Dennis Tuuri

Sermon text today is Ephesians 6:4. To put it in context, we’ll read verses 1-4. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Ephesians 6:1-4.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

Let’s pray. Father, we are joyously thankful to you for your word and for the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and for the gift of the Holy Spirit who comes to teach us things of our savior, to write your word upon our hearts, and to transform our lives. We pray that the spirit would do his work, that we would have open ears to hear things from your law, hearts that are malleable to your word, that your word might be written upon them to the end, that with our hands and our tongues this week, we may obey you in these particular matters of the relationship of authority and those under authority.

In Jesus name we ask it and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen. Please be seated.

Yesterday we had a nice illustration for the children that watched the playoff game between the Blazers and the Lakers. Last week we spoke on the first three verses of this section on children’s need to honor their parents. And we spoke about particularly in terms of the tongue and specifically we mentioned the tongue in terms of its content, its tone and your countenance.

And yesterday, Rasheed Wallace got thrown out of the very important critical first game of the playoff series for his countenance. He didn’t say a word to the referee when he was finally tossed, got his second technical foul. He simply stared at him with his countenance indicating intimidation, and the referee properly threw him out of the game. Now, the referee had warned Rasheed and had warned the blazer bench that Rasheed was staring at him and trying to intimidate him and that it wouldn’t be countenanced.

Warned him three times apparently, but it’s an indication of the dishonor shown to the authority in the context of the basketball game yesterday and Rasheed broke the fifth commandment. He did not honor his superiors in the game, both his coach who had told him not to do it and the referee who had told him not to do it.

On the other hand, we have Shaquille O’Neal and at the last quarter of yesterday’s game, there was the “hack Shaq” methodology of basketball. The guy cannot make free throws, makes about one out of two. So, in the fourth quarter, as the Blazers were trying to catch up, they intentionally fouled him. They told the referees they were doing it. That’s within the rules. Shaq goes to the line 20 odd times in the fourth quarter. Misses the first seven in a row, makes the next seven in a row, and after his seventh one he makes in a row as he’s running back down.

Shaq looks over at coach Dunleavy of the Blazers and says something like, “It’s not going to work.” Well, immediately after the game, one of the announcers in the interview of Shaq said, “What did you say to Dunleavy? You know, were you mad about this or whatever?” I don’t remember what the question was. And Shaquille said, “Well, I did not mean any disrespect to him,” indicating to coach Dunleavy, “but he just wanted to make sure that he knew that this wasn’t going to work. He was going to make his free throws.”

So you have Shaquille going out of his way to state before a national audience that he was actually trying not to show disrespect to his superior, the other team’s coach. And you’ve got Rasheed Wallace showing disrespect toward his coach, his team representing his city, I suppose we could say. And the two paths are ejection and hero. The two paths are the curse of ejection from the game and the Blazers lose the game and Shaquille in his at least exterior attempt to honor the authorities in the game becomes the hero of the game making over 40 points and the team wins.

So there we have an illustration of what we talked about last week, the first half of these sets of verses here on children and fathers. So last week we talked about children and fathers. This week we’re going to talk about fathers and children. And we put all this in a context. This is Credenda/Agenda stuff. Ephesians is two halves. First three chapters doctrine. Second three chapters application of the doctrine and that is in the context of the supremacy of the Lord Jesus Christ as the end of chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 4 picture for us the reconciliation of all things in Christ and the glory due to Christ on behalf of us who are supposed to walk worthy of these great doctrines.

I put in here again this is just last week’s outline and remember that the context for this can be sort of summed up in this chiastic structure of seven “ones” in verses 4-6 of chapter 4. One body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and father of all. And if you look at that in a chiastic way, I think they match up rather nicely. We took the time last week to go over that. I won’t repeat that analysis, but at the center is the Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. So, we have the supremacy of Christ and specifically the term Lord is used indicating his superiority in terms of reign and rule that we’re his subjects.

So when we get around to looking at children and parents, it’s an outworking of the supremacy of Christ and the reconciliation of authority that is happening now with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to fulfill the work. We sing psalms, that’s great. And we sing hymns, that’s great too. the one we just sang this morning, we sang a psalm and then we sang a hymn. And it shows us this transition from the old covenant to the new covenant and the supremacy of the greater Elijah, the greater Aaron, uh the greater Enoch, etc.

