Leading Our Children

We appreciate Eddie for leading our songs this morning and thankful that you’re here today and let’s just real quickly remind everyone that next week we start our gospel meeting with Brother Mike Bonner. He’ll be here and he’s going to be presenting some great lessons on the book of Galatians. We’ve been studying Galatians all year and this will be a wonderful kind of a review and summary and wrap up and you know we’ve got some more things to say about authentic Christianity so we’ll talk about that some more.

But he’ll be here, and so let’s invite as many people as we can to come and hear the gospel preached. Brother Mike is a great gospel preacher, and you will not be disappointed with what he has to say. And so we’re thankful that he is coming, and he’s been with us several times here, but every time he comes, people say, we got to have that guy back again. And they just love hearing him preach.

And so, let’s invite all our friends and families, neighbors, take one of the flyers that are out there in the foyer, give it to someone this week that could benefit from coming to hear him preach the gospel next Sunday. And I hope that you’ll be making your plans to be with us as well, and we will look forward to that good effort.

Well, this morning I would like for us to open to Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6, and we’re going to be reflecting on verse 4 of Ephesians chapter 6 this morning as we think about leading our children. Ephesians 6, verse 4 says, “And you, fathers” (some translations say parents), “do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”

Godly children. And this is explicitly said in Malachi 2 and verse 15, when Malachi, who is prophesying by God, God’s saying through Malachi that He made Adam and Eve one so that they could have godly offspring. Listen to what Malachi 2 and verse 15 says, “But did He not make them one, having a remnant of the Spirit? And why one? He seeks godly offspring.” So we need to be faithful in our families. We need to be faithful to our spouses, whether we’re husbands or wives. God wants us to be faithful. He wants us to have unity in the family. He wants there to be oneness in the family so that there can be godly offspring.

Godly offspring. That is the purpose. And, you know, as we think about our families and our children, there’s a lot of things. There’s so much that we want to teach our children, and there’s a lot of good things that we want to teach our children. We do want our children to be successful, and we can teach our children to be successful in this world, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

God wants us to work. God wants us to earn a living. A large part of teaching our children has to do with having them learn how to do that in this world. We can certainly teach our children to be successful. Maybe successful doctors, or lawyers, or educators, or teachers, or athletes, even other areas that they can be successful in.

You know, maybe truck drivers, maybe farmers, maybe good store clerks and workers and businesses. All of these are good areas, and we want them to be successful. However, if we do not teach them to be godly, then we have failed in our mission as parents to fulfill God’s desires for the family.

Because why did God make the family? He seeks godly offspring. That should be our number one focus as parents, is teaching our children to be godly. And so as we look at Ephesians 6 and verse 4, we see three elements here that we want to discuss. And what does Ephesians 6, verse 4 say?

“And you, fathers” (or parents), “do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” So three things. First of all, rearing children involves parents, and parents must be parents. And so leading our children, first of all, means that we as parents have to be the parent. But then secondly, rearing our children, leading our children means regulating our child’s emotions. So do not provoke your children to wrath. There’s emotion there. We have to regulate those emotions.

And then third, it means spiritual training, bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. So three points here from Ephesians 6 and verse 4. And let’s think about those three things this morning. First of all, leading our children means being the parent.

Now, I know, as many of you also know, that sometimes being the parent isn’t the most fun thing in the world. You know, there was, for a while, I haven’t seen some of the, I guess it’s still going on, but, you know, occasionally you’d see something on social media about adulting, right, where you do something that only pertains to being an adult and you say, here I am killing it, being an adult.

You know, it’s usually something not very fun, something that, you know, you don’t get really get a lot of enjoyment out of, but it needs to be done. And so you do it. You’re the adult, right? Well, parenting is a lot like that. Sometimes parenting involves doing things that aren’t necessarily all that fun. But as parents, we’ve got to embrace and perform those duties. You know, God has given the task of leading children to parents.

The Greek word here can mean both fathers, plural, or parents in a generic sense. And so, while it says fathers in some translations, it can mean parents. And so, we want to include both mother and father in this leadership role of parents over the family.

