A Father’s Duty Is Not To Be Neglected (Ephesians 6:4)
One of the many dangerous things that modern feminists have introduced into our society is the degradation of fatherhood. You will often hear women today say that they do not need a man. The sentiment is an ignorant one, as experience today strongly affirms.
I like to use AI as a research assistant at times, so I asked Grok this question. “What effect does fatherlessness have on children?” and I requested a deep search. It came back with pages and pages of answers.
The answers were profound. And complete with citations, so they could be looked up. Here is the conversation, https://x.com/i/grok/share/STTy5E711dmAmCcLWBKMBlnI0
Here is a table that summarized the data for me.
This is profound. When the problem is this pervasive, it will lead to changes within a society. 25% of all children in America grow up without any father figure present. That’s one out of every 4. It’s no wonder we feel like society is falling apart.
No wonder the Bible has repeated warnings concerning the importance of fatherhood. Lot’s whole family was destroyed because of his failures to lead his family away from Sodom. Eli neglected his duties as a father and his sons were worthless and did not know the Lord. David neglected many of his duties as a father and it led to horrors in his life. Ahab was just wicked and led his children to be wicked human beings.
These men stand as warnings over us. The statistics above stand as warnings over us. And the warning given today is that fatherhood is important and you’d better treat it as important. You’d better look at those children sitting next to you and realize that you have an incredibly significant role to play in their lives.
It is very natural for a man to be very oriented to his work. And it is very beneficial for the family that he is this way. But it is oftentimes the case that men do not understand that he has important work to do in the home as well.
He is, in a sense, oriented toward work. Men struggle with doing multiple things at the same time. There is no such thing as multitasking, our brains are only capable of doing one thing at a time. And for some reason a woman’s brain can flip from one thing to another much more seamlessly than can a man’s brain. This is good when he goes to work and does a job. This makes things difficult when he is watching a child, making dinner, and cleaning the kitchen all at the same time.
But difficult does not mean that we should neglect it. A father has important work to do when he gets home from work. In fact, the work he does or doesn’t do there will have greater significance than everything he does at the job site.
Matthew Henry, the great Bible Commentator, gave a sermon concerning how fathers should order their homes. It has been made into a small book called “Building a God Centered Family: A Father’s Manual”. Note how he begins the sermon.
“Every child you have has a precious and immortal soul, that must be forever either in Heaven or Hell. Will it not be very sad, if through your carelessness and neglect your children should learn the ways of sin, and perish eternally in those ways? Give them warning, that if possible, you may deliver their souls, at least that you may deliver your own, and may not bring their curse, and God’s too, their blood and your own too, upon their heads.” (Matthew Henry, Building a God Centered Family: A Father’s Manual)
Your job is not over when you get home from work. If you just check out from the family when you have finished your job, then you have left the most important thing out.
Those children that you helped to create will live lives here on this Earth that are either faithful or unfaithful to the Lord. Those children that you helped to create will live forever either in Heaven or Hell. Would it not be the greatest of sorrows to neglect your duties before them and they perish?
What is the task?
“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4 ESV)
As you can see there are two commands in our text today. But the two commands are related. Notice this as well, for it is a big part of the sermon today. Provoking your children to anger is opposed to bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. In other words, you can provoke your children to wrath by not
Do Not Be Thoughtless And Domineering
The command given is to not provoke your children to anger. This is less about not annoying your child and more about how you lead your children. So, go ahead and tell the Dad jokes that make their eyes roll into the back of their heads.
There are a few ways that fathers can provoke their children to anger. Truthfully, there are ways that fathers do this every day. And it seems to me that we can catalogue these under being thoughtless and domineering.
We can be thoughtless by not setting clear boundaries for our children. What happens when we don’t set clear boundaries for our kids? Well, they don’t know how we expect them to behave. And this happens more often than you would think.
Let’s imagine that your child picks up your cell phone and gets in trouble for it. Then 10 minutes later they do the same thing and do not get in trouble for it. In fact, you let them walk around and chew on it.
Or another instance may be that you lay the law down on your child when they smart off at you instead of doing what they were told. Then later in the day you let it go instead of punishing it.
