Fathers

Well, happy Father's Day. I'm still recovering. I hope that all of you dads are treated extra special on this day. I heard one guy say, I heard one guy say that this is the only day that his family gives him complete and total obedience because he tells them, don't spend a lot on me on Father's Day. And they don't. So that's perfect. Right? I remember becoming a father for the very first time, and it was, you know, I remember coming back from the hospital, Edie and I were driving in our little, our little car, and we had Trace in the seat and we were coming home and I was thinking to myself, what, what? Like, the nurses don't come home with you. And this is frightening. And you know, it can be overwhelming when you are a new father. It's like these three fathers that I read about who were in the hospital, these three new dads, and the nurse came in to the first one and said, got some news, and you've got twins. And he was like, what? That's crazy because I actually played baseball for the Minnesota Twins Organization. And they were like, whoa, who would've thought? And then a little while later, the nurse comes back in and says to the second dad and says, hey, you're having triplets. And he's like, you gotta be kidding me. I worked for the 3M Corporation who would've ever thought this was possible? And as soon as that came out of his mouth, the guy next to him passed out. And when they finally brought him back, they were like, what's the matter? And he went, I work for Five Guys. So whether you're a dad of five or whether you're a dad of one, or whether you're a dad of one on the way, we aren't left good news here. We aren't left with no instruction as to how fathers are supposed to function. The Apostle Paul taught the Church of Ephesus about the nature of Jesus changing everything, changing our identities, changing the nature of what we call family, changing how we function within the context of that family. And then particularly every role that comes in our lives, everything is changed because of who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. And whether that's being a husband or a wife or a child, or in our social relationships, or whether as a mother or a father, God actually speaks to this and he is changing everything. Now, I wanna remind you that although today I'm gonna highlight one verse in a passage of scripture that we've actually used, that we've preached from three times in this Family Matters series in Ephesians chapter number five into chapter six. We've actually taught out of these verses three different times in this series. But I wanna remind you of something, and it's this, although we're gonna be highlighting fathers today, every single person needs to pay attention. The reason that you need to pay attention is because you may learn something about God in the midst of all of this, because that's really what the scripture is doing for us, is teaching us about God. So I want us to look at just one verse today. That's it, just one verse. Not because dads can't handle more than that, but I just want to be able to give us one verse so that we can pay close attention to it. And it's in Ephesians chapter six, verse number four. And it says, this, fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Now, you may get that verse, and you may have heard it before. You may look at it, dads you may see that verse And all of us may read that verse and say, well, this seems at least relatively basic to us. It was not relatively basic to the audience Paul was writing to. In fact, the audience Paul was writing to what he was saying in this passage of scripture was extremely counter-cultural. You see, Ephesus was a pagan city through and through. It was Roman in its complete and total feel. And there was a pervasive ethos that was in the Roman Empire that unless you were there in that time, you didn't fully comprehend and you didn't really understand. And it's characterized by a Latin phrase and it's a very simple Latin phrase. Patrias Potestas. And you know what that means? Paternal power. That's a Latin phrase. Patrias Potestas. Paternal power or the power of a father. This was the ethos at that time. And I'm not sure that any of us really have an appreciation for the power that fathers had in this ancient culture. It was extraordinary power. So much so that in the Roman culture, this pagan culture, when children were born, they were brought before the Father who was sitting down and they were placed at the father's feet. Listen to this. If the father stayed seated, they kept the child. If the father got up and walked out, then they sent the child into what was called exposure. This was a place where either the child would die from exposure outside or would be absconded and used as a slave in the Roman Empire. This was the power that fathers had. They had an extraordinarily powerful role. Anything they said went and they could do whatever they wanted. In fact, we could go back to 1 BC, which is just shortly before the timing of all of this, right? This was probably written, Ephesians was probably written, let's call it in the 60s, maybe the 50s, late 50s AD, right? But just within a 50 year timeframe, roughly about the time of the time of the birth of Jesus, maybe just a little bit before it, we've got a letter that we still have from a man named Hilarion who was writing to his wife, Alis, A-L-I-S. And he was traveling because he was trying to get some work and make some money. And apparently they already had a child at home and she was pregnant at home. And listen to what he says when he writes to her, I'm asking you and begging you to take care of little child, and when we are paid, I will send it to you right away. If you happen to be pregnant again, if it's a boy, leave it. If it's a girl, throw it out. This was the context into which Paul was actually writing these things. Fathers had extraordinary power and they didn't even need to really work on relationship with their children because their children just simply had to do whatever they said needed to be done. And that was what went on in