You find first of all that in verse 21 of Ephesians, Paul
says concerning all believers that we are to submit ourselves
one to another in the fear of Christ. Do you see that? There
is a general mutual submission of all believers one to another. I must stand ready to serve every
believer in seeking his and her interest of communion with Christ
and conformity to Christ, willing to take the posture, your servant,
for Jesus' sake. But then moving from that generic
submission of all believers one to another, he now zeroes in
upon three specific categories where there is a unique submission
between differing groups of people. And the first is the submission
of a wife to her husband. Verse 22, Wives, be in subjection
unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. And then he addresses
the whole subject of the woman's required submission to her husband
in verses 22 to 24, but then notice what he does in verse
25. He now addresses the person to whom the wife is to be submissive. Husbands, love your wives, and
then this lengthy section follows, in which directives are given
to the husbands, which, if followed, will make compliance with the
directives to the wives a glorious and a blessed experience. So here's the pattern. He addresses
the inferior as to position and submissiveness, then he counters
with a word to the specific superior who must be in the position of
giving authoritative leadership. Now notice how he does that in
verse 5 of chapter 6. Servants, he starts with the
inferior. the obedient unto them that according
to the flesh are your masters with fear and trembling in singleness
of your heart as unto Christ." Not in the way of eye service.
All the way through the end of verse 8, he's talking to the
inferior again, the servant who owes an obedience unto his master. And it's a different word used
from the obedience that the wife is to render to her husband or
the submission she is to render to her husband. But then what
does he do? In verse 9, he addresses the
superior. The one to whom the inferior
is to be submissive is now addressed and he says, and you masters,
do the same unto them and forbear threatening, knowing that he
who is both their master and yours in heaven, there is no
respect of persons with him. Now do you see the structure?
He addresses the inferior, then the superior. the inferior than
the superior and that's exactly the structure of the Ephesians
6 1 to 4 notice verse 1 children obey your parents In the relationship
of the family, the children are to render equal respect and regard
to the authority of both father and mother. Therefore, he does
not say, children, obey your fathers. He says, obey your parents. Then he says, honor your father
and your mother. You see, from the position of
the inferior, the child, the child is to regard both father
and mother as bearing equally assigned divine authority to
give authoritative directive to them. Obey father and mother. Obey your parents, that is the
father and the mother. They are to be honored equally.
honor your father and your mother, comes to address the superior
in that relationship, he doesn't say, fathers and mothers, do
not provoke your children, but he addresses the one who is in
the unique position of the superior, and you fathers. And you see,
if we say, as even some good men have said, I read Dr. John MacArthur's book on the
plane today on this text, and he and others take the position
that Paul's use of the word father here has no significance. It
could be equally rendered fathers and mothers, and gives a very
slim and flimsy linguistic justification. But I say there is not only no
linguistic justification, there is no contextual justification. Paul was very, very careful when
he kept this structure of the inferior and the superior to
make it plain that in the administration of the nurture and guidance of
the children, the fathers bear a unique, a non-transferable
responsibility. Then there's a second reason
in the context as to why the command to godly training is
given to fathers, and it is this. because of the divinely established
male headship within the marriage relationship itself. Because
of the divinely established male headship within the marriage
relationship itself. You see, in the hierarchy of
the family as it relates to the child, there is a unit of authority. Children, obey your parents.
Honor your father and your mother. But within the relationship of
the parents, there is another hierarchy, the hierarchy of the
husband and the wife. And Paul had already established
that in chapter 5. He had said, wives, be in subjection
to your husbands as the church is in subjection to Jesus Christ. And therefore, When he comes
to address this subject of the nurture and training of the children,
he is not going to negate what he has already established in
the previous chapter. Within the marriage relationship,
you do not have an egalitarian relationship. That is, with no
real authority structure established by God. No, there is an authority
structure established by God, and it is one in which the husband
is to exert a loving, sacrificial, self-giving headship over his
wife as Christ exercises a loving, self-giving, saving headship
over his church. And so when he comes to treat
the matter of the responsibility of the nurture of the children,
he will not overturn that hierarchy and have an egalitarian structure
of authority and burden for the nurture of the children. No!
