“1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”
4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
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Folk music rarely makes it to the top of the charts. Harry Chapin did it in 1974 with Cats in the Cradle. ‘My child arrived just the other day he came to the world in the usual way, but there were planes to catch, and bills to pay. He learned to walk while I was away, and he was talking ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew, he’d say, “I’m gonna be like you, dad. You know I’m gonna be like you.” My son turned ten just the other day. He said, “thanks for the ball, dad, come on let’s play. Can you teach me to throw?” I said, “not today. I got a lot to do,” he said, “that’s okay.” And, he walked away, but his smile never dimmed. It said, “I’m gonna be like him, yeah, you know I’m gonna be like him.” I’ve long since retired, my son’s moved away, I called him up just the other day. I said, “I’d like to see you if you don’t mind.” He said, “I’d love to, dad, if I can find the time. You see, my new job’s a hassle, and the kids have the flu, but it’s sure nice talking to you, dad. It’s been sure nice talking to you.” And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me: he’d grown up just like me. My boy was just like me.’
That song isn’t autobiographical. Chapin’s son Josh was only two when it came out. Chapin said, “Frankly, this song scares me to death.” That’s a proper fear. Parenting is an awesome responsibility. We parents are training our kids whether we know it or not. We train them by our presence. We train them by our absence. We train our kids whether we know it or not. Our kids are also responding to this training whether they know it or not. In this portion of Scripture, God tells us how to train our children. He tells children how to respond to parents. He says that parents are to bring up their children in the Lord and children are to honor their parents. That’s the claim of this sermon: parents are to bring up their children in the Lord and children are to honor their parents.
We will see this in two points. First: honoring parents. Second: bringing up children. We will look first at honoring parents from verses 1-3 and bringing up children from verse 4.
First: honoring parents. This sermon series deals with marriage and sexuality. Children are tied up with both. This connection is seen in the first command to Adam and Eve, “be fruitful and multiply.”
Now we want to be sensitive to couples who are unable to have children. There are unique sorrows with that. We also want to be sensitive to the realities on the ground when children aren’t raised by married parents. We want to be sensitive to the exceptions, but these are simply the exceptions that prove the rule: sexuality leads to children and children come out of marriage.
We need to acknowledge that these are tied together because the sexual revolution is adamant that they are not. It’s not surprising that the sexual revolution went hand in hand with birth control—sexuality and having children are no longer tied together. It’s not surprising that the sexual revolution went hand in hand with the breakdown of the traditional family—marriage and having children are no longer tied together.
In this series, we are trying to listen to what God says on these matters rather than what our nation says, and since marriage and sexuality are designed to lead to children, we are going to study childrearing. Both children and parents have responsibilities here and we start with the responsibilities of the children; verse 1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”
The apostles treated children as responsible for their behavior and increasingly so with age. As Peter O’Brien said, “It is obvious from these exhortations that the apostle thinks of local congregations as consisting of whole families who come together not only to praise God but also to hear his word addressed to them. As the household tables are read out, children, too, would learn of their own Christian duties as well as those of other family members.”
Paul, in his letters, was training whole families in this area of marriage and sexuality, which is why we are studying his letters together. Paul wanted everyone to hear God’s word on these matters and for every member of the family to know that every other member had heard God’s word on this matter too. He wanted children to know that their parents had heard the command, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”
Now the primary focus of this is children in the home. Adult children are called to honor their parents and that has its own particularities, but here we are thinking about children who are still in the home. They are called to obey their parents.
They are called to obey because this is right; verse 1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” Now this word “right” might mean “fitting” as in “put that painting down two inches; yeah, that looks about right.” Obedience to parents certainly is fitting. No one in his right mind is sympathetic with the kid throwing a fit over candy in the checkout line. However, it’s more likely that “right” here is “righteous”; “obey your parents in the Lord, for this is righteous.”
The focus here isn’t so much on what’s appropriate as much as it’s on what’s pleasing to God. Children obeying their parents is pleasing to God. Obedience is pleasing to God. To understand how very pleasing it is, we must recognize how very rare it is. As Calvin, writing over 400 years ago put it, “Experience shows how rare this virtue is; do we find one among a thousand who is obedient to his parents?”