And there’s a tremendous shift that’s happened in covenant history with the coming of our savior. We want to retain Old Testament truths, but we don’t want to deny the tremendous shift that’s happening. We’ve been talking in our New Testament survey class about the four gospels. And historically, they’ve always been related to the four faces of the cherubim. And the four faces of the cherubim are ox, lion, eagle, and then man.

And that’s the proper order, I think, at least that we’re teaching to our New Testament survey class on Tuesday for their final exam. If they put a different order, they’re going to get it marked wrong, ’cause I’m the authority. I’m the referee. Okay? So, and if you think of it that way, then what you have is a transition from three animals to the face of man. Jesus is God in John. Most people relate that to the eagle, but the image of God is man.

And there’s a transition from the old covenant ruled in a sense in more of an animal sense to the coming of Jesus as the man. The old covenant, you know, mankind was instructed to look at the animals, “go to the ant,” you know, “consider the ways of these various animals” and it’s still proper to do that. But in the New Testament, what does Paul say? He says, “Look at my example. Be a follower of godly men.”

Now, the Old Testament, they get off the ark and probably they follow the animals to find out where the watering holes are and what’s good to eat. They watch them. Do they die after they eat something? So, they kind of are being trained by the animals. Now, after 2,000 years of the reign of the Lord Jesus Christ, we’ve got satellites and all kinds of interesting frequency waves and stuff to analyze the entire earth and map out not just watering holes, but mining capability, potential mineral deposits. There’s been a tremendous shift with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and his—this book of Ephesians is about the reconciliation of all things through the work of Christ.

At the heart of that is the lordship of Christ in terms of authority. And we are taking two weeks here to talk about this reconciliation of authority, proper authority in the personal work of our savior as it relates to children and parents. And we said last week briefly on your outline that children are addressed. Children are to be nurtured, not evangelized. Now evangelized in the broader sense of the term, we’re all being evangelized.

The evangel, the good news is that everything’s changed with the coming of Christ that he now reigns. So we’re all being evangelized, actually, but I’m talking about point action time. I think we’re supposed to look at our children the way Paul says we’re to look at them here. They’re to go to the law of God, not so that they can become Christians, but because in God’s providence, he’s already put them in Christian homes, and they’re to be the subject primarily of nurture, not evangelism.

Remember these psalms we sing? Do we ever sing a psalm of a man coming to a great, you know, “I saw the light” conversion as an adult? I don’t think so. Now, that’s true. You know, it’s true. A lot of us came to faith late in life, so to speak. And that’s proper and certainly the missionary version, missionary acts of Paul indicate that’s proper of course and it’s proper to sing songs like that but the normal experience of the covenant community as children growing up in the context of Christian nurture and that’s repeated here in the New Testament by Paul.

Secondly, children are to be given, rather, a pedagogy of instruction they’re to know the law of God they’re to know the word of God from the earliest days. Now if you’ve been coming to this church for the last two years you have had an opportunity to get a real good handle on the book of Psalms, actually the five books that comprise the Psalms. You had a good opportunity to get a good handle on the book of Judges. You had an excellent opportunity to get a very good handle on Leviticus. And if your children are in my class this last two months, they’ve got a good grasp, somewhat of a good grasp of the Old and New Testament in a New Testament survey course. These opportunities have been presented before you. And you should know the basic thrust of the law of the covenant.

Exodus 21-23, a synopsis of God’s ten commandments. Now, whether you’ve had time to come to these classes or not, you know, that’s up to you. And there’s other things that are more profitable for you at certain times in your life than coming to these classes in the evening, Sunday morning, or whatever. But this church is doing its job by providing opportunities for you to know the word of God and to know it in a comprehensive sense and to grab a hold of a book of the Bible like the Psalms or Leviticus or Judges and say, “For the rest of my life, I know what that book’s about, and I can transmit that knowledge to my children and to my grandchildren, you know, taking it down to their age, their ability to conceive things.”

But see, if you came to these classes, then you, whichever one you came to, you got the ability to instruct your children in that, and you’re supposed to do that. Children are supposed to know the word of God from their earliest age. And this June, we’re going to start up again Sunday school classes. I’m looking at probably doing a New Testament survey course for 13 weeks. Maybe an overview of the gospels for another 13 weeks. I don’t know what I’m going to teach some book of the Bible this fall in the classes that I do for the kids. John is going to teach on the fruit of the spirit beginning the middle of this month.