this particular context. So Paul actually gives counter-cultural instruction, and he does it this way. He gives one negative statement, not negative in terms of bad but negative in terms of do not do. And then he gives two positive commands. And I want us to understand how Paul is teaching us how fathers are supposed to relate to their children. And if you'll pay attention, you're going to see something behind this instruction that's not just for dads, it's for all of us. So how do fathers relate to their children? Here's what Paul says first, don't exasperate them. Right? This is how you are supposed to relate to your children. Don't exasperate them. Remember how he begins in verse number four, fathers do not exasperate your children. Now, what does that word exasperate mean? Some of you don't use that word. It's not maybe a common word for you to utilize. What does the word exasperate mean? It means simply this. To provoke to anger or to provoke to wrath. That's what it means to exasperate someone. Now what Paul is talking about here is he's saying, hey fathers, you should not be involved in a sustained behavior that builds resentment that could ultimately reach hostility in the lives of your kids. Don't do that. He says, in fact, if you start to think about it, how can a father exasperate a child? Mothers can do this too, by the way, but he's specifically talking here to fathers. Fathers, how can we exasperate? How do we provoke our children to anger? Well, here's one. Public humiliation will do that. Public humiliation. I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about you're at a restaurant and you do something funny as a dad and your kids just roll their eyes and like, please, dad, don't ever do that. That embarrasses me. That's just fun. I did that all the time. This is just part of like, it's part of being a dad. It's part of doing something stupid and funny and whatever. That's fine. I'm talking about publicly humiliating your child, right? That shouldn't be the case. Because what that does is that breeds an internal resentment. It provokes them to anger, it provokes them to wrath, and it begins to be deep seeded in their hearts. Or maybe this, maybe treating your wife, their mother poorly. When you treat her poorly, you are causing something to happen inside the heart of your child. And it's not something that you want to happen. It is a building resentment and a building anger that begins to happen in the life of that child because they realize that their mom, your wife, is not supposed to be treated the way that you're treating her. Or maybe you can exasperate your children by smothering them. Man, is that something we should talk about, by smothering them. Like to the point where they can't make a decision on their own, they can't do anything on their own, they can nothing. They can't do anything. And that can become a place where it becomes stifling and a building resentment can start to happen. Or maybe we exasperate them through our hypocrisy. See, what they know as our children is they know that when we're at home, we're not even remotely the same person that we pretend to be when we're at church or when we're other places. They know these things. And that hypocrisy can build a resentment and an anger and can be exasperating for them. I could, there's plenty more. I could probably talk about favoritism, right? You could go back to the story of the family of Jacob and Esau and see how bad that works out, right? Favoritism is not something that's going to be helpful. So what I'm reminding us of is that fathers need to make sure that we don't exasperate our children. And one of the ways that we can do that, listen to this, one of the ways we can not provoke them to anger is by making sure that we've dealt with our own anger. Because I've met a lot of fathers, I've met a lot of men, truthfully, I've met some women in this regard as well. And they're so full of anger and it comes out in so many different ways that we've gotta deal with our own anger. In fact, just a little bit before that, in Paul writing to the Ephesian Church, he talks to them about this very thing, and he's talking to everybody at this point. He says this in Ephesians four, verse 31, get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander along with every form of malice. He's saying, you've gotta get rid of all that. Do you know why? Listen to this. Do you know why you have to get rid of anger dads? So that you don't provoke your children to anger? Do you know why you need to do that? Because anger is a cannibal emotion. It eats all the other emotions until it's the only one left. That's what anger does. It's a cannibal. It just consumes every single other emotion until there's no other emotions left except for anger. And when you are angry yourself are going to by default provoke your children and all of those around you to the same thing. Don't let your brokenness become your children's burden, but instead love them deeply by allowing God to work richly in your own heart to make you whole and to make you free so that they're not bearing the burdens of your brokenness. So Paul says, don't exasperate them. That's kind of the negative command, so to speak, right? Don't exasperate your children, instead love them, right? And then he gives two very specific positive commands. Here's the second one, I would say how fathers relate to their children. Don't exasperate them, but secondly, be present. Be present dads, listen to what Paul says. In verse four, he says, fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, watch this. Bring them up. You're like, man, you are really pulling words out of this thing, I am. And here's why, because he uses this phrase, Paul does when he says, bring them up. He uses that phrase just a few verses earlier when he is talking to husbands, it's just translated slightly differently, but it comes from the exact same Greek phrase, et trepho. And here's what it says in verse number 29 of Ephesians chapter five. