Truth For Life

Announcer (Male): I think it's safe to say none of us are perfect parents. Today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg addresses some of the most common mistakes well-meaning parents make. Find out what matters most in our parenting priorities and where we can turn for support and guidance. We're focusing on Paul’s warning to Christian fathers found in Colossians, chapter three.

Alistair Begg: Verse 21: “Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.” We've been learning, at least I hope we've been learning, how the instruction that is provided here and elsewhere in the Bible concerning the Christian home, how it benefits not only those who dwell within the Christian home, but it also benefits society, makes an impact on a culture when it becomes obvious to people who look on that Jesus is actually the King, that Jesus presides over the family life and in the home.

It's very challenging, isn't it, to put it in those terms? At least I find it so, to realize that it is our home life, our family life, set within the context of our church family life that is then to provide a significant advertisement for the Christian faith. And not least of all, in this express area concerning fatherhood. When we read the Bible, we read it in light of the "then," we read it in light of the "now." We do not live in Colossae; we live in Cleveland. I think we all recognize that. And we do not live in the first century; we live in the 21st century. We need to understand at least a little of what Paul was dealing with and then to apply that to what it means for us.

I'll say just briefly: in Roman civilization, it was a tough and a dangerous place for children because of the father's power, the *patria potestas*, as it was. It was absolute. The power of the father had complete control. He could make his children work in the fields in chains. He could punish them as he liked and as much as he chose. He was even capable and able by Roman law to sell his children into slavery. You say, I can understand why Paul would have written this. It's a grave concern, isn't it? Yes. And we come to it at a very different time and in a different place.

While, of course, we know what it is for fathers to be abusive towards their children and all that that means for children who are vulnerable in that context, I wonder if it wouldn't be fairer to say that children in our day are not so much endangered by the *patria potestas*, the father's power or by his aggression, but children in our day are endangered by the father's absence. Sheldon Thomas, a former gang member and the one who leads an organization called Gangsline, in addressing this, points to number one, bad parenting; number two, absent fathers; number three, bad role models as the key contributory factors in young men drifting into the gang culture.

Clearly, it is far more complex than that, but whatever else is involved, those things are almost inevitably there. Whether the context is first-century Roman culture or 21st-century American or Western culture, we need the light of the Word of God to shine into the darkness. And shine it does. Now, as I say, the text is straightforward, isn't it? “Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.” I think we can answer three simple questions: Who is being addressed? What is it that they are to avoid doing? And why is it so important?

First of all then, who is Paul addressing? You say, it's very obvious, isn't it? He's addressing fathers. Yes, but he is addressing specifically Christian fathers. Is the distinction important? Yes, it is very important. It is customary for God to be referred to as everyone's Father, right? We think of that, that God is Father by creation. It is true that God has a kind of fatherhood by creation.

Interestingly, when you read the Bible, the Bible does not generally use the term "Father" of God as Creator, but rather it reserves it for those who have become God's spiritual children through faith in God's Son. I want you to understand that. The general way in which "Father" is used in the Bible is not generically in terms of all people by creation, but specifically in relationship to God's self-revelation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It is only, the Bible tells us, as we come to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, as we come to believe in Him, as we come to receive Him, that we are given the right—the right—to become the children of God. It's very, very important that we understand that. You can look for it, and you will find it reinforced not only in the record of the Gospels but as we read the letters. For example, that is why Paul makes the point that we are justified by faith—justified by faith—through the Lord Jesus Christ. We're put right with God even though we know ourselves to be sinners.

When he writes later on in Romans, he points out the wonder of what has happened to us in that we have been adopted into God's family. As we believe, as we receive the Lord Jesus, we are then welcomed into a family by grace to which we do not belong by nature. Are you listening? I wouldn't be at all surprised if I'm speaking now to a father within earshot of me by whatever means—either as you look upon me or as you hear me through a box in your car. Here you are as a father, doing your best, aware of your failings, looking somewhere, everywhere, for ideas, for principles. You've even begun to come along to church in the hope that somehow or another there will be some religious pegs that you can lay hold of to help you.

