11-13-25 Study of Ephesians Chapter 6:1-4 Divine Design For Family

➡ The Bible study group has been discussing the roles of family members as outlined in the book of Ephesians. The group has explored the roles of wives, children, and husbands, and is now wrapping up the topic. The speaker emphasizes the importance of following biblical advice over secular advice when it comes to family matters. The speaker also warns about societal pressures that label traditional family roles as toxic and encourages the group to stay strong in their biblical beliefs.
➡ The text discusses the importance of ending societal bondage and returning to traditional family values. It emphasizes the need to prioritize children’s well-being and resist societal pressures that may harm them, such as overmedication. The text also criticizes the education system for potentially exposing children to harmful influences. It concludes by urging parents to raise their children according to religious principles, viewing them as gifts from God to be stewarded responsibly.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of teaching children obedience and respect towards their parents, as per religious teachings. It suggests that children should be taught these values when they are old enough to understand responsibility. The text also highlights the need for parents to respect their elderly parents’ decisions, unless they are mentally incapable. It concludes by stating that disobedience and lack of respect can lead to negative consequences, as per historical religious teachings.
➡ This text emphasizes the importance of parents guiding their children’s growth in four areas: mental, physical, social, and spiritual. Parents should create a nurturing environment and teach their children to understand and respect rules, both human and divine. The text warns against hindering a child’s development through distractions or harmful practices. It also stresses the need for parents to model good behavior, listen to their children, and teach them to obey, as this is pleasing to God and beneficial for society.
➡ Parents should teach their children the difference between right and wrong, based on God’s teachings. This helps children understand the concept of absolute rightness, which is important for making good decisions. If parents don’t teach their children the right way, they should not expect obedience and respect. Discipline, according to the Bible, is a necessary part of raising children who understand and honor their parents and God’s commandments.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of discipline in raising children, suggesting that it helps them associate misbehavior with consequences. It also warns against provoking children to anger, as this can lead to resentment and rebellion. The text encourages parents to lead with love, care, and discipline, and to teach their children about faith and righteousness from an early age. It also warns against setting unrealistic expectations or comparing children to each other, as this can lead to feelings of inadequacy and bitterness.
➡ The text emphasizes the importance of teaching children to fear God and speak the truth. It suggests that children who understand and respect the truth are less likely to commit evil acts. The text also encourages parents to love, laugh, listen, pray, praise, pay attention, and preach more to their children. This, it argues, will not only bring joy to the parents but also honor to the Lord.

Okay, we’re at our Thursday night Bible study, and we’re into the book of Ephesians. We’ve broken into chapter six. Coming to the home stretch, we’ll spend several more weeks in, in this chapter, but hopefully by the end of February, we’ll be done with Ephesians and going back into Revelation. But I’m, I’m still playing with that because we’ve not gone far enough in Acts at that point in time to do what I think God’s telling us to do. So we’re going to play with some things when we get, when we get to that point and see where we’re at.

But tonight we’re going to sort of wrap up this looking at family. Okay, so what we’ve done over the last five, six weeks is look at the very, very components of the family. We start out with the Walmart or the wife, then we went to the children, and then we’ve spent two weeks looking at the man’s or the husband’s role in the family. And I’m not going to try to rehash everything that we’ve gone over for those six weeks, but I am going to try to bring this down into a conclusion. If I, if I did this right, I would spend 10, 10 to 14 weeks in this.

Okay. If I, if I wanted to actually do it in the detail that we need to do it. But you guys are doing adequate study and, you know, Tuesday night allows for a lot of Q and A to come up about this stuff. So what I’m going to do is I’m just going to try to put a bow on this. And we’re, we’re going to look at what God has put in to process as the design of the family. Now, we already know basically what that is. It’s, it’s a husband and it’s a wife and children.

That’s pretty much taking a simple view at it. But what we want to do is we want to look at the, we want to look at the Bible and see what it says about bringing this together in the complete role of the family. Now, when we talk about the divine design for the family, it’s really summed up in four verses, the same four verses we’ve gone over in the last six weeks. Okay? It speaks to the children in the first three verses and it speaks to the parents in verse number four. So that is really it.

That’s the design of the family. Now the question is, is what do you, how do you interpret that? And what are the rules that you put in play to have God’s design for the family actually be a successful family that you operate in. That’s. That’s really the question. So in, in the first three verse we’re just going to review, it says, children, obey your parents in the Lord for that. It, for this is right. Honor your father and mother for this is the first commandment with a promise. And the promise is that if you do that, then you will live long on this earth.

Promise. Okay? If you don’t do that, your life is short. So that’s really the key component there in that verse. And then it goes on that says, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So if, if we look at this at, in a minimalist type approach to the family, that pretty much covers it right there. There are plenty of places that you can go and get bad advice about the family. What he talked about that I would say, stay out of psychology, stay out of psychiatric groups, because they have no biblical advice.

They only provide you what they’ve been taught in school and where. You know what that, what a disaster that’s at. So this is the foundation of all God’s design for the family directed at children and at the parents. Now, I’m not saying you don’t need counseling, okay, don’t get, don’t get me wrong. It’s where you get your counseling that is the, the position that you need to focus on if you think you need help, if you think you need advice, if you think, you know, you need a support group for whatever you’re dealing with, whether it be your own children, whether you’re dealing with an elderly parent, still the child, but they turn into the child and, but the rules of the game are still in play.

Or if you’re raising grandchildren or whatnot. There’s, there’s points that, that you may need some advice and you need to seek some point that provides biblical advice, not secular advice is all I’m trying to say. So I’m not going to belabor these points because we all know that the family is being assaulted in society today. You see, you hear. Matter of fact, I got sick of listening to it on the, on the boob tube today while I was, while I was working and I just turned it off because it’s, it’s. Now everything’s cutting out. It’s all raising its ugly head and, and transparency.