Proverbs 1, verse 8 says this, “My son, hear the instruction of your father, and do not forsake the law of your mother.” So the Bible talks about both father and mother being in those leadership roles when it comes to rearing our children.

And parents, as we mentioned, are adults. And being an adult means that we have progressed beyond the point of childish things, and we’ve gone to the point where now we’re supposed to be responsible, we’re accountable, we do adult things, we do grown-up things, and we have, as a result of that, an amount of knowledge, an amount of wisdom.

And that wisdom and knowledge is to be shared with our children. Proverbs 5 and verse 1 says, “My son, pay attention to my wisdom; lend your ear to my understanding.” And you see, that’s the role of the parent. The parent has wisdom, the parent has understanding, and the parent is to impart that wisdom and understanding to children.

Children, however, must grow in wisdom and in understanding. Even Jesus had to grow in these areas. Luke chapter 2 and verse 52 says, “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” And what does that mean?

It means that children should not be leading the parents, but that the parents should be leading the children. Children don’t have the same knowledge, the same understanding that parents have. And so parents have a responsibility to convey that to the children.

Children will generally go where the parents lead them. And so that usually results in parents, children doing things that the parents like to do. And if the parents like to do it, then the children will like to do it as well.

And it’s different for different people. Different people have different preferences, different things they like to do. When I was a parent of young children, we got out and went camping, and we went to the national parks, and we enjoyed being outdoors and enjoying hiking and nature and things like that.

And those were my things that I liked to do. And then now, my children are grown, and they like to do some of those things, too. Now, they don’t like to do everything that I like to do, but they like to do some of those things. And that’s good because we do things that we like to do together, and we still go to national parks occasionally and have a good time because we have that common bond. Maybe that’s not your thing, and that’s fine. Some parents are really involved in sports, and that’s good. And spending time with the kids doing that and developing relationships with them, that is valuable time together.

Other parents, I know there’s some parents who like animal husbandry, and they like horses and cattle and things of that nature, and they spend time doing that, and they get their children involved with that, and they really enjoy that, and that’s great, that’s great. All of these things are good, but what’s most important is that while we’re doing these things, we’ve got to put an emphasis upon Spiritual matters. When we went out to the national parks and saw the beauty of God’s creation, we’d always make it a point to point out God made all these things for us to enjoy. And that’s where the emphasis was.

And when we went on our vacations, we always made a point to worship with the church where we were at in our time away from home. And if we will put the emphasis on spiritual matters, and you can do that with national parks, you can do that with sports, you can do that with animal husbandry, whatever your thing is, you can put the emphasis upon spirituality in those areas of our life.

There are spiritual messages to be learned from every aspect of life if we’re participating in a healthy and spiritual way. But God wants parents to teach children the importance of spirituality. And these messages should surround them on a daily basis.

In Deuteronomy 6, in verses 6 through 9, this is what God says to His people. He says, “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”

Children should see God’s spiritual message everywhere they go, and they should know that anything that they’re involved in means being involved in it as a person who is spiritually minded as a Christian. Now, parents, we need to step up and do this job. In Luke 2 and verse 51, it says even about Jesus that He was subject to His parents. “He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them, but His mother kept all these things in her heart.” So even Jesus had to be subject to His parents.

And what is God telling us with that? He’s saying, parents, you have a spiritual responsibility. You have a divine responsibility, a holy responsibility to lead and guide your children. And so leading our children means, first of all, being the parent. But then secondly, it means regulating our child’s emotions. Parents are not to provoke their children to wrath or anger.

And this, this is an interesting Greek word. It’s the only time this word is used in the New Testament, I believe. And it has the idea of not exasperating children with unreasonable demands. So today we might put it in these terms. Don’t be a helicopter parent, you know. I think we all kind of understand what that means, right? You’re just constantly micromanaging your children.

Children everywhere they go and not giving them any time to be free and to run around and to just be a child. You know, sometimes they need that. Children need to have some time and some room to explore and experiment and to test the world around them.

I’ve got a book in my office called Last Child Outdoors, or something like that, or Last Child of the Woods, and there’s actually an interesting program that’s going on in Germany right now where children are being encouraged to go outside and go outdoors and spend time in the woods and explore every day.