Obedience to parents is rare. You need to recognize that obedience isn’t simply not defying parental authority. Obedience is doing what parental authorities say right away, all the way, with a glad heart. So many childrearing books have to do with behavior modification aimed at avoiding outright defiance. They don’t aim for the heart. They don’t aim for the soul. They don’t aim at what verse 1 aims at; “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”
Now children who obey righteously show glimpses of that; they “show”, in the words of Peter O’Brien, “that they are receptive to the Spirit’s work of transforming them into the likeness of God and Christ. They demonstrate that they understand the Lord’s will and provide concrete examples of a wise and godly lifestyle.” We need to ask ourselves if that’s what we are praying for.
As for you children, you need to recognize that to obey God, you must obey your dad and mom all the way, right away, with a glad heart. If mom tells you to clean your room and you don’t, you aren’t just disobeying your mom, you are also disobeying God. If dad puts you in charge of mowing the yard in a timely fashion, and you never do, you aren’t just disobeying dad, you are also disobeying God. God is merciful, but you must repent. If you want to follow Jesus in your situation, it doesn’t look like dropping your fishing nets like Peter and following Jesus. It looks like obeying dad and mom.
Now you don’t obey your parents simply because of your parents. You obey because of God. You don’t obey dad and mom simply because dad and mom are bigger than you. You don’t obey dad and mom simply only when dad and mom know more than you do. You don’t obey dad and mom because dad and mom pay the bills. You obey dad and mom because part of the way you obey God. You obey them “in the Lord” as verse 1 puts it.
Jesus is the proof of that. Jesus obeyed his parents. Maybe you don’t want to obey your parents because you think you know better than them. I’m willing to bet that Jesus often knew better than Joseph and Mary, but he obeyed them because of the fifth commandment, “honor your father and mother.” After Jesus’ parents found him in the temple we read that Jesus “went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them.” If you want to be Christlike, do that. A truly wise child doesn’t disobey because he knows better than their parents. He obeys his parents because that’s what it means to obey God.
God rewards children for doing this; verse 2, ‘“Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise—“that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”’ We don’t have time to go into the exceptions to this promise such as accidents and disease. We just have to time to say that God can make life go very well for you in this life and the next and God can make life quite difficult for you until you act sensibly. His choice in that matter has a great deal to do with how you treat your parents who are His representatives over you on earth.
God commands children to obey their parents. God commands parents to parent in a matter worthy of being obeyed. That’s our second point: bringing up children. These words are directed to the father. This doesn’t mean that mothers were or are excluded from these commands. Paul was dealing with his culture and in the Greco-Roman culture the father had unlimited power over his children. He could sell his children into slavery. At the time Paul wrote this, the father could still kill his child without any legal repercussions.
Given that power, Paul gave the following command: verse 4, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children.” To exasperate is to make angry. We see this same word used in the Septuagint of Deuteronomy 4:25 used for the Lord’s response to sin—“doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke Him to anger.”
Sin provokes God to anger. Sinful parenting provokes children to anger. Fathers misusing their authority provokes children to anger. Favoritism provokes children to anger—think back to Joseph and his brothers. Abdicating your responsibility as a parent provokes children to anger—think back to David and his children. Hypocrisy provokes children to anger. Andrew Lincoln has a list of what provokes children to anger: “excessively severe discipline, unreasonably harsh demands, abuse of authority, arbitrariness, unfairness, constant nagging and condemnation, subjecting a child to humiliation, and all forms of gross insensitivity to a child’s needs and sensibilities.”
Make it your goal not to provoke your children to anger. Repent when you do. If you want your children to confess their sin against others, you would be wise to confess your sins against them.
If you exasperate your children, you are actually working against their training in the training and instruction of the Lord. No child has ever been shamed into the kingdom. Calvin was right, “Parents… are exhorted not to irritate their children by unreasonable severity. This would excite hatred and would lead them to throw off the yoke altogether.” Parents can make it very easy for their children to obey God’s rules for the household or they can make it very difficult. They make it very difficult when they exasperate their children.