And it’s, it’s enough to make you sick to know that we’ve lived through this so Men are being assaulted by the culture and have been for a long time. So the father of the home is being assaulted due to the nature of, of the morality that the father sets for the home. And we’ve actually are being recast. If we’re, if we’re having a biblical home, we’re being recast in society as toxic. That’s what we’re, that’s what we are. We’re. They’re. The society has labeled us and they put us on a collision course with this world. And it is a destructive pattern if we do not stay the path.

All right? That is where you get into situations that cause all kinds of, of issues to, to be put into your family life, your marriage and, and your children, if you waiver at all, okay, you’re to drive men, you’re to drive your family as a general, okay? Not as a doormat for your wife and not destructive to your child. But in this day and in this climate, you need to be a general. You need to have all of the feature sets that an army general would have. You need to have all of your strategies laid out.

You need to think ahead of the game. You need to design the patterns by which you’re going to operate in. You need to know what I call my go, go to bag. I need to know what it is that I’m going to do before it ever happens. Because in today’s world, you don’t have enough time to sit back and do what we used to do in being able to talk and rational, rationalize with our children or even in the family, because we’re into a society that’s instantaneous and our, our mode of operandi is, even though it’s, it’s got to be biblically sound, needs to approach what we’re being faced with in the same manner.

So we mean, you can’t fight evilness in today’s. With F entry tools. You’re going to have to fight it in today’s tools. And you need to have those tools available to you. That’s your, that’s your go to box. Okay? So, and women are, are the same thing. Women have become abuse targets of this toxic patriarchy by being focused to stay home and have children and never find their real fulfillment. They have dulled down the role of the woman to get their, the love for life instead of their family. They have put the woman into a situation that if she doesn’t have personal freedom, literally to do whatever she wants, when she wants it the way she wants it, outside of the construct of the divine structure that God’s put in place, then the woman is abused for not thinking for herself, okay? And that’s the world we live in.

So women need to be fulfilled. That’s, that is what the programming in. Beginning in our generation, those, the baby boomers beginning, beginning in our generation when they begin to change the culture and the school system, they programmed us to be where we’re at today. And if we don’t understand that programming and begin to, to discuss it in a manner by which it’s not a personal destructive communication, it is just an open communication about how we want to run our home, how do we want to raise our kids, how are we going to fulfill God’s divine order for our, our home.

All of those things need to be in place for the culture to not create a deception on what they think you want to do. So, so in, in understanding that, then we need to understand what society’s done is society has put marriage in bondage. That’s really what, that’s really what they’ve done in both cases from the man or the woman or the child. But they have, they have programmed us to think that the home is slavery. It’s a mindset, okay? And if you cannot pursue your individuality, your, your self freedom, then basically you’ve been trained to think that you’re in bondage.

You, you’re being controlled in a manner by which is, the society is, is made it so toxic that they tell you that’s wrong. So, so in, in looking at this, we, we need, we need to come to the point where, where this form of bondage needs to be ended. All right? Needs to be ended if, if we’re going to take back this world, which is what we’re looking at in the book of acts and what is on mainstream media now about pulling out and understanding the fact that we have been a slave in, in the world’s government for so long that we have to get back to the, the, the nuclear family in order to save us and then save the culture that we live in.

So, so it’s got to end. And, and we got to have the method by which we can move through our, and do it in such a way that we don’t put on the world stigma as being encumbered to another person. Okay? The only person that you need to be encumbered to is God. All right? If you fit that mold, then it doesn’t matter what society does to you. It is when you walk this fence or this fine line and okay, my family, I, I Think I got a pretty good handle on it. But it’s not all, it’s not all focused on the divine order that God really put in place.

There’s things in the family that, that we allow to, to happen because we don’t want to deal with confrontation. That’s really the key. So this leads to singleness, by the way. And singleness is a sexual freedom and personal freedom, both for the male and the female. And of course, the children are the ones that get the brunt of this because they become the victims of this self freedom. And when that happens, then the home is completely distorted from God’s design. So let me sort of back up a moment. Children have the right to live if they’re not going to be a bother to you.

That’s a mindset that society has given us in the family today. They’re not going to intrude on your freedom, otherwise you can kill them in the womb. That’s what’s going on. That is exactly why Planned Parenthood came to be. Even after they’re born, if they irritate you, well, you can medicate them. Think about all the things that society does today. Okay? They might be a little hyper, they’re getting on your nerves, so you take them to the doctor and they give them a pill. All right? So this is a horrendous thing to get our arms around and looking at all of the conditions associated with, with the home.

Because at the heart of this, parents are walking a fine line against children. Abuse that could be a criminal act, abuse against each other. And, but we’re in such a hurry to get through it that we tend to not make the proper decisions. That’s the reason why I said, guys, you need to, you need to act as a general on a battlefield with your game plan already in place. That’s, that’s a critical thought for the men. You know, medications are coming out quite frequently. Matter of fact, that’s, that’s the reason why RFK and them have taken such a transparent view at providing us with information on medications, even the basis of Tylenol, okay.

In order so that you can have the knowledge base to make good decisions. But see, early on, the decisions you make as parents towards your children can have a catastrophic long term response if you do not act responsibly. Okay? And that goes with understanding the role of grandparenting to your children and grandchildren as well. So we all know this. We’ve talked about this for the last six weeks. We, we know what the Bible gives us. Here is the formula for raising our children. We know what’s wrong with the culture. We understand that, and we know how perverse it is to the degree that the medical profession, who are supposed to be the people that protect us from death or harm, basically are medicating our children into disastrous futures as well, in some cases mutilating them all with the auspices of your approval one way or the other, okay? Regardless of whether or not you are in line to understand what’s going on with your child, in fact, you are in line in going on with the child, even in a school system that doesn’t provide you with the upfront notifications.