There’ll be lots more opportunities this next year to know what this Bible’s all about. And parents, you have a real big obligation either through the use of the materials of the church or in some way to be systematically learning what that word of God is book by book, section by section, and transmitting that knowledge to your children. Children are supposed to be taught the law of God as Paul tells us here.

Third, Paul not only reasserts the law of God by citing it. You know, it’s the basic commandment children have to know, it’s the ten commandments and it’s the heart of them in terms of their demonstration of a person’s obedience and honoring God by honoring authority. So, when Paul begins the Christian nurture of children, he does so by means of the law. He doesn’t see a big law-grace distinction. He takes them back to the law.

The law is given to a saved people. Children are perceived by the apostle as saved people who are to be nurtured and nurtured by means of instruction in the law. And not just the law in terms of the commandment, but also the sanctions of the law because he quotes the rest of that fifth commandment which is to the end you might live long on the earth. And so the sanctions portions of the law that there’ll be chastisements if you break God’s law that bless things are ours in Christ, not to be attained through lawkeeping, but to be maintained as we keep God’s law and the power of the spirit.

He applies those sanctions portions. Now, the sanctions and the application of God’s sanctions to his law in time and space that some kids that Christian kids who honor their parents are going to have longer lifespans than children who don’t honor their parents. That’s a fact. God’s word says it’s true. And that means that the world will become Christianized over time. God’s application of sanctions of his law indicates an optimistic view long term of Christian history.

So Paul gives us a lot of detail here, a lot of truths. The sovereignty of God in putting your child in your home, the sovereignty of God in issuing his ethical requirements to you and promising that he’s going to back them up with sanctions.

Fourth, the command cites the law. That is the first law, the second section of the commandments, focusing on how to know if we’re honoring God. You know, you say you love God, hate your brother, you’re not a little mistaken. You’re not maybe a little confused. That’s not what John says, the apostle of love. He says, “If you say you love God and hate your brother, you are a liar.” Liar. Strong term. I don’t like my family to use the term liar. It assumes a lot of things and it’s a big bold statement that should be saved for a really, you know, really obvious intent to deceive. But that’s the term that John uses here.

If we don’t show by our evidencing of respect and honor for the referee at the basketball game or the coach of the team or the parent, if we don’t demonstrate it there, it’s because we’re not honoring God. Rasheed’s problem, I mean, I talk about him because he’s a public character. I don’t know the man, but the evidence seems to indicate that his problem is with God, not with the referee ultimately, nor with his coach. But God says, you know what your child is like in terms of honoring God because your child must demonstrate through his actions toward you whether he’s honoring his father in heaven.

Fifth, the law quoted puts the honoring of God and his authorities high on the list of the priorities. Remember we said that if you get around to Leviticus 19, the center of the law, the very first of the 70 commandments in there, the whole string of commandments under the holiness section, the first half of the book that begins with the need to revere, to worship, to bow down before your parents and to honor God’s Sabbaths. He ties those two together in one commandment. So, it’s the idea that at the top of the list now the most important commandment children hear is the need to honor their parents and as we said countenance tone and content of speech and countenance alone is demonstrated yesterday is bringing the sanctions of God.

Sixth, the law implies that parents are to act honorably. Talked about that the other end of Leviticus 19 parents are not to prostitute their children cause harlotry in the land a general statement but parents are to act honorably to their children a plain implication of the command.

And then finally, the command follows the typical Pauline form and addresses children first and then superiors. Servants first, then masters, wives first, then husbands. Why? Because we’re all children. We’re all servants of Jesus Christ. We’re all part of the bride of Christ. He addresses us as functionally inferiors in each of these commandments. And I think that’s why this pattern is given that particular way.

Let’s move now then to verse four in the second half of this section. And the first thing we note in verse four is that command in terms of the parents is given explicitly to the father not the mother. Now he’s just cited the fifth commandment by saying “honor your mother and father,” your father and mother rather. So it’s not as if the mothers are totally excluded but the point here is an important one that we at this church have heard a lot the last few months. You know, a lot of us at least having read Doug Wilson’s book The Federal Husband pointing out once more for us that husbands are the covenantal heads of the unit of the family and husbands have the ultimate responsibility.