And that’s teaching them about the world and giving them an opportunity to helpfully engage with the environment that they’re in. And it’s very interesting, some of the things that are happening in that regard. But we don’t want to shut our children down. We don’t want to constrain them and so close them off so that they just feel like they’re in a cage all the time. You know, we don’t want that.

We want our children to have opportunity to learn. And sometimes learning means that they make mistakes. Sometimes it means they fail. What we want to do is to provide a safe environment where they can sometimes make mistakes and fail in that regard.

And why is that? Because they need to learn and they need to grow. And some lessons they need to learn on their own without us being involved with it. Now, we do want to teach our children. We do want to be good parents and spiritual in that nature. We don’t want our kids to get involved with sinful things. That’s not what I’m talking about at all.

But we do want them to, you know, maybe sometimes they go outside and play with a stick and poke themselves and get hurt a little bit. And they need to learn. If you get a sharp stick and poke yourself, you’re going to get hurt, you know, so don’t do that, right?

So they need to learn things like that. Think about Psalm 127 and 3 through 5. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, but shall speak with their enemies in the gate.” You know, the Holy Spirit and the psalmist here compares children to arrows, right? And arrows are things that you pull back and that you release and they end up going in a direction, right?

And the idea is to give an aim to it, give it a direction, so it’ll hit the target with arrows. That’s the idea. But then once you’ve let go of that arrow, what happens? It flies through the air on its own without anything else impacting it.

So it has independence in that sense. So that’s the idea. You know, children are like arrows. We want to aim them. We want to point them in the right direction, but then eventually we’ve got to let go. And so when we let go, we want them to be on target for the rest of their life. And so that means we’ve got to give them some independence to a certain degree.

And that’s important to helping them develop their emotional behavior. Because when children are born, as all of you parents know, they’re full of emotions, right? Children got a lot of emotions and they let you know pretty quick that they have a lot of emotions.

They cry, they laugh, they get angry, they have all kinds of emotions that they express. They get joyful and happy and almost too happy sometimes, you think. But we want to help them process those emotions so that they can become adults.

You know, sometimes we use gentle corrections with our children, and that’s good. And then sometimes we’ve got to use stern methods of correction with our children. And why is that? Because the Bible says in Proverbs 22, 15, that “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction will drive it far from him.”

So children have a lot of foolishness that they engage in. Some of that is lighthearted and innocent. Other foolishness that children engage in can be very dangerous. You know, my mama, when I was a child, you know, she didn’t want me playing with matches, right? Because matches are very dangerous and they can create fires and those fires can get out of control and they can be a big problem.

So sometimes we let them and sometimes we restrict them. And sometimes we have to teach them not to do things that they want to do because those things are not good for them. And so we’ve got to regulate their emotions. And so teach them to not let their emotions control them. That’s what we want. We want our children to make good, reasonable decisions.

In Numbers 15, verse 29, it says, “You shall have a tassel, that you may look upon it, and remember all the commandments of the Lord, and do them, that you may not follow the harlotry, which your own heart and your own eyes are inclined.”

So, some people teach their children to follow their heart. Just follow your heart. That is horrible advice for children. And the Bible says, don’t do that. Don’t follow your heart. Right here in Numbers 15, in verse 29, it says to follow the commandments of the Lord.

Listen to Proverbs 28 and verse 26, you know, thinking about this advice that some are giving. Follow your heart, especially to your children. Let them follow their heart, you know. No, that’s not good advice. Proverbs 28, verse 26 says, “He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered.” So we shouldn’t be teaching them to follow their heart, quote-unquote. We should be teaching them to trust in the Lord and to do His commandments.

Now, we teach them to do things that are good for them, such as going to the dentist or maybe going to the doctor’s office. We teach them to brush your teeth and to eat broccoli and things like that, to clean the house and to clean up after themselves, you know. We teach them to do those things. Even though they’re not fun things, we teach them, don’t let your emotions control you.