Why? Because you have put your children in that environment. So when you look at it that says, oh, my hands are not. My hands are washed clean because they’re in a system. No, your hands are not because you put them in the system. Okay? So any way you go about this, parents, you’re still responsible for whatever happens to those kids. So we need to now look at how we are going to manage this process. And you, you, you have to manage the process by understanding what the process is. Okay? So when you look at education system in whole and you’re saying, I’m, I’m allowing a third party to teach my children life, okay, they don’t get it from you because they don’t have enough time with you in the course of a day.

There’s no way that that can happen. So the education system is perverting our children. They’re exposing as young as three year olds now to drag queens. They’re reading them books even though they can’t read. They’re reading them books associated with transgenderism and it’s in your face, okay? So if you’re going to raise your children in the respect and discipline and instruction of the Lord, you got to take them out of the system. Because there’s two systems, right? This is what we’re studying. There’s two systems. There’s a world system and God system. And not only it’s, it’s the system, it’s how you govern within that system.

So if you do not come to the understanding that your sole responsibility is to your child, once you have children in a home, while you’re there for each other, what’s more important is those children. So we have to get back to the word of God and get our sights set on how God views this relationship between parents and the children. And if you go to Ezekiel 16, it’s pretty clear. Israel, remember, we, we learn our history from looking at history. It Repeats itself. We’re doing exactly what Ezekiel 16 did then today. All right, the Israelites were sacrificing their children to Molech.

They were being offered to Molech as human sacrifices. And what did God talk to Ezekiel, true Ezekiel, to Israel about? He says, these are my children. These are my children. And in Psalms 127 it says, Children are a gift from the Lord. We talked about that in, in the last two weeks. Children are a gift from the Lord. And in Mark 10 Jesus says, Permit the children to come unto me, for as such is the kingdom of heaven. What? What did I say? Those children are conceived and grown in, in the womb of their mother in a conditional state called heaven.

And when they’re born, they come into death. That birth canal does several things. Number one, it puts the veil over their eyes and it gets them ready to die. So we have to start at the beginning. We got to know what we’re dealing with here. Our children belong to the Lord. And you’re given, we’re given as parents the responsibility to steward them. Different mindset. We steward them for him because they’re his gifts. You get a time to rent them and that rental period is so that you can return them to him. You get an 18 year rental agreement with God.

And after the end of some period of time, okay, if you looked at history, Jewish children got married somewhere between 12 and 14 years old. All right, Some, some later. But on the average, a Jewish family would marry their children as soon as they reach the age of puberty and were able to have children. Why? Because that was the nature of the game. God wanted to build a nation and he wanted to grow that nation in accordance to what he, what he put in place. And that was to replicate. See, that’s the reason why you want to raise your child in the nature or in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Because they belong to him, they don’t belong to you. Now think about that in a self assessment. We treat our children in a lot of ways as a stepping stool, when in reality you need to consider them sitting at the right hand of God the Father. A total different mindset. Now, in order to successfully carry out this responsibility of raising our children, there are two duties here. One’s on the part of the child, which is in verses 1, 2 and 3 of Ephesians 6, and the other part is on the parents, which is in verse four.

Now, as I said, so much can be said about this, but I’m just going to go at a high level here. Bring it. Put this bow on it with some selective emphasis so that you can continue your studying on this subject as you need. So if we look at verse one, the duty of the Ch. Of the children. This must be at a point in time when we’re old enough to understand obedience. You can’t do this right out of the, right out of the chute guys. But they have to have, they have to be at a point in time in life to be able to take responsibility for acting in an obedient way and acting in honor of their parents.

Okay, now that goes back to another scripture because they’re underneath God’s protection until what the age of what accountability to know what right and wrong. So now what you see is the. Is God. God works in the protection of the child until they get to the time period in their life of accountability. And that’s really as the parents point of reference of saying now they understand right and wrong and now they understand responsibility of behavior. So you see these parents who shake children in their crib. Why? Because they’re crying. You see these. I’ve seen, I’ve seen all kinds of things throughout my life.

Cigarette burns, children that are drop kicked on the floor. I’ve seen a lot of things in my life. And it as a parent, if they do not understand what you’re telling them, then there’s no way they’re going to change their behavior. So you need to und you need to work with your children in a manner by which you will understand when that shift occurs. And if you’re not dealing with your children, you’ll never know when that shift occurred. And this passage is not talking about infants. Matter of fact, it is a Greek word, T T tna, which is the Greek word for infants.

That’s not used here. Okay. This is the word of just generally offspring, children. It has reference to anyone from small children through young people before they start their own adult life at the time of understanding obedience and responsibility. That’s what the Greek word that Paul uses is identifying that time, that period of a child’s life when this takes hold of. But they’re still under the care of their parents and say it’s an all inclusive thing. You get the good and the bad. You get the good and the bad of them. You get the good and bad of you.

And the majority of the good and bad of you going to determine the good and bad of your children. So they have two commands. The things that you need to teach them are two commands. One, to obey your parents and the Lord. They need to understand why they need to obey their parents because they’re not the parents children, they’re God’s children and that’s who owns them. And if you’re going to raise them to be adults in the Lord, then they need to understand why they need to obey the parents. And see, that’s sort of where the issue becomes.

Because we never sit down and have that conversation with our children. I’m making a bold statement here. Some have done it, but the majority never sat down and had that discussion with their children at a young age for them to understand why they needed to obey their parents. In verse two, it says, honor your father and your mother. Now, this goes both ways. This is not a conditional statement that once you get 20 years old, you don’t have to do that anymore. Okay? Because Scripture says we’re all children of the Lord, right? And if we’re children of the Lord, then this, this goes into effect no matter how old you are.

And it goes in effect to your elderly parents that you’re struggling with and how to take care of them, you still need to do it in a manner by which you honor them. That means that if they’re of a sound mind and they have the ability to make their decisions, you should not make their decisions for them. All right, if they have conditions of medical issues that they need support, but they’re still of a sound mind and they don’t want support, don’t give it to them. You’re to honor your father and mother in a condition by which you step in and take over what you need to take over as their mind begins to generate.