It’s their job whatever happens in the context of the family to try to fix may not be your fault. I don’t know that but it is your job always in terms of your children. So the fathers are addressed here. The command goes to the father. He is the covenantal head of this relationship and you are the one dad that God will hold responsible for the sins that happen in the context of your home. Not in the sense of absolving the children of responsibility.

But just as pastors are going to have to give an account to God of their spiritual stewardship of the church of God, elders have to do that. So fathers are seen here as responsible before God for the conduct of their children.

This is a somewhat difficult thing. Remember we said that God gives these succinct commandments to correct our Adamic bent, our tendency in the fallen sense in our fallen flesh, our tendencies to sin. So children, their great tendency to sin is to be dishonorable toward God and dishonorable toward their parents. So God says, “Be honorable.” It seems like the first way that fathers tend to sin is simply not taking responsibility for the actions of the household. So the fact that God addresses fathers is because fathers particularly need to hear this because they’re going to be prone not to attend to the family.

And part of this is in a sense God-given. Men are given to exercise dominion over the earth. They face away from the home toward vocation properly. The way to biblical manhood is not to have men want to be able to just be completely able to let’s say inherit money, never work, and just take care of the family. That’s not the biblical pattern. The biblical pattern is that men, whether they get money or not, are to be exercising dominion and to lead that Christianization of the world and the flowering of the howling wilderness of the fall back to the garden, unto the new Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. Men are outward facing. Adam is given that task and he’s given a wife to assist him in that task. And I’m not saying that wives are only focused at home. But it seems like when we read in the epistles that women are to be keepers at home, it doesn’t mean they can’t work outside the home. But what it does mean is they have a focus on the home. Just as men face outward to vocation and yet are required to attend to their children and wives to nurture and guard them. So wives have an inward face to the home and yet they may well point outward as the Proverbs wife does by considering fields, buying them, trading with merchants, etc. It’s a matter of focus and stress. And the focus and the stress for the dad is outward.

And he’s going to have a tendency in Adam to now that he’s a Christian to want to exercise dominion so much in the workplace that he neglects the family. That’s our sinful tendency, I believe. And that’s why God corrects us here to say, “Fathers, attend to your homes. We’re going to feel more confident, many of us, out in the workplace than we do at home. We’re going to have an excuse. Adam will put on this godly excuse of exercising dominion to justify his sin of failing to attend to his home.

You see, you know, again, as Doug Wilson, that great expression, there’s ditches on both sides of the road. And the ditch on this side of the road is you’re so outward facing now in terms of understanding dominion in Christ, you fail and neglect to obey this explicit clear commandment that fathers are responsible for the nurture and admonition of their children. So, so fathers are addressed very significantly and dads, you know, I think that probably all of us to one degree or another sin in this way by neglecting our homes.

We need to right now as the word of God and the spirit of God brings conviction to you, repent in your hearts, verbalize repentance in your mind to God. And say, “When I go home tomorrow night from work, as I come in the door, I’m going to engage with my family. I’m not going to retreat. I’m not going to say it’s not my job. I’m going to engage. I’m going to do an analysis of what’s going on in my home. It may be a long time to correct some things, but I’m going to put our family on track. I’m going to grab a hold of this situation.”

I think that’s what God would have us do in relationship to this specific commandment. Now, you know, Timothy is given by Paul as an indication of the success of a young man who is basically nurtured by his mother and grandmother. So that’s significant because that tells us that even if fathers are worst case example, they’re not Christians at all, God will still, as he did in the case of Timothy, work through one godly parent to affect instruction and nurturing in the faith. And so wives have a part in this. I’m not trying to say the wives have no part, but it’s under the headship. It’s under the jurisdiction. It’s under the basic oversight of fathers.

Fathers, as I said yesterday or last week rather, in the word of God, the scriptures are inspired. They’re God inspired. They’re God’s breath upon you. And Jesus gets so close to you today. He breathes upon you and tells you, “Fathers, assume responsibility for your homes. Engage with your children. Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of me, the commanderin-chief, the supreme authority here and the one who is commanding you as a king under the great king to take charge of your household.”

Implications for mothers and children, yes, but fathers. Now, as I said, there’s implications for mothers because Paul has just said that children are to honor fathers and mothers. And now, in the flip side, he addresses fathers, but obviously in the context of that, the fathers are covenantally representing the mothers. So, mothers, I think, also have a requirement to understand what we’re going to say now is this basic command to parents but fathers have the primary responsibility.

