Mothers and Fathers

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Let me start by quoting a letter to Readers’ Digest:

Our teenage son, Robin, was notorious for keeping his bedroom in a dreadful state. Having nagged him for weeks, I finally wrote a note and left it on the floor of his room. It read: ‘Dear Robin, I wish I was clean and tidy like all the other rooms. Love, Bedroom.’

Next day, I looked into his room, and to my astonishment it was tidy, dusted and hoovered. And on the floor was a note. It read: ‘Dear bedroom, I hope you feel better now. Love Robin. P.S. You’re beginning to sound just like my mother.’

As one mother in our church family said, ‘I think God makes babies cute so you want to look after them; and he makes teenagers monsters so you want them to leave!’ And as someone else wrote, ‘It isn’t easy being a mother. If it were, fathers would do it.’

Well this is the first of a mini-series called ‘Christ-centred family living’ So would you turn in the Bibles to Ephesians 5, verse v21 – which says:

21Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. (5.21)

Now that is the ‘headline’ to the next section of this letter which we’re looking at in this mini-series. And it’s about relationships into which God has built a certain order, and where that order needs to be recognised and submitted to. And since it’s mothering Sunday, we’re jumping to the end of the section. So look on to chapter 6, verse 1:

1Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2“Honour 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.”4Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (vv1-4)

Next week we’ll focus on verses 1-3 – what the Lord wants to see in our children. But since that’s a response to the role of parents, we’re going to start this week by looking at that role in v4, which is addressed (inconveniently, for a preacher on mothering Sunday) to ‘Fathers’. Now elsewhere, that word translated ‘Fathers’ is used to refer to both parents (eg, in Hebrews 11.23). And it would be convenient on mothering Sunday to say that’s what Paul meant here. But I don’t think it is, because he could easily have used the same words for ‘father’ and ‘mother’ as in v1, but he didn’t. And I think there are two reasons for that.

One reason is that it’s the father’s responsibility to take the lead in the role described in v4. So it is the role of father and mother. But Christian fathers are responsible for taking the lead. (That’s part of what’s meant when the husband is called the ‘head’ in 5.23.) So, eg, if Tess and I fail to read the Bible with our children, the Lord holds me primarily to account.

But the other reason is that fathers need a particular corrective, which is, v4:

Fathers, do not exasperate your children… (v4)

One Dad heard I was going to preach on this and said to me, ‘My question is why there’s no verse saying, ‘Children, don’t exasperate your fathers.’’ But let’s not duck the issue! The issue here is with fathers who, I take it, are singled out because we men are more prone to anger, and to causing anger, than women – we’re more likely to be harsh or impatient or insensitive or unreasonable. That’s why war is a basically male activity.

So v4 is addressed primarily to fathers, but applies to both fathers and mothers, including those parenting on their own – who need our support as they seek to play this role solo.

So I’ve got two questions for our verse today: What is our role if we’re parents? And how can we get it wrong?


So, firstly, WHAT IS OUR ROLE IF WE’RE PARENTS?

Well, looking at the end of v4: it’s to

bring [our children] (v4)

There’s nothing like holding your newborn child to bring it home to you that, ultimately, they’re not yours – that they’re given. Which is why for many people the arrival of their first child, especially, is a time of openness to the God from whom this new life has come. So our starting point is that our children are ultimately God’s and given into our care. Which means the number one question in the life of a Christian parent must be, ‘What does God want for them?’

By contrast, our culture encourages us to ask the question, ‘What do we want for them?’ And standard answers include nice things, nice holidays, nice houses and so on. Well, it just so happens that we’re about to move into a very nice house. And I’m grateful for it – we need the space. But I don’t want my children to see me loving a house or a car or anything else in a way that teaches them to become crass materialists – because that’s not what God wants for them. He wants them to love him and to be content with having just what they need.

So what does God want for our children? Simply what he wants for all people – namely, that they come to know him through the Lord Jesus – that they grow up recognising his Lordship over their lives, as well as their sinfulness and need for the forgiveness for which he died. Now I’ve heard numbers of you musing about grown-up children who at present are not doing that, and asking, ‘What did we do wrong?’ To which two things need saying. One is: hands up all the parents here who are getting it all right. That non-show of hands reminds us that children come to know the Lord as much in spite of us as because of us, and that his grace is far bigger than our capacity to get in his way. The other thing to say is that we are not responsible for other people’s responses to the Lord. It’s hard to say that about family, perhaps hardest of all about children, but it’s true.