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they watch this, feed and care for their own body. That's the same phrase, when he says, now bring them up in verse number four of chapter six. It's the same phrase as Ephesians five verse 29, feed and care for. In other words, the idea here is about nourishing and caring for our children. And Paul is giving us some kind of physicality with this command. In other words, there has to be a presence, there has to be an embodiment of these things. What does that mean for fathers? Well, for fathers it means that it's going to equal provision, right? If we're gonna be present for them and we're gonna nourish and care for our children, if we're gonna bring them up, which is the idea here that he's talking about, then we're going to have to make provision for them. Food and clothes and shelter, those types of things are embodied in what Paul is talking about here. But he's also talking about the idea of protection, keeping them from harm, keeping them from evil, keeping them from danger. So tied up in this idea of the presence that we would have that nourishes and cares for our children, it comes with the idea of both provision and protection. You know, what I find interesting is that oftentimes when I'm reading, I'll come across some things maybe in the world of science or whatever. I'm not a scientist. I don't even play one on TV. I don't pretend to be any of those things, but I like to read pretty broadly. And sometimes when I'm reading, I'll come across something and I'll realize, you know what? That's kinda what Paul said, or that's kind of what Jesus said. And sometimes you've got science reaffirming some of this in the field of neuroscience, kind of the science of the brain, right? It talks about the three hierarchical states of the brain that you've got basically the survival state, the emotional state, and the executive state. And if you looked at 'em as a hierarchy, the executive state is here. Like this is where you wanna be. The executive state is when kind of everything's firing, everything's functioning. You're able to make really good decisions in the moment that you're in. All of those things are good, but those two other states, the survival state, it's asking one question, am I safe? And then you've got the emotional state and it's asking one question, am I loved? Protection and provision and presence. These are the things that Paul is actually saying to us that actually make a big deal. Even in when we look at neuroscience, it's very complimentary. It makes very good sense. Moms, listen, when it comes to presence, and answering the questions, am I safe and am I loved? Moms are huge in this, but for today, let me just say this, do not underestimate the power of a father's presence. Do not underestimate it. Sometimes in the culture that we live in, you watch, you watch television shows, you watch movies. Dads are always played off as dumb, do nothings. And that's not the case. We can't let that narrative that wants to beat down manhood and beat down fathers. We can't let that stand in the church because we need to be men. We need to be men who are present, who are providing, who are protecting, and never underestimate the power of that kind of presence. To give this sense, I'm safe and I'm loved. It is a powerful, powerful thing. By the way, fathers, even if it's small, it's really, really powerful. You know, Abraham Lincoln had an ambassador to Great Britain, whose name was Charles Francis Adams, a very disciplined man, very smart, very accomplished man. And he had some children and he himself, Charles Francis Adams would do a lot of journaling, right? He had a diary, this was pretty popular back in the 1800s. A lot of diaries at that time. And he would write down notes from the day and all that kind of stuff. And his children, some of them picked up on that habit. And he had an 8-year-old son named Brooks. And Brooks would journal and would write things in his diary. And one time at eight years old, here's what Brooks wrote in his diary, went fishing with dad, the most glorious day of my life. 8-year-old Brooks writes that about his dad. For the next 30 years, Brooks continues to journal. And if you follow the pages of his journal, you can see almost every year he's referencing back, I mean 30 years later, he's referencing back to this day that he got to go fishing with his dad. And it was the most glorious day of his life. And so eventually his father, Brooks' father, Charles Francis died and he found his father's journal. And he thought to himself, I'm gonna look in my father's journal on some of the same days and see what corresponded, right, what that looked like. And of course, he couldn't help himself. He went to that very day where they went fishing and he opened up his dad's journal and his dad's journal said this, went fishing with my son, a day wasted. What his dad thought was a wasted day for the child was one of the most glorious impactful days he could ever imagine. Dads, do not underestimate the power of your presence. Do not underestimate it because what may seem a small thing to you may be one of the richest and most powerful and most glorious things that your child could ever imagine. How do you relate to fathers? Paul's giving us instruction. Don't exasperate them. Be present. Thirdly, be intentional. Be intentional. Look with me at what Paul says at the end of the verse, he says, fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead bring them up. What? In the training and instruction of the Lord, this is very, very intentional. Here's the way that I say it when I'm talking to young dads. Many times these dads are also pastors who are asking questions about what it means to raise a family while in ministry and the challenges associated with that and how everybody knows their kids and their kids can't get rid of their last name because now you know, they know that they're the pastor's kids and then people have expectations and make weird things and do weird things and all that stuff. But when I'm talking to them, here's what I remind them of. Listen carefully, and this is good for all dads, play offense, not just defense. The