Why? Because it’s their mind that’s going to kill them, not their physical condition. If it was, then you would have paralygics that live long lifestyle, long lifetimes because they’re able to deal with that because of their mind. Those go together guys. Obedience is an action and honor is an attitude. Oh, you’re still to be obedient to your aged parents, right? And if they say no, you need to respect that. Now, we’re going to talk more about that as we get into this a little bit deeper. But in, in general form, we never come out of the state of not being a child.

I want you to really concentrate on that long time. But when we come back to basic civilization, we are to instruct our children to be obedient. That is the condition of the stewardship that God put parents in place to raise his children. The fifth commandment is to obey the parents. Exodus 20, verse 12. But I don’t know if you recall this at all. Disobedience to parents was basically a prescription for execution history. Scripture hasn’t changed, guys. Does the command says, obey and honor your parents to live a long life? Well, if you’re not going to do that, you’re not going to live long.

As my grandmother said. I said, I brought you in this world, I take you out. Well, that’s exactly what God can do in a heartbeat. A heartbeat. You’re just one step. A heartbeat from not being there. This is. This goes on in Exodus 21, 15, and 17. It’s also in Leviticus, verse 9. The death penalty was prescribed for rebellious children. And that’s pretty much where rebellious children today are going to end up. Somewhere in the condition of society facing death. That’s exactly the normal outcome of a rebellious child. There does. There’s a devastation to our society when this occurs.

So the law of God was severe in history to ensure that child rebellion did not exist because the death penalty came with it. And the parents told them, see, and we don’t tell our children that. Basically, the reason why you can live long is because you’re obedient and you honor your father and your mother. That was. That’s the command. Now, the fact that children are to be commanded is Old Testament to start with. Okay? But let’s go back to the book of Proverbs, and we talked about this on two. I’m just going to rattle off some of these again to bring your mindset back to this.

Chapter one, verse eight. Hear, my son, your father’s instructions. Do not forsake your mother’s teaching. That’s a command. That’s not a conditional statement for a child. Basically it says, listen to your father and your mother. That’s the interpretation of that scripture. Chapter two, my sons, verse one. If you will receive my words and treasure my commandments within you, make your ear attentive to wisdom, incline your heart to understanding. Oh, okay, so this is another commandment. You will only have understanding and wisdom if you do what? Receive my words and treasure my commandments within you. You ever wonder why you don’t know Anything serious? Chapter 4.

Hero Sons the instructions of a father and give attention that you may gain understanding, for I give you sound teaching. Do not abandon my instruction. Oh, he. What he’s saying is, I go through the father to give you instruction. And if the child does not understand how that works, they’ll never understand why they need to listen to you. And then down in verse four, let your heart hold fast my words Keep my commandments and live. Okay? Live. This is the parental duty for your child. And chapter five, my son, again, verse one. Give attention to my wisdom.

Incline your ear to my understanding. Chapter 7 Again, verse 1, My son, keep my words and treasure my commandments within you. It’s over and over and over again. How and if they spend so much time restating the same commandment over and over and over, don’t you think you ought to pay attention to it? Now, this is. This is a challenging reality for us. Now, do you find this same challenge in Luke chapter two? No difference. Just difference in time as it’s related to Our Lord. Luke 2, verse 52 says, Concerning Jesus, he kept increasing in wisdom and statue and in favor with God and man.

Why? Because he listened to what God told him. Now, without sin, perfectly righteous as a man, nonetheless, he needed to increase in wisdom. Okay, think about this. He comes in as 100% man, 100% God in his spirit, okay? Sinless. But he acted in man. See, he had to equate his life like our life, so he had to act like man. He had to go through his life just like we go through our life. And he had to be sinless. See, that’s the only difference. So when you look at him and you look at him as to the nature of how he needed to live his life just.

Just like you, no different. So therefore, he had to continue to increase in wisdom in order to finish the prototype of a sinless life. If not, we wouldn’t be able to go home. So he needed to increase in the favor with God and to increase in favor with man. Oh, honor your father and mother. Be obedient to his father and mother. He had a father and mother, right? He needed to work in man’s rules in scripture as God. Now, if he does that, and then he says that of him, how important is it of us to make sure that our children understand why we do things and more importantly, why you should move in that direction to ensure your children understand why you do things.

So there’s four categories in which children develop, okay? Wisdom is mental. Stature is physical. Favor with man is social, and favor with God is spiritual. Now, our children are not perfect. We’re not perfect, and our children are not righteous. They didn’t come out that way, right? They came out as little demons. We already know that. Ephesians 2. They are not sinless like Jesus Christ was. So we have to take on this reprobate mind that showed up diagnosed as a baby. If he just took. And we have to understand what we’re dealing with, they have to grow mentally, they have to grow physically.

They’ve got to grow socially. And more importantly, they got to grow spiritually. All of that growth is not on some third party that you put your child in school. You are to do that. We teach them how to think, we teach them how to work. We teach them how to relate to people. Don’t bite them, okay? You can’t go. Just go up and bite them because you want to take a bite out of somebody, you know? And we teach them how to relate to God. And we make a place for them in the world. See, you create the environment by which they’re going to become.

You understand that the environment that you create when, when that child hits the ground and running is the environment that you created for them. They only tap into their personality and they, they take that personality and they put that personality to task in the environment that you created. If you don’t like how they’re operating, what do you need to do? Change the environment. Now, we place them in this world, in this instruction, with it being our responsibility. Guys, now I’m going to emphasize that again. The last thing you ever want to do is dull your child’s understanding or dull your child’s responses with medication.

Do not hinder their mind to think. Do not hinder their mind to what they think are dealing with in God’s, God’s universe. Remember, they’re not turned loose from God himself until they reach the age of what accountability. So when you negatively put them in a state as young children, knowing that they had not reached that mind of accountability, you’ve just what, working against God. What did I say? There’s two people that know quantum physics. One is an adult trained and the other one is a mind of a child. They know more than what we will ever know as adults.