So, what God wants for our children is that they should come to know him. And therefore it’s important to say that those without children yet – or who remain without them for reasons only God knows – can nonetheless have spiritual children, can point others towards the Lord and nurture them in the Lord – including others’ children. So I’m a godfather and for a good while was a single godfather, able to visit regularly, able to join those families for parts of their holidays (one of the couples told me it was always like the cavalry arriving when they were flagging and the Indians were winning), and so on. And I’m already enormously grateful for the others in this church – in crèche and so on – who are sharing in the nurture of my children, who are spiritual mothers and fathers.

So, we’re to

bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (v4)

Training

So let’s think next about that word ‘training’. We have a very modern, western view of education where it’s often all about the classroom or lecture theatre. As one cynic put it, ‘It’s about the transfer of information from the teacher’s notes to the pupil’s notes, bypassing the brains of both.’ Whereas the Bible’s view of education is training – which includes the teaching of information, but is much, much more. Eg, my Dad was an outstanding squash player and trained me. He trained me by letting me watch him: ‘Look how I do this smash,’ he’d say – and then he’d do it. He trained me by then helping me do it.– setting up lob after lob for me to smash. And he trained me by affirmation or otherwise – either saying, ‘That’s it – you’re getting it,’ or burying his head in his hands and saying, ‘No. No. No.’ – a line which later came in handy as he was teaching me to drive.

And that’s the Bible’s picture of parenting: it’s life-to-life training. So our children need to watch us living for Christ – eg, they need to see me praying, see me inviting people to church, see me apologising to Tess, and so on. Which means the best thing you can do for your children (not to mention your husband or wife) is to nurture your relationship with the Lord – working at your Bible reading and prayer, working at learning from Sunday sermons and so on. Then our children need us to help them live for Christ – eg, they need not just to be told to go and apologise to a sibling, but helped to do it: ‘Look, this is what you need to say... Why don’t you go and talk to them now and then come back and tell me when you’ve done it?’ And they need our affirmation or otherwise – eg, they need us to underline the intrinsic reward of getting homework done – ‘That’s great, we can watch the rest of that DVD now’ – or to underline the intrinsic consequence of not getting it done – ‘That’s a shame. I’m afraid finishing that DVD is going to have to wait another night.’

But the crucial Bible verse on training – for all of us, not just our children – is Titus 2, v11. It says:

11For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It trains us [same word] to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age... (Titus 2.11-12)

So ultimately, only grace – only experience of God’s all-forgiving love through Jesus – will train us to want to live how God wants us to live. So the most important thing that I as a parent, and we as a church, can do for my children is to teach and model to them the gospel of grace. Because my prayer for them is not that they become more ‘moral’ – which they could do, while remaining total strangers to God. No, my prayer for them is that they come to know God. Now of course that involves teaching them God’s morality. But, eg, I don’t just want to teach them to forgive as a non-Christian parent might. I want to teach them to forgive in a way that’s rooted in the gospel of grace – to say, (along the lines of Ephesians 4.32), ‘Look, God wants us to forgive just like he’s forgiven us. After all, where would we be if he treated us like you’re treating your sister right now? That’s why I want you to accept her apology and make up.’

So back to Ephesians 6, v4 again:

bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. (v4)

Now the word translated ‘training’ was also used of discipline and punishment (eg, it appears in 1 Corinthians 11.32). And then ‘instruction’ is an odd translation, because that word is also a discipline word – elsewhere it’s translated ‘warning’ and is used of warning about the consequences of sinful behaviour (eg, in 1 Corinthians 10.11). So now let me mention two areas of discipline.

Discipline

The most obvious area of discipline is: responding to our children when they sin. Now like every aspect of parenting I’m touching on, the ‘how’ of that could fill a whole sermon. What v4 does is simply to remind us that we must discipline our children. And we need to hear that in a culture that’s deeply uncomfortable with discipline – even against it. And it goes without saying that we are against any form of discipline that’s harsh, uncontrolled and not fundamentally an exercise of love. But the main reason our culture is against it is the rejection of God and the resulting lack of confidence that there are any absolutes. That’s why some parents I know say, ‘I just don’t feel I can impose my view of right and wrong on my children.’ They still discipline them pragmatically – otherwise life would be intolerable and the kids would trash the place. But they’ve got no basis in principle for discipline.