In these instances, you have not really set clear boundaries for your children. By enforcing that boundary some times and not in others there is a confusing atmosphere. And it doesn’t lead to good places.
Some bit of that is happening with our country as I type this. People were allowed to cross the border illegally. The laws were not enforced. They were then allowed to stay. And now they are in full convulsion as our country decides to enforce immigration laws. The reality is that there are no clear boundaries on this law. It will take a few years of enforcing the law for this convulsion to stop. But the same sort of thing happens with your child.
I call this thoughtless because, if you behave this way, then you haven’t put any thought into the boundaries that you have for your child. So rather than punishing your child for misbehavior, you punish them when they irritate you or embarrass you. And then they receive punishments that are harsher than they ever should have been or would be had you been consistent.
Another problem that can arise is that there are too many rules. This is due to thoughtlessness as well. I can’t remember a lot of rules. And I’m sure that the kids can’t either. That is a very difficult system to live under.
I will again use our government as a bad example. Our legal system is a corrupt mess, in part, because there are too many laws and regulation. This creates unclear boundaries and that frustrates people. Don’t do to your kids what our tax laws do to you every time you file takes. Make the rules simple and memorable.
This means that it’ll be necessary for you to think about the rules that your family will follow. Make a few rules that can be applied broadly and remembered.
- Respect Authority
- Do what you’re told. Obey Mom, Dad, and anyone else that is in charge of you.
- Honor Mom and Dad.
- Honor God.
- Respect People
- Don’t hit, kick, bite, name call, etc.
- Respect the Place
- Don’t purposely break or waste things.
Obviously you don’t have to use these rules. But I’m trying to show you that, especially when your child is young, they don’t need a lot of rules. They can’t handle a lot of rules. But you can make rules as a family that are simple, memorable, and doable. This means they won’t provoke your children to anger.
Another way that we can provoke our children to anger is to act like they are not growing up right before our eyes. We shouldn’t treat our 15 year olds the same way we treat our 4 year olds. My standards for my older kids should still be high, but I should expect more independence out of them than I did when they were young. We should allow for more and more freedom as they grow up.
Remember, this is what you are raising them for. You are not raising them to stay in your home for the rest of your life. We are raising them to leave, so we prepare them to leave. And part of this is going to be giving them a little more freedom all the time. And this is something that they will have an innate desire for. Make them rise to the challenge. They need to know how to function out in society without us by the time they reach adulthood.
These are your children. You need to know your child. Some kids need stronger encouragement to good behavior than others. Some need to have the board of discipline applied to the seat of learning often. Some need only a little correction to be set on course. And if your child is not corrected when disciplined, then they need more of it. Or they need a different form.
I believe that the repeated usage of “the rod” in discipline throughout the Book of Proverbs includes spankings as well as other things. God disciplines us, and it is not always physical. Often it is not physical punishment. But we should not think this means that it does not include spanking, because it obviously does.
If spankings don’t work, or if your child has grown out of them, then use other forms of “the rod”. And do it until behavior is corrected.
I have said before that having to work as a punishment was far more effective than physical discipline was for me as a kid. I think there were days that I was spanked until my parents were tired. And my behavior was relatively unchanged. But it didn’t take too many wheelbarrow fulls of rocks carted through the woods to the rock piles for me to realize that my behavior needed to change.
This type of understanding, of your children and their needs, comes as you do the work of setting clear boundaries, clear expectations, and ensuring that they do it.
I am convinced that many parents just try and make things up as they go. And I am convinced that many fathers are frustrated with their children because they haven’t thought about clear expectations for them.
And I find this amusing because it is as if the father hasn’t thought about the rest of his life. He hasn’t thought about why he is sometimes more comfortable at work than at home.
A father will go to work and set clear expectations for himself and those around him. Maybe he is a supervisor or in management and he’ll set clear expectations for them. Maybe he is not and he has all of those expectations set for him. And it is expected that they live according to those expectations. Yet, he doesn’t apply those things at home.
He doesn’t think about how his child should act; he just knows that their current behavior annoys them. So he gets on to the child. But the child was never given clear expectations for behavior at home. And the child is left to try and figure it out on their own. And that’s not going to go well.