We program them to our state of mind. Instead of allowing them to grow in their state of the mind that God’s given them. See, if you tranquilize your child, regardless of how you do it, it might not be with pills. It might be sitting in front of the television. Oh, go to your room, play your games, you know, just leave me alone type scenario. See, that type of response as a parent to a child absolutely accomplishes nothing. It provides no mental growth. Think about it. It’s no physical development, no social skills at all. You’ve isolated them.

And they’re not getting any spirit to development at all. Because you’re not teaching them why they need to do certain things. See, that is the challenge of parenting right there. And it’s being set aside for whatever you choose to do, use for medicating that child’s response in whatever way you choose to do it. And as I said earlier, your decisions to do that ought to be a criminal act that should be completely disallowed of your parenting skills, along with other horrific things that you put in their minds, like transgenderism, puberty blockers, surgeries. Anything else that you choose to allow your children to have access to, that’s your fault.

You have the sole responsibility to provide the environment for the child to. So when they get to the age of accountability, you’ve already set in motion the platform that, that they’re going to operate in. Do you either choose a sinful way, a way of this world, or you choose a spiritual way? Let’s say, if you don’t know either, then how in the world are you going to know what to do? And guys, if you’re not into this sanctification process that we’ve talked about so much over and over, you’re not going to know. This is just words in a p.

In a scripture, a verse that says, this is my commandments. But see the details of how you do that’s in the sanctification process. Foreign. It’s not reading scripture verses fun, because you. You need to study to show yourself. Approved to be a parent for a child. Chapter 30 of Proverbs, verse 11. It says this. There is a kind of man who curses his father and doesn’t bless his mother. Verse 17. The eye that mocks a father and scorns a mother. The ravens of the valley will pick it out. I’m going to interpret this for you in just a moment.

And the young eagles will eat it. Now that’s a very graphic language speaking of a rebellious child, a child who mocks his parents, but the world eats them up. You have the responsibility to teach your children to be obedient. That’s Also in Colossians 3:20. Obedient because it’s pleasing to the Lord. That is what parenting is. That’s what being a child is. It’s not developing their fashion sense. It’s not turning them into some kind of highly motivated scholar. It’s not making them into some kind of great athlete. We live to our children, by the way. It is.

It is to elevate them mentally, physically, socially, and spiritually by training them where the full faculties that you have. You can’t train them unless you have it. See, because you’re all these things, you’re mature physically, you’re mature mentally. That could be debated in some of you. You’re mature spiritually, and you’re mature physically. So you’re the road model, you’re the example. You got to get it, you got to understand it. And your job is to pass that on to your children. And it starts by teaching them to. Obviously, the word in the Greek by definition means acoustic.

It starts with listening. Teach your children to listen and to submit to what you said. It’s a present imperative. But you can’t teach them to listen if you don’t listen to them. And you got to do this over and over and over and over to the point that sometimes, like I said to my youngest daughter, quit asking me why. All right, I’m. I give you the same answer different ways because I don’t think you’ve understand me. And she starts laughing at me. No, I just want you to continue to tell me, see? So you need to just do it over and over and over again and see.

Obey your parents all the time in everything. Self assessment Guys, put yourself in the situation, dealing with your older parents and think what makes you go off the rail? And understand that going off the rail is not an adult thing. You learned that as a child. See, you as the parent, are the mom. You’re the example. You get it. You. You got to understand it. And your job is to pass that on to your children. And it starts with teaching them to obey. And they can’t obey unless they’re listening. So it says, obey your parents all the time in everything.

And then it adds this little thing in the Lord. In other words, because this is what pleases the Lord. The same thing is said about submitting to the government in first Peter 2:13. Guys, everything that you teach your child in the four categories of raising your children is exactly how every governmental authority structure in the Bible works. When they become disobedient to you, think about society today and how they changed us. When they become disobedient to you, they become disobedient to society. They become disobedient to any authority foreign. These are Colossians is talking about being slaves.

Serve your masters in the Lord. In other words, God gives you your work. Be satisfied with what God gave you, or ask him. Ask him for a change. It screws your mental attitude up by you being frustrated about it. See, this is because all of this is God’s design for the most productive life. If the outcome you seek is the best productive life that you can live, then the only way you’re going to get it is. Is follow the principles of Scripture. And you got to do it without any caveats. Well, you might ask why. Well, Scripture tells you because for this is right.

It’s to glorify God. Everything you do say, I can. I. I just want to stop here a moment. Your children need to know what’s right. And how are they going to know what’s right if you don’t know what’s. See, that’s the best answer. And I finally got around to my youngest daughter about this. As she grew up and as we were able to talk more and more, that’s the best answer you can give your child. When your child asks, why do I have to do that? Or why do I have to do this? Why don’t I get to do this? Because it’s the difference between right and wrong.

And that should be enough. If you’re teaching them what’s right, they will understand right and wrong. If you’re not teaching them what’s right, they’ll never understand right and wrong from you. See, what you’re doing is showing them that in the world in which they live, they’re absolutes. You don’t need to give philosophical defense of any behavior you require if it’s consistent with the word of God. And having your children obey is consistent with what scriptures have to say. I was talking, I. I said about my young daughter. You know, to some degree sometimes I said, because I’m in charge.

I got fed up with her asking why, Because I’m the one that’s going to make this decision. I’m in charge. So that’s why sometimes I said, because it’s right. And all you need to know is what’s right. You don’t need to know why decisions are wrong so that you get to the decisions of understanding how to make right decisions. Because what I was dealing with was the conditions of understanding absolutes. If I was going to have my children understand that there is an absolute right answer in our house, then they needed to understand the rules of absolution.