But you have not yet come to trust through Jesus in God as your Father. To you I say, oh come to the Father through Jesus the Son. Who is he addressing? Paul is addressing Christian fathers within the church family concerning their role in the physical family. Secondly, what is it that these fathers mustn't do? You see it in the text before you: “Fathers, do not provoke your children.” Let's not get confused here; it's not that mothers are allowed to provoke their children and only fathers are not allowed to provoke them. That's not the point. We're in this together, aren't we, moms and dads? Of course, we are.

We're in this together as couples, but the directive is given specifically here to the father. Because of the special responsibility which falls to men in the Bible, both in the home and in the church. Here, of course, is one of the great divides in our day, isn't it? The whole place of the rise of feminism and everything that has come along with it over time, challenging at its very heart God's order—so apparently bright and enlightened and so on. And yet no, the Bible is very clear.

What are we not to do? We're not to provoke our children or to irritate them. The King James Version has: “Provoke not your children to anger.” In other words, dealing with them in such a way that their response is clearly not submission but is rejection. The point is fairly straightforward; namely, that the love and grace which our Heavenly Father has displayed in Jesus in dealing with us as earthly fathers—this is why it's so important we understand this distinction. He's not just addressing the idea of God Father as Creator; he's talking about redeemed men.

So that we know as fathers that the love that God has given us is an undeserved love, that the grace that He continues to provide for us is just beyond our ability to comprehend, that we are sustained by it and kept by it because we're wretched at heart, we're sinful at heart. We haven't been made righteous in Jesus; we've been set right before God in Jesus. We're sinful. Therefore, we recognize that since God has loved us in this way—here is love, herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. The point is straightforward: that if that is the way in which the Father has lavished His love upon us, that then is to be the hallmark of the treatment of our children.

Who is sufficient for these things? You see, this is Christian. This is the enabling of the Holy Spirit. This is not a long list of things you're supposed to do, try your best and see how many you can get out of ten. That's religion. No, no, no. Instead of crushing them with our dictates, we are to cultivate them by grace. I just made a list of ten things that are easily, at least in my understanding, a mechanism for provoking my children. I think all of us may find ourselves far too quickly on the wrong side of this track.

One straightforward is over-severity. Just the father as an ogre. “Wait till your father gets home!” Instead of their going, “Yeah, we can't wait!” they're like, “Oh no, oh no.” Secondly, inconsistency. That matters today, it doesn't matter tomorrow. It mattered an hour ago; it's important here, it's not important now. The children don't know where they are. Thirdly, constant fault-finding. “Why can't you?” “Why haven't you?” Constantly scolding our children. Fourthly, favoritism. Whether we make the favorites the boy next door, the girl up the street, the person that you saw at the school program, whatever. “Why couldn't you do something like that? Why do you just sit around in here all day? Why are you always there? What the thing?” Provoking our children.

Fifthly, belittling their achievements. Somebody said that the key to being a father is being able to say that soap on a rope is your favorite present of all time, right? Because that was the extent of it. “I did this. I made it myself. I attached the string.” And they see us as it's set aside, and we move on. Sixthly, and it follows from it, doesn't it? Failing to show appreciation for their attempts to please, for their kindnesses. Seventhly, by our neglect.

I don't think these statistics really amount to very much, but every so often someone will produce a piece that says, you know, the average American father spends X minutes with his children in a day or in a week. Don't let's confuse being in their company with actually spending time with them. Don't let's include sitting watching something as time spent. No, failure, neglect. Eighthly, expecting too much of them. Why do we do this? We're not that great ourselves. It's one thing to set goals for our children, but it's another thing to constantly be pushing the bar out and beyond them again and again to the point where they just don't know where to go.

Ninthly, restricting their freedom. Well yes, we have to protect them, but we mustn't over-protect them. And that actually would be the tenth one: over-protection. I think it's a feature, isn't it, apparently? It's complex, I recognize there are many factors involved in it, but it's not unusual to hear people say, “I used to get up in the morning in the summer days and I'd go out, get on my bicycle, I'd be gone all day, and I would come back and my mother was glad that I came back and, frankly, she was glad that I was gone.”

That was a different day. It was a different day. There's been an inevitable correction in relationship to the strangeness of the society in which we live and so on, so that desire for a framework that is secured is entirely legitimate and entirely understandable. But the over-protection of our children is harming them and will provoke many of them to anger. “Why can't I be free?” Unless we allow our children to learn the principle of reaping what they sow, they never learn it. “Do not leave your bicycle in the park unattended or without the lock.” Hey, who cares? You come back, “Mom, my bicycle is gone! I need you to buy me another bicycle!” “Don't you worry, honey, I'll get you a better bicycle this time. What a shame, what a naughty per—” No! No! I told you. You disobeyed me. There's an impact.