And what does he say? He says you fathers and fathers he’s saying to you today you fathers engage. And what does he specifically tell you? Well he says do not provoke your children to wrath. Do not provoke your children to wrath.

This command implies, outline point two under B. The command implies that the father’s actions will normally in Adam lead to anger and discouragement for his children. Now, I say discouragement because the parallel passage in Colossians 3:21 says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.” Again, Paul preaches to our weakness, to our sinful tendencies.

So, I take from this first of all that if you provoke your children to anger and if you provoke your children to being disheartened, join the crowd because that’s what men do in Adam. That’s what Paul is bringing us away from. That’s what God is empowering us to leave behind. But don’t think, you know, that it’s unusual for you to do that with your children. It’s normal in Adam and the fall. At least I think that’s the implication of this command given to us.

So, join the crowd. But understand how central it is to putting off that kind of old man behavior. Ephesians 4, put off and to put on instead the Christian nurture of your children. It’s very important. It’s very common for us not to do this, but this is what we do. Remember Mark 9, you know, the disciples were prone to indifference toward the children and as a result not to really nurture them in the Christian faith. So, it’s normal.

First things first, admit this is who you are in Adam, men. Admit this is the sinful tendency of your heart. Admit that probably even this last week there may well have been instances in you men’s lives where you did provoke your children to unrighteous anger. Maybe the grace of God kept them from getting angry. But you know that your chastisement of them was out of line perhaps that you ignored them. That you failed to follow through on your word. That you did all kinds of things that might end up in your children becoming disheartened or wrathful, angry.

Now I want to spend some time on this particular point and talk a little bit about this in terms of getting a little more specific and personal in terms of some of the ways this tendency manifests itself and I want to start with one that is scripturally given in Romans 10:19 we read but I say did Israel not know first Moses says I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation I will move you to anger by a foolish nation now you know I want to say what I think might be true and I don’t know this but it seems that father in heaven uses on very rare occasions the idea of comparison provoking Israel to wrath or anger by means of bringing in the Gentiles by putting his love upon someone else other than Israel and it seems like father in heaven this is one of the ways that he fathers his children is to do this thing and it’s very much parallel to what fathers are commanded not to do here in Ephesians 6:4.

Now when it says don’t provoke your children to wrath, the word provoke is in the particular form that it means many times don’t perpetually don’t all the time provoke your children to wrath. Now we might be able to imply from that to the fact that God does this comparison on a rare occasion that maybe it’s okay for you to provoke your children to wrath by means of comparison, but it’s certainly not good to do that as a regular course of action.

And here we’re told explicitly that one of the results of setting your love upon another as opposed to your child or one child over another child in terms of partiality can be anger on behalf of Israel. It was God’s purpose, jealousy and anger for the comparison. So I think the scriptures tell us that one thing we should not do on a regular basis is to show partiality with our children or to compare our children and leave them behind and say, “Isn’t Johnny over in the other person’s household a good child as compared to you?” Powerful medicine.

I think that one of the biggest problems that I as a father at least and maybe some of you have is not remembering the impact of who we are to our family. You know, virtually every officer I know, particularly the elders, have said that once you become an elder, you’re not really prepared for the way people hear what you say. You sort of think of yourself as just, you know, not being an elder still, just a guy. You offer your opinions on stuff, but people are listening differently to you now because you have authority in the context of the church. Some people may hear you and be more threatened by what you say. Some people may give more weight to what you’re saying than what you really want to say. It changes.

And fathers, you know, it’s not easy to remember that you are the dad and your children hear you in that way. And you’re a big guy. There was a child abuse ad on the television a couple years ago and big father yelling and his child is just cowering at his feet and you know I don’t really like those ads much but I think that was an effective image of the effect of our of fathers upon their children when we raise our voice you know it’s heard by them 10 times louder because we’re the dad and they’re real little intimidate and our actions frequently have more power than we realize and when we make that kind of comparison we may just be intending to nudge the child a little toward correction.