So over a course of years, as, as she grew and as we got past this young age of continually wanting to know why. And I think she just did that because she knew it. Got my goat. Okay, I. We got to the point where the, the kids understood absolute rightness. And the word right, by the way, is the word for righteousness. See, that speaks of God in Christ and the righteousness imputed to us in salvation. You cannot get to the end game unless you go through sanctification so what you want to teach them and what you want to do is what God says, because it’s right.

Say, we need to take our own lesson here. Now let me give you an illustration using Nehemiah. Nehemiah, chapter 9, verse 13. I was reading this as I was looking at all of this stuff going together in the building of these courses. It’s not in the context of parenting, but it’s an interesting statement that he makes. This is a bit of rehearsal of Egypt’s, Israel’s exodus from Egypt and coming to Mount Sinai. That’s, that’s the context of what Nehemiah is talking about. And in verse 13 he says this. Then you came down on Mount Sinai. This is looking to God’s appearance on Mount Sinai to give the law.

And you spoke. He’s talking about Moses. And you spoke with them, Moses. To the people from heaven, you gave them just ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments. And you laid down for them commandments, statues and lies that were all good, they were all true, they were all just. And why did you do that? Because God said to do it. That’s what Moses did in trying in moving the nation of Israel to a righteous nation under God. Psalms 119:75 says, Your judgments are righteous. Hosea, chapter 14, verse 9. Your commandments, your judgments are righteous. They’re righteous because they come from you.

So children are to obey righteous commandments from God passed on through their parents. Now I need to ask yourself, is there ever a time when you don’t do that? You need to think about that self assessment. Is there ever a time that you just build that criteria onto something that says, oh, I don’t need to do it this time. Well, Jesus talks about this. Luke 14. If you don’t hate your father and mother, you can’t be my disciple. At what point do you hate your father and mother? When your father and mother forbid you to come to Christ.

That’s the same thing about obeying the laws of the land. When the laws of the land are different from God’s law, he says, disobey them. Same thing with a parent. If your parents don’t teach the children the righteous way and basically teach them to go from Jesus Christ, then you need to run from them. See, putting in time of this period and you got to go Back to the 430 years of silent years between Malachi and Matthew. The children of Israel were for be forbidden to believe in Jesus Christ. They were. They were what focused on pagan idols.

They were worshiping idols. They. They were even asked to curse Christ. They were. They were asked to break all kinds of rules and whatever. In Matthew 10, if you don’t love me more than your father or mother, you can’t be my disciple. Your first love has to be Jesus Christ. Why? Because you’re his. You got that from understanding that you’re his children from birth. Do you think just because you’re an adult, you’re not his? So the assumption then is that children are to obey their parents in the Lord because their parents are in the Lord. Say you don’t obey your parents who are defying the commandments of Scripture.

So what is a child’s responsibility? Think about this. The child’s responsibility is to only obey and honor their parents that are passing down the Lord’s commands. So if you are not being honored and obeyed, are you living the Lord’s commands and passing them down to your children? First tip. Honor your father and your mother. That is the attitude that corresponds to the active obedience of responsibility. It’s not reluctant, it’s not rebellious, it’s not unwilling. It’s with honor. It actually can be used to mean awe or respect in the Greek language. Is the Greek word. It’s used in John 5:23 of honoring God and honoring Christ.

So this is how you obey with honor. This means the attitude and the action. The attitude is followed by the action. And the Apostle Paul says this. This is the first commandment with a promise. This is the fifth of the ten Commandments. But is the first one with a promise because it’s unique. It’s the first one in the human relationship section. The first four commandments have to do with relationship to God. The last six commandments have to do with your relationship to each other. And the first of those human relationship commandments has a promise. And what’s the promise? We got it in verse three.

So that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. That’s quoted right out of Ex Exodus 20, verse 12. The Ten Commandments that Moses brought down on Mount Sina. Foreign. It’s not natural, guys. Children are born reprobates. They’re born rebellious. They’re born with a fallen nature. They have to be taught obedience and honor. And go back to Proverbs for a moment and I’ll give you some insight as to how you develop that. Proverbs 3:11 says, My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe his reproof, for whom the Lord loves He.

He reproves even as the Father corrects the Son in whom he delights. How you get this is by discipline. You can’t reason with your children. It requires discipline for your child to revert to the right attitude that will lead to the correct action. And those of you who raised your children without any discipline most likely are living a life of hell right now. So there you see? Discipline and reproof. That’s part of the training in Proverbs, chapter 10, verse 13. A rod is for the back of him who lacks understanding. Corporal punishment is a process in the Scripture to discipline your child in order for them to gain the understanding and wisdom in the process of obeying and honoring the father and mother.

Chapter 19, verse 18. Discipline your own son while there is hope and do not desire his death. See, parents, you have a choice. You either send him to the gallows or you discipline them in the Lord’s word. That’s your choice. That’s called discipline your son or desire his death. Whichever one you want to go for is what you’re going to lay as the outcome that they’re going to live in. See, if you don’t discipline your son, he’s headed for disaster and death. So do they have the choice? Yeah, but you make that choice for them in setting the stage in how they’re going to live their life.

So you need to ask a question. Do you want your children dead or just. Do you want your grandchildren dead or disciplined? Chapter 22, verse 15. Foolish. This is bound up in the heart of a child. Some of that action is cute and some is not. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s cute or not. It’s foolish. See, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod of discipline will remove it from him. That’s a promise, guys. They need to associate pain with misbehavior, and that pain is not going to stand in the corner.

Chapter 23, verse 13. Do not hold back discipline from the child. What do you mean by that, you may ask? Although you strike him with the rod, he will not die. But if you don’t strike him, he surely will die. Say, striking him with a rod rescues his soul from hell. Chapter 29, a couple of verses 15 and 17. The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother. As I said, if you didn’t discipline your child, you’re probably living in hell right now for what’s going on in your life.