Fathers, you are heads not only with respect to your wife, but
you are heads with respect to your children and to their nurture. And then thirdly, of course,
he addresses husbands because of the divinely constituted oneness
of the husband-wife relationship. He's already established this
in the previous context, verses 28 to 31, that great mystery
of the union of Christ with His Church is reflected in the mystery
of the two shall become one flesh. Now you see, having established
very clearly that in the Christian marriage the two have become
one, he assumes that when he says, and you fathers, that doesn't
mean that all the women sitting at the Reformed Baptist family
conference in Boiling Springs will jump up and shout and throw
their hands up and say, hallelujah, it's his job, whoopee! This is
women's liberation of the truest kind! He can change the diapers. He can wamp the bottoms. He can
rub off the dirty noses. He can scrape the... None of
them. He said, the two shall be one
flesh. Let me ask you, are Christ's
interests the very life and breath of your life? Are your interests
the very life and soul of His life? Yes! For the Scripture
says Christ rules our life, and we are described as those who
are engraved upon the palms of His hands. No, you see, having
established the unique oneness of the husband and wife, he is
assuming that whatever task the Christian father takes upon his
shoulder as a divine deposit from his Lord and Savior there
at his side, one with him in spirit and burden, one with him
to administer the task, is the beloved of his heart. his wife. But you see that oneness does
not negate his responsibility to be the primary administrator
and guide and director in the great task of the molding of
the children. So it's not surprising when you
turn to the book of Proverbs, you find such words as these,
My son, hearken to the law of thy father and to the word of
thy mother. Why? They were one. And therefore,
as the father set the framework of the nurture, he had at his
side a helper answering to his need in the administration of
that task. So in answer to the question,
why? I say the context is clear. There is a divinely established
structure in addressing inferior, superior relationships. There
is a divinely established male headship within the marriage
relationship, and there is a divinely constituted oneness of the husband
and wife relationship. Now then, having asked of the
text, Who? Fathers. Why? Threefold answer. Now we come to what is the burden
of my heart tonight. What? What kind of fathers are
needed to fulfill this command? If fathers are to fulfill this
command, ye fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but nurture
them. What kind of fathers must we
be? Well, we don't need to go outside
the book of Ephesians for the answer. May I suggest that all
we need to do in answering that question is just go back through
the book of Ephesians and pick up its major strands of emphasis,
and the answer is there on the surface of the epistle. Here's
the great principle. It is what Christian that is the foundation
of what the Christian man will be as a father. It is the man
that makes the father, not the father that makes the man. And
don't you girls ever forget that. Oh, you say, this guy that whispers
sweet nothings in my ears and is so charming, he's a bit irresponsible. He's not a leader, he's a wimp,
he's got no backbone, got no initiative, never takes anything
by the nap of the neck and deals with it as he ought. But oh,
when we get married and then I bear him a child, then you
become a man. Don't kid yourself. It is not
the father that makes the man, it's the man that makes the father.
Don't forget it. And what kind of man then is
needed? You fathers who've heard the word of God tonight, who
maybe have sat here and said within yourself, Pastor Martin,
you're getting a little old and senile, you've been repeating
yourself. Yeah, I have been repeating myself, that's right. And you
know why? Because as I said to someone
at the previous conference, when you're going after the average
Christian woman's conscience, you can get her with a blow of
a feather, and she breaks. The average Christian woman.
But we hard-hearted, self-justifying, proud men, you've got to go after
us with 16-pound sledgehammers with spikes welded to the end. And it's so hard for us to say,
look, there it was in the Bible. I could have read it with my
own eyes, but I've just been willing to throw the burden off
on Mama. I've sinned. I've disobeyed God. I've walked contrary to the scriptures. You begin to take seriously that
God lays this on your shoulder, and I'll tell you something,
Christian man, you're going to begin to have a felt desperation
to say, oh God, how can I be the kind of man I need to be
to do the kind of task that I must do? And I answer from the book
of Ephesians, you know what kind of man you've got to be? You've
got to be a father who has experienced the gracious, life-transforming
salvation described in chapters 1, 2, and 3 of Ephesians. You
see, Paul is assuming when he says in chapter 6 and verse 4,
you fathers, that these fathers have experienced everything he
described in chapters 1 to 3. And what do chapters 1 to 3 describe?