But I think what the scriptures tell us is don’t do that very often. That’s powerful medicine. And if you do that, expect jealousy and anger to be the result. I mean, the scriptures seem to say explicitly that one way to provoke your children to anger is by comparison, by setting them aside and setting your love upon someone else. And so we should be very maybe don’t want to do it at all. I’m not sure here, but if you do this at all, you know, reserve it for only a few times in the lifespan of the child. Reserve it to really, you know, have the effect you want it to have. Understand that it has a tremendous sense of power and effect to them.

Now, that’s a scriptural the only scriptural example I could find that explicitly correlates to this verse. Most commentators as they look at this command to not provoke our children to anger say things such as Matthew Henry says. He says this though God has given you power, father, you must not abuse that power. Now, say remember this is to mothers too. Dads are covenantally covering parents here. And you know it’s not like mothers are supposed to be able to provoke the children to anger. They shouldn’t. So when you hear these commandments relative to not making them angry through too much severity, mothers, take it to heart for yourself, too. Okay?

Though God has given you mom and dad power, you must not abuse that power, remembering that your children are in a particular manner pieces of yourselves and therefore ought to be governed with great tenderness and love. Now, I’m going to set that on its head here in a couple of minutes, but just he starts there. Be not impatient with them. Use no unreasonable severities and lay no rigid injunctions upon them. When you caution them, when you counsel them, when you reprove them, do it in such a manner so as not to provoke them to wrath. In all such cases, deal prudently and wisely with them, endeavoring to convince their judgments and to work upon their reason.

Okay. Lenski says something very similar in his commentary on this passage. Lenski, the great Lutheran exegete, says that unjust, improper parental treatment angers the child so that it cannot honor the parent. A long list of parental faults may be made under Paul’s summary, including arbitrary, inconsistent, foolish, harsh, and cruel treatment. Parental authority is easily abused. The prevailing sin is Eli’s softness, careless indifference. The children rule and dishonor the parents. The parents obey. Turn the home upside down. The results must be accordingly.

So, you know, Lenski starts at the same place Matthew Henry starts. The obvious thing is don’t berate your children. Don’t demean them. Don’t kick them. Don’t discipline them in your own anger because that’s going to make them angry in response. And we don’t want to remove the truth of that statement. It is true. When your children, think back this last week. If your children either got angry or got disheartened or disheartened rather, a lost heart over a task in relationship to your correction of them, you should always ask yourself when that happens, have I contributed to this?

Scriptures tell me that’s going to be my natural bent. I’m going to discipline him properly and as a result, I’m going to make him angry and I’m going to make him disheartened. Now, it doesn’t always mean that the child is angry. It’s your fault. But it’s where you should start, I believe. You should say, “Did I exercise too great of severity to them? Did I teach them all law and no love?” God’s law is put in the context of his love for us.

I mean, God foreknows us, predestinates us, calls us, then justifies us, and begins to sanctify us by giving us his law in the context of that foreknowledge and to no means to love. So God’s eternal love from time past, before time began, is the basis for his law. And your child should have the understanding of your love for them and your law should come in the context of that love and as an extension of it.

So parents should always evaluate themselves. Have I used too much severity in the context of my children? And so that’s important to us. But Lenski’s last point that Eli was not a question of too much severity. Eli loses everything. The whole nation becomes Ichabod. The glory of God departs because he fails to manifest God’s honor through his honor being required of his boys. He doesn’t discipline them enough. He doesn’t even use words admonish them according to the text.

And so the third way we can provoke our children to anger and the first two have been one comparison partiality two undue severity. The third way I think that we can provoke our children to anger I think that Eli’s sons were probably angry sons is to coddle them. To coddle them. Sentimentalism toward our children. You have to be careful with what Matthew Henry just said. Well, remember their little pieces of you. Well, I think we remember that as dads at least all too well. I think that in Adam, men tend to love their children more than their wives. I think that because the children reflect themselves. Man’s big problem is self-love. You know, we have a movement today. You got to love yourself. Well, it’s true that it’s difficult to remember that we’re justified by faith and that God’s love is placed upon us.

It’s difficult to remember that and remember that we’re adopted as sons and we must needs work at that. But I think that’s a little different from trying to generate self-love. The Bible assumes in this same book in Ephesians 5 that all men love their own flesh, protect it, and nurture it. And the Bible says that man, that’s man’s problem. He loves himself and he doesn’t love God. Self love. That’s why people become homosexuals. That’s why incest of the type of the gladiator movie, that’s why it goes on, I think.