world that we live in seems to make us want to think that our job is just to sit back and wait and then respond to stuff. And by the way, you play a football game, you have to play some defense. There's no question about it. But stop forgetting that you wanna put points on the board, you wanna score, you wanna play offense. And Paul is saying here, that fathers should be intentional in what they do. They should be playing offense in what they do. The world that we live in seems to make us want to think that our job is just to sit back and wait and then respond to stuff. And by the way, you play a football game, you have to play some defense. There's no question about it, but stop forgetting that you wanna put points on the board, you wanna score, you wanna play offense. And Paul is saying here that fathers should be intentional in what they do. They should be playing offense in what they do, and he gives us two ways that that's the case. Here's the first, train or discipline your kids, train or discipline your kids. The word Paul uses here, when he says bring them up in the training, is the same word that is used for discipline in Hebrews chapter number 12, same word. Here's what it says in Hebrews 12, verses five through nine, and have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father, addresses his son. It says, my son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline and do not lose heart when he rebukes you. Because the Lord disciplines the one he loves and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son, endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you're not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline, then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we've all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the father of spirits and live? You see, what we need to understand is that when, when the writer of Hebrews is talking about this concept, and when Paul is talking about this concept, we have to think about the idea of discipline as training. That's what we have to think about. Sometimes when we think discipline, we think, you know, what does this mean? Spanking or timeouts or whatever, discipline as training that we're playing offense and we are helping them understand what they're doing and don't get confused with discipline or training and punishment. Punishment friends, listen carefully for this distinction. Punishment is about the past and paying for the past. Discipline has an eye on the future and training you to walk in a different future. This is what Paul is saying to us as fathers, that we need to be people who enter into the lives of our children and we provide correction and discipline that leads to life with an eye toward the future. It's not about punishment, it's about training. But he also tells us a second correlative kind of place to be intentional in the way we instruct, in how we instruct, that word instruct, where he says, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. That word instruct means to put in the mind of someone else. That's what the idea is of instruction, to put in the mind of someone else. Sometimes we see the word admonish, which means to put in the mind of, and this has a rich history in terms of instruction, fathers giving instruction to their children. There's a rich history of that in the Old Testament, right? You may be familiar with Deuteronomy chapter number six. It says this, these commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts, impress them on your children. In other words, impress them. Put into the mind of the children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up, in other words, in everyday living, you're able to give instruction to your kids, whether you're driving in the car, whether they're going to bed at night, whether you're sitting at the dinner table, whether they're on an athletic field or they're in a dance recital or whatever it may be, right? Tie these commands as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. You see, they were very serious. The instruction that God gave Moses to give to the people of Israel was that you are to be a people, a parent, a dad who instructs their children, teaches them about the things of God. Play offense. Dads, here's what you can't do. You can't just have a mentality of I'll drop 'em off at the church and let them do this. It's your job. This is a compliment. You've got people that are serving kids and serving students, and we thank God for you, by the way, thank God for you that are willing to come along students and children and serve and help to reinforce and to teach and to encourage them. But the primary responsibility, according to the word of God, lies with the parents and dads, you have a very specific role in that, a very specific role of playing offense. Maybe it's like what Pastor Dan said on the video when he said, create a family night and protect that night where you can help your kids learn about the things of God and teach them the things of God. And they're hearing that from their mom and their dad, right? We did that at home. We made a very special night of one of the nights of the week, and we did stuff at home and we made it very specific in our home. Or maybe for you, you have an opportunity to, with each of your kids, to take them away on a little trip or whatever. Maybe it's a dad daughter, you know, away weekend where you do something, you know, or it's a dad son away weekend where you do something and you've got an opportunity to help train them, to talk to them, to instruct them in the things of God and to have fun at the same time, right? You can do all of those things. You don't have to negate them. We did the same thing, I did that with Trace, I did that with Tanner. Very same things. You have to play offense. Or maybe it's, you know, getting creative about thinking some stuff. One summer I remember, I think they were in high school and I told them, we're gonna do man camp. And they're like, what does that mean that, you know? And I was like, no, it's not like manual labor, whatever. Here's the