You want to talk entitlement? The Bible is so obviously clear. The command is so straightforward. The challenge is huge because it is all too easy to fall down on the wrong side, to either indulge and spoil our children or to humiliate and suppress the children. That's why actually, as we've said from the very beginning, we desperately need one another. The husband needs the wife, and there is a peculiar challenge in being a single parent. Some of you know that. That's why the Bible is saying, that the only way that we're going to be able to raise our children in a Christian ethos is when we understand that what's happening in our family is set within the context of the church family.

There are uncles and there are aunts and so on, and someone is an only child and maybe the lady is widowed now and the child is growing up alone like that. Well, where are the people that will come around and say, “I can invest my life in this, I can be a part of this”? Who is going to take on the challenge of mentoring in a culture that is increasingly filled with gangs? Well, don't do it; do the reverse. Sometimes the husband has to acknowledge that his wife's coercion, direction, encouragement is absolutely vital, and so we recognize that to be the case. Who is it that's being addressed? The fathers. What is it that they are not to do? Provoke their children to anger. Thirdly and finally, why is this important?

We're told: “lest they become discouraged.” If you come down too hard on them, you'll crush their spirits. If you over-correct them, they'll grow up feeling inferior and frustrated. By our provocations, we may actually cause them to be discouraged and just give up. The warning is clear; it's inherent in what is being said, albeit briefly: the danger of rules without love, of law without grace. Realizing that these things are to be understood and applied because it's what the Bible says. The culture doesn't really buy this at all. It never actually has, but in our day more so than ever.

I gave you ten, I'm going to give you six, and I'm not going to elaborate on them; I'm just going to make six statements concerning our children. In no particular order: number one, they're special. They're sinful. They're silly. They're selfish. They're sensitive. And they're souls. They're souls. The arrival of a child confronts us with an existence that is now commenced for eternity. For eternity. That's our great concern: their eternal well-being.

The Bible is our guide, as I say, and in this little series of studies, we have been confronted by the fact that our failure to believe this or to apply it, and to apply it in a timely way, in a Spirit-enabled way, in a grace-filled way—our failure to do so may actually find us losing out to the power of a rebel heart. The power of a rebel heart. We are by nature rebels—rebels against the authority of God, rebels against those whom God puts in authority over us, and so on.

I remembered in something that my old boss had written. He told the story there of Stephen Anderson, Captain Stephen Anderson. He was a military guy, and he retained that title even in his days back in civilian life. He was an evangelist with the Church of Scotland, and he worked very, very effectively among young people and teenagers in particular, and he was the leader in camps and so on. Derek recounts how on one occasion, Stephen Anderson had, in dealing with the leadership team that he had in the camp, sensed in one of the young ladies who was part of his leadership team a lack of peace and a lack of assurance. She just seemed somehow or another to be off-kilter.

He felt led to say to this girl, without knowing anything, he said he felt led to say to this girl, “Listen, your father, your earthly father, only really loved you as a success. But your Heavenly Father loves you for yourself.” The girl dissolves in tears, and she tells Stephen of how disappointed her father had been that she had been born a girl, that she had not entered into the family business. The unconditional love of our Heavenly Father flooded over her to bring her a new relief and an unutterable joy.

Some of us need to find peculiar hope in that kind of illustration. Fathers, let's not provoke our children lest they become discouraged. I say again, I think perhaps some of us need to settle this issue of knowing God in a personal, living way as Father, in embracing His love to us in Jesus, in accepting the provision that He has made for our own sinful, foolish hearts, and then resting upon the direction of the Bible and the enabling of the Holy Spirit to seek to do what we're called to do.

Announcer (Male): You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. Today's message wraps up our study titled *The Christian Family*. If you'd like to re-listen to or share any of this series with a friend or with those in your church, all of Alistair's teaching can be streamed for free using our mobile app or on our website at truthforlife.org. Alistair’s teaching through this complete five-message series is available for purchase on a USB at our cost of just $5. You can find the USB in our online store at truthforlife.org/store.

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