Gods Design For Parenting

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, discusses God’s design for parenting based on Ephesians 6:4 in the New Testament. He emphasizes that as God’s people, we are called to be unique and separate from the world, including in our family relationships. He stresses that children are gifts from God and parents have the responsibility to raise them according to God’s instructions. Paul contrasts this divine standard with the harsh parenting practices of ancient Rome, urging parents to follow God’s pattern to avoid heartache and to bring joy and blessings into their lives.
➡ Many children today face abuse, neglect, and even death at the hands of their parents, with millions ending up in foster care or being exploited. A large number of parents regret having children, viewing them as a nuisance. Despite this grim reality, the teachings of Paul encourage parents to raise their children with love, discipline, and instruction, emphasizing the role of both parents in a child’s upbringing. This message urges us to keep faith, stay strong, and continue to positively influence the world.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God Is Government, called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be God’s Design for Parenting. The key verse really here in the New Testament that it gives to us, God’s Design for Parenting is Ephesians 6, verse 4.

It simply says, And fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. It’s a tremendous statement in that verse. It, again with an economy of words, covers a vast field. Books, treatises, volumes have been written on parenting. God has reduced it to one statement. Do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This is God’s pattern for parenting. And as we begin, I want us to remember something. It’s very important at the very outset.

As God’s redeemed people, we are called to be unique. We are called to be different. We are called to be distinct. We are called to be separate from the world. In fact, the whole epistle of Ephesians points to the reality that we are not to live as the rest of the world lives. We live in light, not darkness. We live in wisdom, not foolishness. We walk in the Spirit, not the flesh. And we are unique then, because we have the knowledge of God, we have the Word of God, we have the Spirit of God, and God has called us to live in unique and distinctive ways.

In fact, that extends even to our relationships in the family. We don’t conduct relationships in the family the way unregenerate people do, the way the world does. We have a completely different plan and pattern. In Leviticus chapter 18, when God established the standard of behavior for Israel, he pointed out this reality of uniqueness. This is what he said. You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes.

You are to perform my judgments and keep my statutes, and to live in accord with them. In other words, you’re different. You don’t do the way the world does. You don’t conduct your lives or your relationships the way the world does. Later in that same 18th chapter of Leviticus, God further says, Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. Thus you are to keep my charge or my command, that you do not practice any of the abominable customs which have been practiced before you so as not to defile yourself with them.

I am the Lord your God. A call to be different. A call to distinctiveness. And God has maintained this desire for his people through all time. We are separate. The standards, the principles, the statutes, the commandments by which we conduct our lives before God in the family and before the world are unique. We are separate. We are to have an undefiled uniqueness. We are to follow principles which are not in any sense assisted by human wisdom, nor are they refined or defined by human wisdom. We are not to succumb to the pressure of the world.

We are not to listen to the world’s diagnoses of what might be wrong with people or marriages or families. We are to turn to the word of God. We are to live distinctively. And God is not saying anything different today. He’s still saying, do it my way. And as far as the parenting role is concerned, that too is summed up magnificently in that verse I just read. And herein lies God’s pattern. It doesn’t sound anything like modern psychology. It doesn’t sound like the things that we have been told about childhood education, about how to raise a child.

It doesn’t sound anything like what the world is currently saying. And it shouldn’t because it is divine. We’ve already found out that the pattern for husbands is completely distinct from the world. The pattern for wives completely distinct from the world. The pattern for children in response to their parents is distinct. And so is that for parents in regard to their children. This is not the message of secular psychology. This is not the message of conventional wisdom. This is not the message of political correctness. This is the word of God. And the place we have to begin is with the recognition that all children come from God.

God gives them to us and then has given us the manual on how to raise them. Genesis 4-1, and she conceived, that is Eve, and bore Cain and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. At the very outset, Eve knew who was the source of her children. She went right past Adam to God. In Genesis 4-25, the same chapter, later on she bore a son and called his name Seth. For God, she said, has appointed me another seed. Children, says the Old Testament, are an heritage from the Lord. They are gifts from God.