They describe a sovereignly dispensed, Trinitarian, gracious, life-transforming
salvation mediated through Jesus Christ and applied by the power
of the Holy Ghost. A salvation that leaves them
nothing less than what we find described in chapter 2 in verse
10. We are His workmanship created
anew in Christ Jesus unto good works which God had before ordained
that we should walk in them. A salvation described in verse
4 as being quickened together with Christ, raised up together
with Christ. A salvation described in chapter
3 as one that makes us long and pant to be filled unto all the
fullness of God. Not some Mickey Mouse, raise
a hand, walk an aisle, straighten up some of the more gross forms
of your life and go on living for yourself. Not that kind of
pseudo-salvation, my friend. You'll never be a father who
can fulfill this divine mandate unless you're a father who knows
experimentally the gracious, sovereign, life-transforming
salvation described in chapters 1 to 3. You and I are just too
full of ourselves to ever give ourselves to the task of being
fathers. 2 Corinthians 5.15 says, by nature
we all live unto self, and it's only when through the dynamics
of grace we have come into faith union with a crucified and risen
Christ that we no longer live unto ourselves, but unto Him. Now let me ask you, man, do you
know anything about that salvation? Not a salvation that's caused
you to just rearrange some of the mental furniture in your
head. And you say, oh yes, I believe this, believe that, believe this,
I don't believe that anymore. And so you've just rearranged
the mental furniture in your head. No, that's not real salvation.
Nor am I asking you, if you have a so-called salvation that is
simply refined some of the external patterns of your life. You don't
go around with vaca juice drooling out the side of your mouth anymore.
You don't chew, you don't spit, you don't even dip snuff. Good.
So you go to hell clean-mouthed. You go to church. You maybe read
the Bible occasionally. And sing hymns and listen to
sermons. No, I'm not talking about that. I'm asking you, man,
you fathers sitting here tonight, has something happened in you
by sovereign grace that has no explanation but that you've been
raised from the dead? You've been christened together
with Christ. What is there about you that
defies any other explanation but that Almighty God in sovereign
mercy has made you a new creature in Christ? Change the whole center
of your life from self to Christ. The whole orientation from your
ideas and your plans and your comfort and your ease and your
pleasure to where you're ready day by day to take up a cross
and feel its splinters plunging into your remaining self-life
and walking, as it were, in your own blood drops of self-denial
that you may be a father according to the pattern of the Word of
God. Now maybe that's why some of you men can't hack it. The
real problem is you've never been converted. And maybe God
will use even your natural affection for your children. The Bible
speaks of that. and the realization why I can't
even be the father I ought to be, because I'm not a Christian.
Oh, may God use even that motive to get you to seek the Lord while
He may be found, to call upon Him while He is near, and say
to Him, O God, not only am I a dishonor to You and a grief to my wife,
but O God, I can't even be the father I ought to be. Have mercy
upon me. Cleanse me and wash me. Make
me a true Christian. That's the starting point. But
then secondly, you have to be a father who is committed to
whole soul participation in the life of a healthy church. You've
got to be a father committed to whole soul participation in
the life of a healthy church. That's chapter 4, verses 1 through
16. Don't have time to go into the details, but you who are
familiar with Ephesians, you know that's what it says. After
establishing the essential unity of all who've experienced this
salvation, both Jew and Gentile, he then says that amidst this
unity there is diversity of gift according to the activity of
the ascended Christ. And among his gifts he gives
pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints unto
the work of service. And then he says, he gives them
that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro, that's the
negative. Then he gives them that in the
context of consciences and hearts under the molding influence of
truth, speaking the truth in love, we may grow up into him
in all things who is the head, even Christ. When he says in
chapter 6, you fathers, he's not talking to fathers who think
they can have freelance religion. that doesn't bind them to serious
commitments to a healthy local church, with healthy biblical
pastoral preaching and oversight, and with healthy congregational
interaction, he is not envisioning any father being able to fulfill
his task who is not committed with the whole of his soul to
the life and ministry of a healthy local church. The Bible knows
nothing of freelance, independent maturity in Christ. The Bible
knows nothing of it. Could it be that this is why
some of you are flops as fathers? It's because your priorities
are so messed up and your unmortified pride so dominant that you really
don't think you need to make the kind of commitments expected
in a healthy biblical church. You say, nobody's going to tell
me if I don't feel like going to church Sunday night, I have
to. If I want to go on the back porch and look at the stars and
worship God, that's my business. And if I feel I need a Wednesday
night to just relax, I'm not going to make commitments that
bind my conscience to be present when the church gathers to pray.