Correct your son and he’ll give you comfort you will also delight your soul. So what do you do? How do you train your child to obey and honor? With discipline. So when Christ does that with you, how do you feel? Do you accept his discipline in order to prune you to what? Have honor and obedience to him? Think about it. You’re to give thanks for both good and bad things in your life. Are you doing that? Can you do that? Now, if you know this, bring your child. You don’t want to medicate a child because you never, ever get to the issue of being able to correct them, even in the worst moments.

So, parents, what’s your job? Do not provoke your child to be anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. You right there tells you this is the duty of the parents. It’s essential to raise a child with the truth, truth and discipline, so that the promise of a blessed life may become a reality. Truth and discipline, so that the sins of the fathers aren’t passed on to corrupt the subsequent generation. Generational curses, guys, this comes down to your decisions, and your decisions will create those generational curses. And see, the Scripture gives us two approaches, one positive and one negative.

And I’ll give you the first is negative. But that looks at the word fathers. That’s pator in the Greek, and it can be fathers as it’s translated, but it also can mean parents. And the same exact word is used in Hebrews 11:23. So when I talk about this, I’m talking about parents. And when I look at this, in what the negative side, I’m looking at the parents of Moses. How do you like that for a history lesson? Moses parents. So I think we can embrace parents in this way. Parents in the negative, do not provoke your children to anger.

Don’t make your children mad. Don’t make them angry. That is abuse. That’s really a terrible thing to do to a child, make the child angry. Now, I, I, when I think, when I thought about this, I said, what are, what are the amount of angry children that were there in biblical times? Well, I just, I just went as far back as Roman law. Fathers had the absolute right of life and death over his children. He could sell them into slavery. He could do whatever he wanted to do at whatever age he wanted to do it. And that told me right there that he could put them in chains and make them slaves.

He could take the law into his own hands and punish them any which way he wanted, and he would not be held accountable or responsible even if he killed the child. So when I looked at this, I’m saying, oh my gosh, there are more angry children in biblical history. That tells us why we’ve got angry ch children in today. It’s all the same. There’s no difference. See, think about this. When a child was born in Roman, in the Roman world, we talked about this. I’m just going to bring this up, but because I want. I’m going to make an analogy to today.

The child was placed at the feet of the father. If the father stood to lift the child, it meant he acknowledged that he wished the child to be, to live. If he turned and walked away, the child was killed. I want you to think about that today. If you do not interact with your children today, you’ve just given their death sentence. Unwanted children, regardless of the age, were left in the Roman forum to become slaves or prostitutes. What is going on today, guys? No different. And it amazes me. It amazes me what we do and what we think, how we think.

So there are four factors that I think go into parenting and I think you can understand it this way. The father’s leading and discipline. The mother’s love and care. The father and mother’s very demonstrable affection for each other and the closeness of the family. Father’s leading and discipline. Mothers love and caring parents loving each other. So the child sees how interaction of the home needs to be, which produces immense security for the child and the closeness of the family. In other words, don’t let the family fragment. So don’t provoke the children to anger. That should be obvious.

Be there for them and be there a lot for them, knowing that in today’s society there’s an awful lot of very angry children running around this world. And they’re angry with their parents, they’re angry with their culture, they’re angry at everything. And it goes back to parenting. They would not be angry if you didn’t teach them anger. Now you can make angry by overprotection, by fencing them in, by confining them to just themselves, by distrusting them, never allowing them any type of freedom. So what you have built is a relationship in the family of bondage and slavery.

And that creates an irritation because they can’t expand. Your job is to allow that mind to go wherever God wants that mind to go. Now you can do that with favoritism. Why don’t you act like your other brother or like your sister does? You compare them to each other because you like what one does and what the other one doesn’t do. And immediately you’re driving a Wedge in a family. Now you can also put on them so much pressure to exceed at what you want them to do that it becomes unrealistic expectations. And I think this is really huge.

We live our lives through our children of that which we didn’t accomplish. See, you’re crushing them under the weight of your own pride and ambition because you want to see, receive recognition from the world as a great child you have that excels in music or sports or scholarship or whatever. You set so high standards that they never feel like they can ever attain it. And oh, by the way, your helicopter parents, you drive it. Not only do you set it, you drive it. And it that turns into deep bitterness and feelings of fire and rejection. One of the biggest things that I had to deal with with my oldest daughter is the fact that she’s a perfectionist.

And I said, you know, I didn’t, I wasn’t a helicopter parent by any stretch of the magic. She was just a perfectionist. And we had, over time, had to break that down. So you can cause your child to be angry by discouragement, negative reinforcement, no thanks, no rewards, no approval, no honor. You, it, it destroys their entire motivation. You want to break the will of a child, break their motivation, or just the opposite, you give them such a high degree of expectation and you foster the helicopter parenting to drive it that they never can achieve it.

It’s whether or not it’s just another way of breaking their motivation. If they can never achieve anything, how in the world are they going to motivate and later in life to do anything? They can’t be good enough. I never attained it then. I can attain it now. See, we’re supposed to love with grace like God loves us. And I’m not going to go all the way through the neglects of how you get to your children. But see, that’s the challenge. There are so many ways that we can put our child in anger that I’m not sure that you’ve identified them.

But now let’s look on the positive side. Christ says if you bring him up to the discipline and instruction of the Lord, they’re going to live a long, prosperous, happy life. See, our goal is righteousness, what’s right and love, grace and obedience, faithfulness to God. And you start early. Paul said in Timothy 2, 3, 15, which he said to Timothy that from a childhood you learned the scriptures which are able to make you wise unto salvation. You’re to start before they’re born, if nothing more than training. You see, Timothy was in the ministry because his Mother and his grandmother had taught him the gospel from his childhood.

Teach your children the gospel. That’s the reason why. Who is God, who is Christ? What is sin? Teach them to. To understand repentance, to reject all dishonoring conditions. How to love, how to trust, how to out of love, how to trust even Lord Jesus Christ, how to follow his direction because he talks to them, even as a child, in faithful obedience. See, that’s the wisdom that comes from it. They come out with a reprobate mind. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. They’re little demons, and there’s no question about it. Ephesians 2 tells us that.