They are given to be to the praise of his glory and to be a blessing to us. But how often do children become a heartache and a heartbreak? Because God’s pattern for parents is not properly followed. As we look at the divine standard then, we are looking at our responsibility. And we’re looking at the path to joy and blessing in the lives of the children and in our own lives as well. Clearly, the instruction here in verse 4 is given to parents. In fact, the word fathers is occasionally in the New Testament translated parents.

We cannot exclude the mother at this particular point. We must include her as she comes under the leadership of her husband. The instruction is given to the parents because they have the responsibility, the rule, the lead, the oversight, to bring their children to the place where they will honour God. Now, the standard that is established here is not only unique in our society, but it was unique in Paul’s as well. For example, just to illustrate what was going on in the world in which the Apostle Paul wrote this, there was a Roman law called patria patestas, literally means the father’s power.

And under patria patestas, a Roman father had absolute power over his family. As I pointed out this morning, the view of leadership in the Gentile world was one of dominant dictatorship, and that worked in the family as well. For example, a father could sell his children as slaves, a father could make them work in the fields in chains if he wanted. And there are illustrations of this in ancient literature. He could take the law into his own hands to punish his children, and he could even, by Roman law, execute his own children.

For as long as the father lived, there was no age limit. There was no limit to the extent of his control. In fact, when a child was born, it was not uncommon for that child to be placed before its father’s feet. And if the father stooped to lift the child, it meant he acknowledged the child and it could live. If he turned and walked away, the child was thrown out on the street to die or be picked up and raised as a prostitute or a slave. A letter from Hilarion to his wife, Alice, from Wun’s BC, found in ancient sources, says this, Hilarion to Alice, his wife, heartiest greetings.

Now guys, you really don’t want to start a letter to your wife like that, but he did. Know that we are still even now in Alexandria, he writes, being away. Do not worry if when all others return, I remain in Alexandria. I beg and beseech you to take care of the little child, and as soon as we receive wages, apparently he was a soldier, I will send them to you. If, good luck to you, you have a child, if it is a boy, let it live. If it is a girl, throw it out. That is documented from ancient times.

Unwanted children were commonly left in the forum in Rome. They were collected at night by people who would then nourish them to make slaves and stock the prostitute houses of Rome with them. Seneca, the well-known Roman orator, said, We slaughter a fierce ox. We strangle a mad dog. We plunge the knife into the sickliest cattle. Children who are born weak and deformed, we drown. So Paul was writing to a world where children were abused and children were murdered, just like our world, where they are slaughtered largely before they can ever come out of the womb by the millions through abortion.

But one and a half million children, at least annually, probably a lot more than that, who are allowed to be born, are consequently beaten, burned and abused by their parents to the degree that they have to be removed from their families, over a million and a half of them a year. Two hundred, pardon me, two thousand of such die, killed by their parents through burning, drowning, being thrown out windows, off bridges, killed with knives, hammers, razor blades, you name it. Our world today is not a lot different than that ancient world.

Time magazine reported in one survey that 70% of parents, if they had to do it all over again, would have no children. Too much of a nuisance. Somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 children a year are used for pornography. A third of all children born wind up in foster homes because they’re unwanted. Millions are left at home alone to be raised by the television while their mothers go to work. The Chancellor of New York City’s one million student school district said, quote, society has turned against children, hostility toward children in ancient times and even in modern times.

Against that background of ancient Roman society and the background in which we live today, we hear the words of Paul. And fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Again, pata, the term fathers, is normally used for the male head of the family, but sometimes used to speak of parents. It is so translated, for example, in Hebrews 1123. It says, by faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents. And certainly the mother is involved with the father and we can extend it here to include her.

Proverbs four, three shows this dual role. It says, I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. Proverbs one eight, hear the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother. Both parents are involved under the headship of the husband in the bringing up of the child. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of God’s design for parenting. Until next time, remember to keep the faith. Stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com.

Goodbye and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].