Sermon Tone Analysis

A Pocket Paper \\ from \\ The Donelson Fellowship \\ *______________*

*Robert J. Morgan \\ *August 5, 2007

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Today, I’d like to begin a series of summertime messages on the subject, “Life is Good!”

This is a theme that comes across loud and clear in the Bible from the very beginning, for we read in the book of Genesis that God made the light and saw that it was good.

He made the land and sea, and He saw they were good.

He made the sun and stars and they were good.

He made man and woman, and He said they were very good.

Even though in Genesis 3 sin and Satan entered the picture and tried to spoil God’s goodness, the word “good” keeps recurring throughout the Bible.

In fact, it occurs too many times to recount—over 600 times.

The Psalmist said that goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus went around doing good and preaching the “Good News,” and on one occasion He said that if we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will God the Father give good gifts to those who ask Him.  James said, “Every good and perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of Lights, from whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”

I believe that God wants to bless us with His goodness and with His good blessings at every stage of life.

He certainly wants to bless our children, and that’s the subject of my message today.

He primarily does that by placing them in loving families.

For our text today, I’d like to direct your attention to Ephesians 6:4.

This is arguably the premier text on the subject of parenting in the New Testament.

It’s only one verse, but it’s profoundly important.

Let me say a word about the context.

In Ephesians 5:18, the Bible tells us to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Be sold out to Christ, be devoted to Him, be filled with Him and with His Spirit.

The text says:

 

/Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery.

Instead be filled with the Spirit.

Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ./

Then the next verse tells us that one of the evidences of being Spirit-filled is having a submissive attitude.

Spirit-filled people are concerned about meeting the needs of others.

Look at verse 21:  /Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ./

And now the last part of Ephesians 5 and the first part of Ephesians 6 tells how this works out in the home, between husband and wife and between parents and children.

And it’s in that context that we come to Ephesians 6:4, which is addressed to parents.

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/Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

/(Ephesians 6:4)

 

Notice that this passage is addressed to fathers, and by extension to parents.

The word Paul used here is γονεύς, which comes from a word meaning /to generate/.

It is usually translated in the New Testament as /father/, but the lexicons suggest that this word has a broader meaning as /parents/.

In fact, this is the same Greek word that is used in Hebrews 11:23 when it says, “By faith, Moses’ /parents/ hid him for three months after he was born.”

So here in Ephesians 6:4, it means parents, but with special stress on the father.

In other word, it is the masculine form of the Greek word for parents.

Notice that it’s addressed to parents and not to churches.

Now, churches certainly have a role to play when it comes to the spiritual formation of children.

That’s why we’re excited about opening our Children’s Ministry Center.

I want to reach and teach more children for Christ, and churches have been doing that for a long time.

I was telling someone the other day the history of the Sunday School movement.

In the mid-1700s, just as George III and George Washington were battling it out during the American Revolution, there was a Christian newspaper publisher in Gloucester, England, named Robert Raikes who developed a burden for the children who lived in the city’s slums.

The youngsters (some of them very young), worked long hours in the factories six days a week, and there was no provision made for their schooling.

Robert Raikes, a wealthy Christian publisher, hired a woman to teach these boys to read and write on their one day off—Sunday.

He used his newspaper to promote his Sunday Schools, and the Christians and the churches across England caught the vision.

Many of these schools were held in churches, and the Bible was the primary textbook.

In the course of time, Sunday School became a major tool in many churches for teaching children the Bible.

It has been a tremendous movement, and I’m indebted to my own Sunday School experiences as a youngster.

I learned my first Bible verses in Sunday School, and it was there and in Vacation Bible School that I learned the great stories of the Bible.

It was in Sunday School, as a teenager, that I began to have some opportunities to teach and preach on my own.

So I love the Sunday School.

But one of the unintended consequences of Christian education in the church is that sometimes we get the idea that the church is the primary place where children are to learn about God.

The Sunday School and church have an important part to play in the process, but they are not the /primary/ places where children are to learn about the Lord.

This verse does not say, “Churches, do not exasperate children but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

It tells parents to do it, with fathers taking the leading role.

And that is the consistent teaching of Scripture.

The book of Deuteronomy established this without question in the Jewish culture—in the home, in the home, in the home—that’s where children are to learn about the Lord.

We’re to talk about the Word of God when we get up and when we go to bed, when we stay at home and when you walk along the way.

We’re to tell these things to our children and to their children after them.

Much of the book of Proverbs is simply made up of godly advice that a good father is sharing with his sons.

In the book of 1Timothy, Paul talked about Timothy’s spiritual heritage.

Though He did not evidently have a Christian father, his mother and grandmother were women of faith, and from them he learned about the Lord and developed a spiritual foundation that served him all his life.

Here at TDF, our children’s ministries should supplement what children are learning in the home, but we can’t replace the home.

So this verse is addressed to parents in general, and to fathers in particular.

In this verse, we find three instructions for us as dads and moms.

*Avoid Anger in the Home*

First, avoid anger in the home.

/Fathers, do not exasperate your children.

/

 

In other words, do not treat your children in such a way as to cultivate an angry attitude within them.

You know, there are so many angry people today; I’ve never seen so much anger.

You see it at the airports and on the airplanes.

You see it on television and in politics.

But nowhere is anger more destructive than in the home, and if children grow up with angry parents, they’ll grow up angry.

Years ago, I saw a comic strip.

In the first panel, a man at work was being chewed out by his boss.

In the next panel he’s driving home, and then, arriving home, he snaps at his wife.

In the next picture, the wife is snapping at the oldest child, a son.

In the next, the boy is snapping at his sister, and in the last panel, the little girl is kicking the dog.

There’s a pass-along effect to anger, but we don’t want to pass anger down to our children or to exasperate them.

Now, all dads and moms sometimes become angry; I certainly did during our child-rearing years.

Who wouldn’t?

I was interested in something I read recently from Virginia Satir, a leader in the field of family therapy, who put it very well:

 

/Parents teach in the toughest school in the world—The School for Making People.

You are the board of education, the principal, the classroom teacher, and the janitor….

You are expected to be experts on all subjects pertaining to life and living….

There are few schools to train you for your job, and there is no general agreement on the curriculum.

You have to make it up yourself.

Your school has no holidays, no vacations, no unions, no automatic promotions or pay raises.

You are on duty or at least on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for at least 18 years for each child you have.

Besides that, you have to contend with an administration that has two leaders or bosses, whichever the case may be—and you know the traps two bosses can get into with each other.

Within this context you carry on your people-making.

I regard this as the hardest, most complicated, anxiety-ridden, sweat-and-blood producing job in the world./

/ /

There’s no way to avoid miscellaneous moments when your children get on your nerves, and there were certainly incidents in my own parenting years when I lost my cool.

But by and large, I don’t think that I was an angry parent.

But if your anger is just below the surface, if you fly off the handle easily, if you’re always snapping at your kids, if you say hurtful things, if you are always walking around with a layer of anger around you—then you’re creating an environment in which your children will become exasperated.

Anger begets anger, but the Bible says that human anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires (James 1:20).

Proverbs 29:11 says that a fool gives full vent to his anger and a wise man keeps himself under control.

Proverbs 15:1 says that a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.