No way, Jose, not me. All right, man. then let your
shoddy task as a father be the witness of your carnal folly. Almighty God has ordained the
total ministry of a healthy church to make you the kind of man who
can be a competent father. And I say again to you single
young women, what do you look for in a man? Look beyond his
pretty face and curly hair and broad shoulders. and asks where
his feet are on the Lord's Day. Is he one who says, I was glad
when they said unto me, let us go into the house of God, a day
in thy courts is better than a thousand? Is he a man who is
in his place when the church gathers to pray? Is he a man
who's giving his soul to the life and health and well-being
of the church, supportive of its ministries with his time,
with his energies, with his prayers? I tell you, a man like that can
be a gracious and a godly father. Even if he's only got a 34-inch
chest, he may have legs as skinny as bees' knees. But I tell you
something, May I say without being irreverent, he'll be a
true spiritual hunk in your eyes as you see him nurturing your
children. Now some of you men need to have
some dealings with God. I didn't write the book of Ephesians,
you know, I'm just quoting it. When Paul said, you fathers,
he's assuming they've experienced that radical life-transforming
salvation described in the first three chapters. He's assuming
their committed, whole-souled participation in the life of
a healthy church. He's assuming they are fathers
who are resolutely determined, hear me men, resolutely determined
to reject the world's perspectives on parenting and manhood. And here I want you to look with
your own eyes, I could quote it, but I want you to get it
through the eye gate as well. Chapter 4 in verse 17 and following,
what is he saying? This I say therefore in testifying
the Lord that you no longer walk as the Gentiles walk in the vanity
of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, alienated
from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them. You see what he is saying? He
is saying your whole lifestyle must no longer reflect the lifestyle
of those who are steeped in the ignorance and darkness of pagan
perspectives on life. That your patterns of life are
no longer shaped and molded by the world's perspectives that
grow out of their stiggy and spiritual darkness. You will never be a father after
the heart of God unless you're a man resolutely determined to
reject the world's perspectives on parenting and manhood. You've got to reject all wimpyism. Wimpyism! Even the dressed-up
wimpyism of Bill Cosby, Mr. Huxtable, who never challenges
his egalitarian wife. who's a master of diversionary
tactics with his teenage children, who occasionally will have a
little mild confrontation, but fundamentally, Dr. Huxable is
the essence of a horrible wimp of a father. And if you learn what it is to
be a father from Bill Cosby, you in big bad shape, man, On
the other end of the spectrum, you young men don't get your
notions of what it is to be a man, what it is to be a parent from
the sick machoism. It won't be long before they'll
be doing another rerun of Archie Bunker. He's the essence of carnal
machoism. Treats his wife like a chattel,
a mindless thing whose opinions don't matter. And you see the
tragedy as it gets people laughing at it, and all the while they
laugh, that pattern is being etched upon their souls. Treats
his children as mindless. Not those to be reasoned with,
but those to be bullied by sheer naked prejudicial authority. Don't get your notions either
from the wimpyism of Dr. Huxtable or the sick carnal machoism
of Archie Bunker. And you young men don't get your
ideas of manhood from Sylvester Stallone's bulging biceps, pecs,
and lats, with the vein standing out in his biceps, who grunts
instead of talks. Can you imagine him sitting a
child upon his knees saying, honey, what's bothering my little
one? It's incongruous, isn't it? And
yet he's the model of manhood. His manhood was purchased five
hours a day at Nautilus machines. This kind of manhood is purchased
at a dearer price in the secret place with God and in a life
of self-denial. Oh, you young men, I could take
any one of you and put you under intense training and inside of
a couple of years you could win a local bodybuilding contest.