If you didn’t see that movie, they portray this Commodus, this one of the Caesars in Rome as being a bad guy. What they don’t tell you, by the way, is that he had a harem of 300 boys and 300 women. He was like some of our modern-day rock artists, bisexual. He wasn’t, you know, all pent up and as a result only had his sister to kind of lust after. He was a degenerate in many ways. Also Marcus Aurelius his father in the movie if you see the movie many of people are seeing it portrays him as a nice philosopher type. He was a stoic and he was reasonable but he also persecuted Christians severely for their failure to honor the God of reason represented by him. So he was a great persecutor of Christians. But in any event, why does this happen with various Roman emperors, people are given all power and authority and become godlike. Sometimes they engage in this incest at least thoughts.

Why? Because they love themselves. But you know, God has made it so you can’t reproduce by yourself. You want to create more of you. You want to be God. And so you want to make more people like you. Why does Leviticus 18 go out of its way to prohibit all kinds of sexual relations? Why does it do that? Because fallen man is prone to want to imitate himself, reproduce himself, and thus marry in the context of bloodlines. The kings of Europe, they did this explicitly an attempt to keep the royal blood going, and God cursed it with genetic difficulties.

Leviticus 18 isn’t about sex. Leviticus 18 is about children because in the context of all these prohibited sexual relationships is the prohibition of Moloch worship giving our children to the state. See, the whole point of Leviticus 18 is that God seeks a holy seed. And the way he seeks a holy seed is by having you not turn to sister or cousin or close family or a man who’s like you, but to go outside of yourself to someone from a completely different family to seek a holy seed for God. To have your Adamic fallen nature cut off, to not reproduce yourself in autonomy.

I believe that man’s problem with coddling his children, this is the source because their children look more like them are more like them than their wives, right? I mean, your wife is a covenantal bond. Well, you know, it seems like as you get older, you start to look like each other. I don’t know. But you know, genetically, your children come forth half from you. So, I think that one problem we have with our kids is an over sentimentality toward them because we love ourselves so much. We demonstrate that by our love for our children. You know, men try to live out their dreams through their children. Why? Because they’re not seeing them as separate from them. They’re trying to make them into their own image. They’re trying to play God. And that can either produce a harshness with the kids as they can’t meet up or it can produce an over sentimentality.

You let your kids do things you know you shouldn’t do, but they’re the children. They kind of represent you in an unbounded unfettered way. You see, so coddling children, the end result of coddling has a great amount of anxiety for the child because certainly by the time they leave home, nobody else is going to treat him that way. Nobody’s going to coddle him in that fashion. R.J. Rushdoony, he talks about his early days on the mission field in an Indian reservation and how the Indians that he was in the context of, and I don’t think you want to generalize this, but the particular tribe he was with had a very sentimental view of children. Never wanted them to have to cry. Always held them, always coddled them as they were children. And Rushdoony and he saw these children growing up very frustrated as they go into adulthood and the world doesn’t coddle them anymore. And that’s one reason why at this particular reservation, they turn to drunkenness to blot out that anger and pain. And they’ve been raised up. They were provoked to anger by parents who refused to lay down the law and refused to include the sanctions portion of the law in their discipline of them.

Coddling children produces an inability on the part of the child to deal with the corrections that God will certainly bring along if you fail dramatically in your rearing of these children. Our children are little versions of us. And so we tend to coddle them. We fail to provide a law or we give them a law and then let them break the law and don’t apply sanctions. This can be laziness on the part of the father or it can be the idea that you want really to live being able to break laws and not suffer consequences so you fulfill that Adamic dream through your children.

Now I know this goes on. I’ve observed it in some of you. I’ve observed it in myself. The scriptures tell us that self-love is a real problem for us. And the scriptures explicitly as I said in Leviticus 18 drive us away from that kind of behavior. Now Leviticus 20 see you should know the Pentateuch. Middle book is the book of law. Leviticus middle of Leviticus is chapter 19. 70 laws, but those middle section is the laws about food, laws about holy seed, laws encapsulated in chapter 19 and chapter 20.