Let’s say your responsibility is to price it. Replace all of that with wisdom. 1. Teach your children to fear the Lord. And by that I don’t mean just to be afraid, although that’s a healthy fear that makes you respect the judgment of God. But Proverbs 9, 10 says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And the knowledge of the holy is understanding. They’re not going to be able to understand and gain wisdom if they don’t understand the premise of truth. Second thing, teach your child to speak with truth. I think one of the biggest issues that children face in understanding parents is the fact that the parents lie to each other and tell the children not to.

To tell the other parent what the truth is. You got to teach them to speak truth. And if they’re only going to speak truth. When you speak truth. See, Proverbs says, those who speak truth offer words that endure forever, are a fountain of life, a tree of life, like choice, silver soul, satisfying. They feed others. They bring healing. They. They bring deliverance because they are true. Kind, wise, honest, pure, soft, gentle, slow to anger. All the gifts of the spirit, guys. And you can only speak truth if you understand truth. But see, truth is not important in our day.

All generations, all generations must be taught to speak the truth. Psalms 58:3 says, the wicked are estranged from the womb. They go astray as soon as they are born speaking lies. That’s what they do. They’re little demonic liars. So you’re born liar in your child, and God hates lying. Now, if you’re a good liar, you’ll commit any crime. The gift of understanding how to lie is the gift to understand how to commit crimes. Because you can lie your way out of anything. You think. Say Scripture says that if you’ve been disciplined not to lie, there’s a restraint on you.

Scripture because you’re a truth speaker and a Lying. And lying is alien to that child. If you teach a child to speak the truth, God protects that child in that understanding. And it’s going to be hard for that child to admit doing evil and thereby the child is restrained from doing evil. See, they’ll only do evil if they can lie about. So you want a child who is so truthful that you know in an instant by looking at their face when they are telling you a lot. Why? Because it’s alienated to them. So teach your children to fear God.

Teach your children to love and speak truth. Be a true worshiper of God and a lover of truth, a fear of God and the love of truth. Parents, you teach that to your children and discipline that in the relationship of love, consistency, and example and children will be a joy and a delight not only to you, but to everybody else. So I hope this tonight provides some practical help. Not. It’s probably more about understanding parenting instead of looking at a lot of scripture as we typically do. But it’s all scriptural base. Now here’s. Here’s something I want to leave you with.

All of this is advice. But say, in order for all of this to work, you need to love your spouse more. You need to laugh with your children more. You need to listen to your children more. You need to pray a whole lot more to give you the wisdom and understanding of how to do it. You need to praise more, pay more attention and preach more by word and example. Teach. And in doing so, your children will bring you joy. And in doing so, even more than the joy they bring you, they’ll bring honor to the Lord.

See? And in doing so, they bring on unto you. All right, guys, we’ve wrapped. Put a bow on this. Comments, questions, experiences, anything you want to talk about. There’s a question in the chat. Okay. What the Stephen Hawking thing. Have expectations to be duplicates of. Of the parent. This is exactly what I live and my parents are 96 and 93. That’s cool. I don’t. So. So how does one honor parents who have expectations to be duplicates of the parent? That’s exactly what I live and my parents are 96 and 93. Well, we’ve just gone over how to honor your parents, and it’s good that you want to be just like your parents.

If they, if they gave you the foundational conditions of scripture in, in your life, that’s how. That’s who you want to be. That’s. That’s your example. Good. The question is, is when your parents don’t want to do that at an older age. And now you’re put into the situation of managing that. That’s the most challenging. You bet. Yeah. Hey Jim, you said that the birth canal puts the veil over the, over the baby’s eyes. So what happens in a C section? How does the veil go over the baby’s eyes in a C section. Okay. Another way of saying that as soon as, as their term, they change.

So however you want to do it. C section, birth canal. As soon as their head hits this worldly universe and veil is placed over their eyes and they begin to die. However you choose to look at it. Are there ever any cases of the veil not going over people’s eyes? There’s cases for you to remember some things of your past. The, the closer you get in sanctification and discipleship, the closer you get of understanding the conditions of your heavenly home. Go, go look at David. David, prime example of that. Okay. The more sanctified he got, the more relationship he had with Jesus Christ.

He became knowledgeable about things that were, were given to him in heaven that he. That he had knowledge of in this earth. So yeah, it can, you can, you can go back and things can be revealed to you. But. Okay. Thanks, dude. Anything else, guys? You sure? Yeah, that typically happens too. Doesn’t matter whether you have multiple, you know, spouses or, or siblings or not. If the support comes on to you to manage the parent and that’s your role, then that’s the role you’re going to choose to use. And it could go from one, one child to another over time too.

And my example is when I was in the corporate life and I was traveling all over the place, I left the, the manager of my parents health care to my youngest sister. Matter of fact, she had power of return. And then when my mother called and says, oh, I need you here because of situations that only you can provide. The. We had several problems with that, but we got through it and rules changed. Nothing else, guys. All right, let’s pray. Father, thank you for this evening. Thank you for the time to get together and, and, and wrapping a bow around this divine plan of the family.

May you ever give us the understanding and wisdom of exactly the roles that we should play, how we should play them, what we should be doing in whatever situations that present themselves to us, and that we only look for you for the truth. Wipe this world from our vernacular. Give us the words of wisdom, the fear of the Lord and the truth of scripture to combat the evil ways that’s presented to us in all kinds of facets with our children and between spouses, by the way. So, Father, we just give you all the glory and praise and look towards you for life’s benefits in all ways.

Thank you for your son. Thank you for the death of the cross, the resurrection, the prototype, the host body system, the ability to go home, all of it. The redemption, the transformation, all of it. We just want to give you all thanks and glory that’s just in your son’s name.
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