So what? So what? You've got to resolutely determine. I will reject the dark and vain,
worldly concepts of parenting and manhood, and I'll go to my
Bible and I'll say, God, teach me from the Bible. You are the
perfect Father. Teach me. what it is to be a
father. You are perfectly reflected in
your dear son. Make me like Jesus. That's how
you learn to be a true father. Fourthly, we need fathers. What kind of father is needed? We need fathers deeply concerned
not to grieve the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 4, 25-32. We don't have time again to even
read the passage, but you know the emphasis. The emphasis is
that we who've experienced this life-transforming salvation have
all, without exception, been given the gift of the Holy Spirit,
based not upon our tarrying and our working and our pleading,
but based upon Christ's baptism of blood and forsakenness and
dereliction and His exaltation to the right hand of the Father.
He, being exalted, hath shed forth this. And we are sealed
by the Spirit Himself. He is the seal in His indwelling,
even to the day of redemption. But chapter 4 and verse 30 says,
Do not grieve the Spirit. And what is the context? It is
dealing with sins primarily of interpersonal relationships and
specifically sins of the tongue and sins of the heart. Let no
corrupt speech proceed out of your mouth and grieve not the
Spirit. Let all bitterness and wrath
and anger and clamor and railing be put away from you. Be kind,
tenderhearted, forgiving one another. Oh, hear me, dear fathers. I am personally convinced that
perhaps next to reason number one, that men in our churches
are strangers to life-transforming, holy ghost-wrought salvation. Here is the great reason for
the lack of godly fathers. They are grooving the Holy Spirit. Fathers who can speak sharply
to their wives in the presence of their children. and not go
to their wives and to their children and say, I sinned, will you forgive
me? Fathers who, seeing the failures
of their wives, forget the admonition. Husbands, be not bitter against
your wives, and they are bitter She's not kept to figure as I
thought she would. She's not the housekeeper I expected
she would be. She's not the cook I hoped she
would be. And there is a growing, swelling
bitterness. What happens? It grieves the
Holy Spirit. And when the Spirit is grieved,
you can never be the father you ought to be. He is the giver
of all the graces you need to be a good father. The fruit of
the Spirit is love. You can't be a good father without
love. There are times only the Spirit of God dwelling in you
will keep you from kicking your kid clean across one side of
the city to the other. You say, you felt that way? Sure
did, more than once. I'll never forget the time when
my son was a teenager and I got called out of an elders meeting.
He'd done some crazy thing. And I stood six inches from him
and I was mad. And I had him by the shirt and
I said, son, there's a warfare going on in me. There's one part
of me that wants to knock you clean across this room. But there's
another part of me that says if I did it, I'd just have fuel
for repentance, and you better be thankful that the latter part
is stronger than the former. That's what I told him. I had
to be honest. But thank God the latter was stronger. In the times
when I spoke sinfully, by the grace of God to go and say, forgive
me, forgive me. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of
God. Do not grieve the Spirit. What
are you doing tonight, Father, that is grieving the Spirit in
your relationship to your wife, your children, your fellow church
members? If you grieve the Spirit in any
other area, you cannot know His grace of love, peace, long-suffering,
patience. You cannot know His wisdom, His
counsel, His moral virtue of strength. dripping with softness,
and softness that is nerved with moral strength. That's the work
of the Spirit. Where are you grieving the Spirit
tonight? Is it the videos you're watching when nobody's home? Is it the Playboy magazines you're
looking at at the locker at work? Where are you grieving Him? Man,
cut it out. Go back to your room tonight
and have dealings with God. Get down before God if you've
got to go out and walk in the athletic field, under the hot
summer skies, but get right with God, man, or you'll never be
the father God commands you to be. Then fifthly, according to
Ephesians, if you're going to be that kind of father, we need
fathers who are determined to walk in love, radical holiness
and in the fullness of the Spirit. That's chapter 5, 1 through verse
18. Just look at it for yourself
at your own leisure. There is the call to walk in
love, to walk in the kind of love that Christ manifested when
He poured out His life for us as a sacrifice. We're to walk
in love, we're to walk in radical holiness, have no fellowship
with the unfruitful works of darkness, rather reprove them. It's to be radical holiness.