deal. Every single day what I'm gonna have you do is I'm gonna have you read through a proverb and you're gonna help. You're just gonna text me back or whatever. And you're gonna say, hey, I read it. And I don't know if they did, they told me they did, but you know, maybe they did. Hopefully they did. And you're gonna give me some feedback on that, that you read it and you're gonna learn what it means to be a young man who walks wisely before the Lord. We just called it man camp, and it was just a summer little thing, right, that we did by way of text message. And I would give them the passages of scripture that I wanted them to go through. And I said, look, you got all, you got all day, like you're not doing anything. It's the summer. Like you may be working or whatever, but you're not working 40 hours a week probably. You're just doing stuff, right? So get up about the crack of noon when you probably would get up, right? Roll over, get you a Pop-Tart. Open the word. You know, I understand what it's like to be a high school student. I was the same. But the bottom line is this, we've got to play offense. Listen, dads, I don't care what play you run, run a play. Run a play, play offense. You'll know when to play defense, play offense. Be intentional. See, what Paul teaches, teaches us about fathers is so important. And here's why. Fathers that are loving, present, and intentional, give a glimpse into our perfect Heavenly Father. Lemme read it again. Fathers that are loving, present, and intentional give a glimpse into our perfect Heavenly Father. You see, friends, here's what I know real clearly. We are not perfect as fathers. We are not perfect as mothers. We are not perfect as children. We're not perfect as people. We need grace and we need help, and we have it. We have a Heavenly Father who so loved the world that he gave his only son. Now listen carefully before you start thinking, I'm not sure that's a father son relationship that I'm real impressed by, the Father sent the son to die on a cross. The father and the son, before creation was ever done, said, this is how we wanna rescue the world. It's called the covenant of redemption. The Father didn't force the son into anything the Son did not willingly want to. The Father and the Son were of one mind. This was not some cosmic child abuse. This was the Father and the Son as very God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit who agreed on how humanity could be rescued from their sin. And do you know how? Listen, presence. God came to be with us in the person of Jesus Christ. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of God, full of grace and truth. You see, God came and moved into the neighborhood taking upon him our own flesh. And he did it because he was motivated by love, because God, by definition is love. You don't have a definition of love without God. God is love. And what God has done for us in and through Jesus Christ is that Jesus intentionally came and intentionally took the punishment for our sin. God did not provoke us to wrath, we provoked him to wrath. And Jesus, the perfect son of God, came and intentionally took upon himself the outpouring of God's just punishment for sin. And he took it upon himself and he swallowed down to the dregs, the wrath of God, so that through his death and ultimately through his resurrection, he could conquer death and sin and hell on our behalf. So that, now listen to this. Now, those of us who put our faith in Jesus as the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through him. Now, when we do that, we are not under condemnation any longer. God, listen to this, God doesn't punish his kids. He disciplines them. He trains them because everything from our past has been dealt with. He's dealt with past, present, and future at the cross. And now what he's doing is when we make mistakes, we come to him, we acknowledge our mistakes, and he corrects us and he trains us and he instructs us, and he disciplines us because he's fitting us for a future. He's got an eye on what's coming and it is a glorious future. And in all of this life, he promises to be with us always. So that every day, listen to this, every day you wake up, here's what you can know. You are safe in Christ and you are loved in Christ because your father has not gone anywhere and he never will. Now, listen, not everyone has had this model for them. Not everyone has had this model for them. And I know this, all of us have not had it modeled perfectly for us. And it may mean you have a distorted view of who God actually is, that as a result of some bad relationships with a father, that you think, God, your father wants to hurt or punish or humiliate you, or worse yet that he may wanna leave you. Maybe you feel alone. You're not. You're not. Reid Lessing told the story of how Native American fathers back in the early portion of time when they inhabited North America, how Native American fathers would begin to bring up their own kids, particularly their boys. The young brave boy would have to go into after being walked out miles into wooded areas and would be left there for an entire night. And he would have to sit there and listen to every crackling of a leaf or a branch and thinking that it is a wild animal that's coming to get him. Every time the wind would pick up, he would think to himself, maybe this is disguising danger that's headed my way, that now under the cover of the wind can make their way here. And that brave would have to sit there and endure all night long. But finally, when the sun began to rise, that young brave would see, start to see the flowers, start to see the plants and the trees and would start to see the pathway that would lead him out. But what he didn't count on is as the sun came up, he saw a shadowy figure that was not even a hundred feet from him that looked like a man standing at ready attention. It was his dad who'd been there all night long, ready to protect, always on guard and making sure nothing happened to his son. You've gotta warrior your father like that. He'll never leave you. He's always there.