Whereas believers have – because we have the privilege of having come to know God, through Jesus, through the Bible. And we know that he defines good and evil. And we know that the doing of good pleases him and brings blessing to people, while the doing of evil angers him and brings damage to people. And on that basis we discipline our children – not pragmatically – so they’re nicer to live with or less embarrassing in public or don’t trash the place; but with the prayer that through it, they’ll grow up to know that we live in a moral universe, accountable to God and in need of his grace. And how will they understand the heart of the gospel of grace – that Jesus died to take the punishment for our sins – if our discipline hasn’t taught them something of what sin and righteous punishment is?

The other area of discipline I’ll mention is: allowing our children to face hard things which will train them. And some of those hard things they will bring upon themselves. So, eg, there’s a time for supplying a structure of homework discipline for an undisciplined child. But there’s also a time for stepping back so that they experience the consequences of their indiscipline – like failing an exam or even failing to get their university offer grades. I may want to keep up the discipline structure out of parental pride, hoping my child will fulfil my academic hopes for them. But remember the number one question for a Christian parent: what does God want for them? The best academic results? Or that they learn about consequences and responsibility and become people who can discipline themselves?

But then other hard things won’t be brought upon themselves, but will be the result of living in a world that rejects Christ. And we do need to pray and look for wisdom about how and how soon our children are exposed to that world and its values – and that’s got implications for who we delegate their education to, in the form of choosing schools. But it’s a false goal to keep our children utterly shielded from the world, as if the Lord Jesus never said, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must... take up his cross’ (Mark 8.34) – ie, must face the pressure and rejection of a world that rejects him. And according to Hebrews 12 (see vv4-13), God the Father allows and uses that kind of pressure to train and strengthen our Christian character – and I take it he is the model parent with model methods.

My mention of schools prompts me to add something else. It’s that, in our culture, we do delegate large periods of the time of our children’s formation to others – and in addition, our work-patterns also militate against the time we spend with them in life-to-life training. And in light of that, can I say: we should value the role of full-time mothering, where circumstances allow that. And we should take to heart a comment made by my former boss, Mark Ashton. He once said to me, ‘I’ve talked to a lot of people on their deathbeds. All of them have said they wish they’d spent more time with their children. None of them has ever said they wish they’d spent more time at the office.’

So that’s the first question: what is our role if we’re parents? And the second question will have to be just a brief postscript:


Secondly, HOW CAN WE GET IT WRONG?

Now if you asked that of any honest parent here, their answer would be, ‘How long have you got?’ – which is why I reminded us earlier that God’s grace is far bigger than our capacity to get in his way. But v4 mentions this specific way that we – especially we fathers – can get it wrong:

4Fathers, do not exasperate your children… [literally, don’t provoke them to anger or resentment]

So the number one question from v4 is: what does God want for my children? But the secondary question from v4 is: what provokes them to anger or resentment – and how do I contribute to that in ways I can change?

And the reason I’ve taught the passage this way round is that falling short of the role we’ve seen will almost certainly provoke our children. Eg, seeing hypocrisy in us, rather than Christian example, will provoke them (and there’s no more unanswerable reply from our children to something we’ve picked them up on than, ‘Well, you do it!’) Inconsistency or unfairness in our discipline will provoke them. And seeking what we want for them rather than what God wants for them – trying to conform them to our expectations and agendas rather than the Lord’s – will provoke them. And one Christian writer says you can add to that at least the following list: ‘unreasonable demands, nagging and condemnation, insensitivity, humiliation, favouritism and failing to accept that they are who they are and not who we might wish them to be.’

So the obvious application is to guard ourselves against those things. But the ultimate application is to face the fact that we have got it wrong and that we will get it wrong and that one of the most important and powerful things we will ever do to our children is: to apologise to them – as often as we do get it wrong. Because not only is that the surest way of defusing anger and resentment and a clouded relationship with them. It’s also the surest way of modelling the two most vital abilities in life: the ability to admit sin; and the ability to seek forgiveness. And if we model those abilities, not only will it protect our children’s relationship with us; it will also lay the foundation of their relationship with Christ.


RECOMMENDED READING ON PARENTING
The Bible – the whole of it, on God’s parenting of his people; and Proverbs especially
Fatherhood: what it is and what it’s for, Tony Payne, Matthias Media
The new dare to discipline, James Dobson, Tyndale – a revised version of the classic by the head of Focus on the Family in the US (he’s also written other books on particular stages of parenthood)
Shepherding a child’s heart, Tedd Tripp, Shepherd Press – culturally a bit American, but (like Dobson) full of ‘thinking from Biblical first principles’ on parenthood

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