We're not to let the edges get worn off by the pressure. There
was a time when watching your television, An ad came on with
a half bare-breasted woman and you shot out of your seat like
someone had stuck a firecracker in your britches and you turned
it off. Now you just sit and shake your
head and say, but you're still watching. The radicalness of
your commitment to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of
darkness is gone. You've got a pattern of holiness
with the right angles now worn round. You're greedy of having to say
no, and no, and no, and no, and no longer. No longer is it radical
holiness. Oh no, you're not shacking up
with someone else's wife. Yeah, that's right. You're not
taking money out of the till at work. That's right. But you
see, the impact upon your children of a life of consistent, radical
holiness is no longer there, and they see the rounded corners. I tell you, they got eyes to
see them. And then we need, sixthly, according
to Ephesians, and I hurry to be done, we need fathers who
are exemplifying a Christ-like headship over their wives. Isn't
it interesting? He first of all calls these Christian
men to love their wives as Christ loved the church before he tells
them, nurture your children. Maybe this is where many of you
fathers can't cut it with your kids. They see the harsh, insensitive
treatment of your wife. They see your wife, their mother,
sending out a thousand signals to you for a little attention,
for a little interest. They see you utterly insensitive
to those signals, buried behind your paper, maybe even buried
behind a good, reformed Christian book, but buried in your own
interest. They don't see you giving of
yourself to your wife. They can't remember when you
lovingly nudged her out of the kitchen and said, Honey, you've
had enough pots and pans and dirty dishes. Let me take over
tonight. They can't remember when they've
seen that. They can't remember when they've seen you say to
your wife, honey, here, here's 20 bucks. Go get lost at the
mall. You can spend it all on ice cream,
spend it on tiddlywinks. Do what you want. Just get lost.
Get away from this madhouse. But please come back in three
hours before I'm out of my tree. Your kids can't remember when
you did that. They don't see you nurturing, cherishing your
wife. Listen to me, man, you can't
nurture your kids if you're not a husband who's loving your wife,
communicating, being sensitive, picking up on her signals of
need. And finally, you need to be fathers
committed to waging spiritual warfare in this great issue of
training your children. Isn't it interesting? that after
preceding the admonition to fathers with all these six things, it's
as though he says, now you take your job seriously. You know
what's going to happen to you in a very short time. You're
going to say, wait a minute, I've reasoned with that kid.
I've made it plain. The rules have been reasonable
and plain and simple. But there's a rebellion. There's
a snottiness. There's a hostility. It's not
natural. He says, I'll explain that for
you, chapter 6, 10 and following, we wrestle not against flesh
and blood. He says, you've got to be a father prepared to enter
into the realm of real spiritual warfare. And we enter that realm
with the weapons of all prayer in the spirit. And my dear Christian
brother, if you doubt there's such a thing as demonic powers
and devil blindness, and that your children until they are
regenerate are indeed the children of the devil, you begin to attempt
to nurture them as we shall see in subsequent studies according
to the word of God, and you'll find all hell breaking loose
through those innocent little kids. Because the devil now knows
that his kingdom in them is threatened. And if you're not prepared to
be a father, to enter into some of the mystery and the agony
of spiritual warfare, then forget being a biblical father. Some
of us will go to our graves with spiritual wounds inflicted because
we were determined not to see our kids decisioned, not to see
them married into lovely little Reformed Baptist Pharisees. We
were determined that they would be nothing less than new men
and new women in Christ, and become whole men and whole women
in Christ. And it's as though all hell said,
yeah, that's what you want, we'll see if you'll get it. Are you
ready for that? It means you're going to have
to start praying more than five minutes a day. It's going to
mean you're going to have to give up some of your toys. You
may not be able to join the bowling team every Thursday night. You
may not be able to go out and wet a line every Saturday morning. As soon as spring comes, you're
going to have to start battering your flesh and saying no, not
to sin, but to innocent diversions. You say, Pastor Martin, that's
what it means to be a father. I don't know if I want it. My
man, you ain't got no choice. You name the name of Christ and
God's put orders on you. You fathers! You say you're saved
by Christ? He said, if you love me, keep
my commandments. Here it comes, men, you fathers. Now in my closing application,
I want to say There is no task under heaven more demanding than
that of being a spirit-filled father. The Bible records the
competence of Eli as priest in Israel, but his total incompetence
as a father. The Bible records David, the
successful warrior, the efficient statesman and leader of Israel,
who was basically a flop as a pop. sweet singer of Israel, was a
sour father in his own household. How could he teach his son's
virtue when he'd been tasting the flesh of six women against
the clear teaching of God in Deuteronomy 17, 17, the king
shall not multiply unto himself wives. And when David broke the
biblical norm of monogamy, he was set up for his horrible sin
with Bathsheba. Because if he'd had six different
kinds of ice cream, maybe the seventh would taste just a little
better. If all he'd known was vanilla and thought that's all
ice cream was, he'd have gone to his grave satisfied with vanilla
ice cream. How could he sit his sons down
and say to them those words of warning? He couldn't! He forfeited
it by his own shoddy example. And so today there are corporation
presidents who are flunkies as dads. There are preachers who
build big churches who are flops as dads. Contrary to God's Word. Now you see why the domestic
requirement is paramount for elders and deacons? You see why?