My children better know this Tuesday. It’s part of our test. Chapter 20 is Leviticus 18 with sanctions. God lays down law and then he applies blessing and cursing in the context of that law. And in those laws, he reminds us to move away from ourselves. I believe this is the root of homosexuality. It’s self-love. And it’s a self-love that men, all men have in Adam, a failure to appreciate, to reach out toward the other. And coupled with that is a rejection of the other of God. It’s a claim to be God ourselves. And I think the scriptures are clear that this is a way that men have a tendency to do. And so they must correct this. We must provide our children law. And we must provide our children a law with sanctions. There’s no law. There’s no implied threat. And we must follow through with those sanctions that we state to our children as well.

I was glad to hear in the Rasheed Wallace case that the referee had clearly told Rashid three times if you keep looking at me that way you’re going to go home. See, he makes the law clear. The law is don’t look at me. The sanction is I’m going to throw you out of the game. And then the third thing he does is he throws him out of the game. That’s the pattern for us dads. Let’s be referees this week. Making clear to our children the law with sanctions and then enforcing those sanctions as they disobey.

Don’t coddle them from this stuff. Don’t love them in a in a selfish way of yourself, but rather love them in a biblical way to raise them to be godly children. Proverbs 25:28 says that whoever has no rule over his own spirit is like a city broken down and a city without walls. If you are raised in a coddled way, you end up having no ability to control yourself. And the scriptures say you’re like an exposed city.

Now, a city is supposed to have walls to protect it from invasion. And if you’re a man who can’t control your temper, you end up tossed from the game. You end up where the city of the trailblazers doesn’t have the walls up because you don’t have control. At least one of your guys don’t. And as a result, they can get in there and beat you. You’re a you’re a city without walls.

Here’s an illustration for Dave H. the Godfather. I like so, I’ve used this illustration for years with my with my boys. Sonny Corleone, right, in the Godfather movies, he is known to be a hothead who can’t control his temper. Loves his sister in a selfish kind of a way probably. And whenever something happens to her, he goes up and beats up her husband or whoever it was that did anything to her. He’s got no control. And the mafia knows this.

I mean, the opposition is part of the mafia. The other families know this. And the way they kill Sonny Corleone is to lure him out of the compound by his sister being beaten up by her husband as I remember the story. Something like that. He then, you know, because he has no control, jumps in the car, starts driving over there, and they hit him at the bridge at the toll gate. So, you see, it’s very easy to take a guy out if you can control him because he doesn’t have control. You can pull, you know, you can what is it?, you can pull his chain. There you go. Or you can rattle that chain in front of the dog. And here he comes every time. That’s Sonny Corleone. That’s Rasheed Wallace. That’s our children in Adam. And we’re to train them away from that by providing boundaries, laws with sanctions to them.

Proverbs 16:32, “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty. He who rules his spirit than he who takes the city.” That’s the two sides of the coin. You produce self-control with your children by loving them correctly. They’re not prone to anger or disheartened when the least problem happens. Instead, they control their spirit and as a result you’re better than having a walled city. You are a man who’s going to win in the context of God’s providence.

Another way we lead our children to discouragement and anger is rather is to ignore them. To ignore them. Remember we said that this was the sin of Mark 9. Mark 9 contrasts those demons that attack children or compares rather to the disciples who ignore children. So, they’re incipient demons in ignoring children. And Jesus tells them, “Receive these children. Nurture them up in the Christian faith.” Same thing Paul tells the fathers here. And he says that, you know, you think it’s not important. You think it’s a small matter, but it is a great matter. And if you cause one of these kids to stumble through your negligence, then it’s better than you’re going to be thrown into that fire that the demons were trying to throw the children into. The demons can’t do it. God can do it. And he says that if we neglect our children through indifference through thinking it’s not important, all that’s important is what goes on at the office. And if my children don’t grow up Christian, that’s relatively unimportant to my dominion task.

God says, “Think again. I’m going to throw your person in the fire. I’m going to bring judgment and curse to you if you think your children are not important enough to spend time with and work with.” Now, it’s interesting, remember that it’s in that context in Mark 9 that Jesus says better to cut off your hand, cut off your foot, or pluck out your eye than to go into hell.

Right? Okay. Look at Deuteronomy 6:7-9. This is the longest section. We’ll move quickly through the latter points in case you’re getting worried. Okay. Deuteronomy 6:7-9. And you know, we all know this passage. All the homeschoolers know this passage. It’s a great Shema here. O Israel, Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, as our savior says.

Verse 7, you shall teach these things, the law of God, diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your homes, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. So wherever your foot goes, you should be