You’ve got to do some of these things so that you can be a healthy individual. And also, when it comes to the Lord’s Church, sometimes children say things like, I don’t want to go to church. Well, if they said, I don’t want to brush my teeth, would you let that go? Would you tell them, okay, you don’t have to brush your teeth. Just let your teeth rot. That’ll be good, you know. You wouldn’t do that, would you?

You would tell them, no, you’ve got to brush your teeth. You need to brush your teeth every day. And you would let them know that, right? Good parents would do that. Well, when they say, oh, I don’t want to go to church. Well, you tell them, no, we’re going to church. And we’re going to go to church. And we’re going to learn from God’s Word. And we’re going to do what’s right.

Okay? Because it’s good for us. Just like eating broccoli, brushing teeth, cleaning the house, all of those things. It’s good for us. And so we need to teach them to love God supremely and to love mankind, because that’s not always easy to do. It’s not always easy to love God and to love our fellow man. Sometimes our fellow man can be kind of exasperating, you know, but we have to love them anyway.

Jesus said that, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind,” and “love your neighbor as yourself,” Matthew 22, 37 through 29. We want our children to be led by the Spirit, not by the flesh. And emotions are very fleshly things, and so we want them to be led by the Spirit. “Walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh,” Galatians 5, 16.

“If we live in the Spirit, we shall also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” Notice the contrast between walking in the Spirit and the emotion of envy and conceit and provoking, Galatians 5, 25 through 26.

And then finally, leading our children means giving them spiritual training. Proverbs chapter 22, verse 6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Now my question for you as parents is this, how can you spiritually train your child if you yourself are not spiritually trained?

And that becomes an issue for me as a parent to get spiritually trained so I can spiritually train my children, right? 2 Timothy 2, verse 15 says, “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” So we rightly divide the word of truth, the Bible, and study so that we can know how to spiritually train our children.

It was said of Abraham in Genesis 18, verse 19, by God. God said, “For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice.” So God knew that Abraham would spiritually train his children. The psalmist wrote in Psalm 78, verse 4, “We will not hide them from their children, teaching to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength and His wonderful works which He has done.” We won’t hide them. We’ll teach them to our children. And consider how Timothy was trained, 2 Timothy 3 and verse 15, “That from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

What do we say to our children to spiritually train them? First of all, let’s answer their spiritual questions. Children have a lot of questions. They have a lot of spiritual questions. Let’s try to answer those questions as best we can. If you don’t know the answer, say, you know what, I don’t know that, but I’m going to find out, and we’ll talk about it later.

Remember what 1 Peter 3 and verse 15 says, “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” Our children are included in that. And when our children ask us spiritual questions, we need to be ready to answer those questions.

We train our children to do all kinds of things. We train them to do schoolwork. We have conferences with teachers and many other things to make sure they are doing well in school. We train them to be involved in sports activities. We spend money on them, and some parents even yell at their children if they don’t do well, you know, in the sports activities.

My question is this, are we at least as serious about spirituality as we are about these other areas of our life? We need to be. And so let’s train our children to be spiritually minded. Three things here. Ephesians 6 and verse 4, three things. You parents, “Do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” Being a good parent, leading our children means, number one, being the parent. Number two, regulating our child’s emotions. And number three, spiritual training.

If we will focus on those things, then our children will turn out really well and we’ll be very proud of them as adults. And so we’ve looked at God’s Word this morning on what it has to say about training our children. Now maybe we need spiritual training more in our lives. You know, I always need to study. I always need to pray.

Those are things that I do on a daily basis and I hope you do those too. But maybe you need the prayers of the church to help you be a better parent or maybe a better grandparent. Grandparents have a role as well.

Or maybe you need to become a Christian so that you can train your children to be Christians. You’ve got to do that before you can train them. And so if you need to become a Christian this morning, you can do that by hearing God’s Word and believing it, repenting of your sin, confessing Jesus is Lord, and being baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

And then you will be qualified to teach your children how to become a Christian also. So why not become a child of God this morning if that’s your need? Or if otherwise, you can come forward now and make it known while together we stand and while we sing.

End of transcript. Thank you for reading along!