It's the most telling test of true spirituality. If a man will
not well his own house, how should he take care of the Church of
God? If he's not ready for the personal holiness, the self-denial,
the self-giving love, and all of these things we've seen in
Ephesians that are necessary to be a good father to that little
church within the walls of his home, he'll never have those
graces in sufficient measure to take care of the larger household
of God. Second thing I want to say by
way of application to you young men is this, there are few goals
more worthy of your arduous pursuit than that of being an effective
father. Your highest goal should be to
know and love the Savior, to be able to say to me to live
as Christ and to die as a gain. Next to that, oh I say to you
men, whatever God may have for you in service, It is secondary
to what he would have you be as men and as fathers. But remember,
just as the Father was built upon the man, so the ministry
is built upon the man. And God's great work is making
the man, not the minister. And then I say to you single
women, you set your sights in the light of this teaching. When
you think Mr. Wright has come along and you
begin to get the flutters, And you begin to think, well, this
may be the right one. One area you be sure to look
for are these qualities that will make a man a godly father.
Because remember, wedding days lead to honeymoons. Honeymoons
lead to babies. And babies mean somebody needs
a father. Somebody needs a father! What
kind of a father? An Ephesians father, who's marked
by those seven qualities. Don't be satisfied with anything
less. And as I told the young women
at Bluffton, listen, if he's got a nose this long, if he's
five feet three and bowlegged, grab him inside of ten years. He'll be the handsomest guy on
the face of the earth in your eyeballs. But your Prince Charming,
with his 17-inch biceps and 44-inch chest and 28-inch waist and 25-inch
thighs and 16-inch calves, who's an Adonis in his appearance,
who's got the smooth tongue of a Casanova, he'll become ugly
when he doesn't have the qualities necessary to take the fruit of
your womb and to nurture it into that which glorifies God. and
becomes the very thing for which you gave your body to that man,
gave yourself to the pain and the groans and the agony of birth,
and you'll be mocked by your false standard of what you sought
in a man. Are you hearing me, girls? Are
you hearing me? I'm talking as a father who's
had the joy of seeing his two daughters marry Ephesians men. You want to give your dad and
your mom that joy? Then set your sights right. You young men, what do you want
to be? What do you want to be? You go home with the book of
Ephesians this week and say, Oh God, make me that kind of
man. Because somewhere you've got a woman looking for a man
like that. Lord, make me that kind of man. Don't give your
hours to idle pursuits. Chasing the bubbles of false
standards. Give yourself to this. And then
I say there are few tasks to which God is more willing to
give his abounding grace than to the task of being an effective
father. Isn't it interesting where it
comes? Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. And then, right after dealing
with the five-fold manifestations of the Spirit-filled life, he
moves into the domestic sphere. Oh, dear people, hear me, lest
you be swallowed up with a sense, this is too hard, this is too
much. I hope you're there, that's where
we ought to be. Who is sufficient for these things? But the scripture says, hear
me, hear me, the scripture says, he that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely
give us all things? Everything you need to be the
Father God sets you up to be is stored up in Christ. And having
given Christ in the greatest act of self-giving, even to the
death of the cross, He will with Him give all that you need to
be what Christ would have you to be as a Father. The task assigned and ye fathers.