The negative command here is, “do not exasperate your children.” The positive command is, “instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” That’s your responsibility as parents. Your ultimate goal is not that your kids obey you for your sake. It is that they obey you for God’s sake. As Peter O’Brien put it, “Ultimately, the concern of parents is not simply that their sons and daughters will be obedient to their authority, but that through this godly training and admonition their children will come to know and obey the Lord himself.”
Your goal is for your children to live as disciples of Jesus. Now, of course, for you to train disciples of Jesus, you need to be living as a disciple of Jesus yourself. You can’t train others in what you’re not doing. If you try, the hypocrisy of the situation can only exasperate your children.
So how do disciples raise their children in the training and instruction of the Lord? Moses tells us, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your 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.” If you expect your children to live as disciples, you need to talk about how disciples live. You need to talk about the grace that motivates obedience to the commands. You need to talk about the sin inside us all, including you, which fights against keeping the commandments. You need to be talking about this, “when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Now that’s a lot of work, which is the primary reason we often choose to simply settle for behavior modification and ignore the heart, but that’s not what this verse is after and that’s not why God gives us children. We are to lay it all on the line for our children. Jesus did so that our children might come to him. He gave himself up to death for it. We ought to do the same. Talk about God’s will with your kids. If you don’t, and if you aren’t, they won’t think it is important.
Now covenant education simply seeks to extend that training and instruction of the Lord into the forty plus hours our children are in school each week. The goal of covenant education is to add “are at school” to Deuteronomy 6—“talk about them when you sit at home and when you are at school, when you lie down and when you get up.” The goal is to come alongside parents in bringing up these covenant children in the training and instruction of the Lord.
The goal of covenantal education is the same as that of the home—training children to obey God all the way, right away, with a glad heart. That occurs “along the way” to use the words of Deuteronomy. Along the way at home has to do with siblings and money and chores. Along the way at school has to do with music and science and growing in your ability to do good to those around you—which is what work should be. The goal in all of it is to train children to obey God all the way, right away, with a glad heart.
Now none of what I have said disparages public education. None of what I’ve said denies the influence of godly teachers in the public schools. What I’ve said does, however, delineate the two models as different. No one expects public education to train children to obey God all the way, right away, with a glad heart We do, however, expect that of covenant education. They are different models.
Since we fathers are the leaders in our homes, we would be wise to pay particular attention to the faith formation in our homes because study after study says that our children are leaving the faith in droves. Quite a bit of this has to do with the sexual revolution we’ve been studying. It has won the day in our wider culture. It trains our children—primarily by way of stories—to think about humanity, connection, and satisfaction in ways that are hostile to what it means to be made in the image of God. It is invasive and it is militant.
The question for us as parents is are we aggressive too? Are we aggressive about bringing our children up in the training and instruction of the Lord? Imagine for a second that the only training and instruction your children received as to what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus was what they received in your home. So no pastors, no Sunday School teachers, no Christian education, no Cadets, no GEMS, no EDGE, nothing other than what you, fathers, and your wife are doing in your home. Would your children know how to use their Bibles effectively by the time they left home? Could they tell the difference between God’s truth and the crafty lies of our culture by the time they left home? Could they talk about their faith by the time they left home?
If you aren’t aiming for that by what you are doing in your home, don’t expect that thirty-five minutes of Sunday School is going to do what you aren’t doing. Don’t expect that any teacher or pastor no matter how skilled is going to somehow make your child interested in something which you are not treating as interesting in your home. Remember, it is you who are training your children. God is telling you to own that and bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. There are books and DVDs listed in the bulletin to help.
Read the Bible at the end of meals with your children. Read a Bible storybook every night with your kids before bedtime. If you fathers did that every night, you would make it through 365 stories a year. That would make an impression. Your kids won’t think the Bible is important unless you—who are their authority—treat it like its important. Remember your marching orders for parenting are to bring your children up in the training and instruction of the Lord. That comes right from the top. Arrange your life that way. Arrange your family that way.
If you do, you will have equipped your children as well as you can for life and eternity. That’s what you want as a parent. You want to be able to look back and honestly say, “I did everything I could to raise those children in the training and instruction of the Lord.” You don’t want the regrets that come from doing otherwise. That should scare you far more than anything in Cats in the Cradle. Amen.