What I have said before, I will say again and again about parenting. But if your child annoys you, if you can’t stand to be around your kid, other people can’t either. If you dread spending time with your kid because of their behavior, then you can be assured that other people do as well. So go about the business of fixing that behavior.
Sit them down. Tell them what the expectations are. And then, when they push against those boundaries as they inevitably will, enforce those rules.
You can tell when things have gone awry. When your house is filled with chaos, there’s a problem. And 9 times out of 10, when you sit down to think about the problem it’s not the kids it’s the parents. Kids will push boundaries. That’s something they will do. It’s inevitable. When parents start not making clear boundaries and enforcing those boundaries, there’s a problem. The whole house will feel like pure chaos.
Don’t be surprised that, when you pull up the walls, the barbarians storm in and make chaos. That’s exactly what is going to happen. Your little barbarians are going to do what barbarians do. You have 18 years to form them into people that will not act that way. But they don’t come to you fully formed. So don’t be surprised when they act foolish when you allow them to act foolish.
And don’t be surprised when you allow the foolishness and they end up exasperated.
I find some illustration of this in our country’s modern immigration predicament. People were allowed to cross into America illegally. They broke the law to get here. And every minute they stayed here, they broke the law. At some point they grew to despise the country that allowed all of this so much that they burned cars and stood on them while waving the flag of the country they left.
What happened?
Well, because we didn’t enforce the law these people thought little of our authority. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted without repercussions. And rather than growing to love America more, they grew to despise the country. Interviews online from the LA Riots have these people talking about how they want to upend our country and make it a Socialist country. Suddenly America decided to enforce immigration laws and it all felt so arbitrary that a whole group of people threw a fit that involved violence toward officers and burning cars.
The same thing happens with children. Children that are left without discipline don’t grow up to honor their parents. They don’t grow up to love Mom and Dad more. They grow up to despise them.
Do Raise Them Up In The Discipline And Instruction Of God
We are commanded to raise them up in “discipline and instruction of God”. It is non-negotiable. And the task becomes clear as we think about what these words mean.
The word translated “discipline” here is “παιδεία”. Anyone that has gotten their teaching degree took a pedagogy class that teaches the theory and practice of learning. So you’re possibly familiar with the word. Strong’s definition of the word is
“the whole training and education of children (which relates to the cultivation of mind and morals, and employs for this purpose now commands and admonitions, now reproof and punishment) It also includes the training and care of the body”
What you see here is that we’ve translated it discipline, but the word is much more broad than that. It is the entire practice of educating your children. This would involve reading the Bible to your kids, teaching them Scripture, walking around and talking to them about life, teaching them when people hurt them, teaching them when they make mistakes, and disciplining them when they make mistakes. What I hope you see by this is that it is an all-encompassing education that is in view here.
And this all encompassing education is not an education from the world, or their friends. It is “of God”. Our children are to be raised in the Paideia of God. And that will take a massive amount of time and effort.
The word translated “instruction” here is “νουθεσία”. According to Strong’s it means,
“calling attention to, i.e. (by implication) mild rebuke or warning:—admonition.”
This is calling your child’s attention to the thing that they are doing wrong. We must be willing to do that. And we will probably have to do this often.
Fathers, you are responsible for making sure that this happens. Do not exasperate your children, do this instead. Steer them.
Decide to be faithful here and do not let them do the steering, for they will definitely try. They will try to move you off course.
In his book, “Leadership and Emotional Sabotage” Joe Rigney writes,
“Our world demands that whole communities adapt to their most reactive, unstable, and immature members.” Joe Rigney Leadership and Emotional Sabotage
Children test boundaries. And children also figure out how to manipulate to get you to move your boundaries. Tears, outbursts, withholding love, there are countless ways to manipulate. They will try to do it. And our society has made us think that we should cave. Don’t. You are raising them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, not their wicked little hearts.
You have probably already realized that children are not the only people that do it. But you do get up close and personal with your kid. A child is okay with manipulating you so much that the whole family caters to them. They are okay with disrupting the entire family. So don’t be steered. You are the parent, you do the steering. Have clarity about what you are doing, how they are to be raised, how the family should function, so you can look through the manipulation, get beyond the anxiety of disappointing someone, and guide your family in the right direction.
Again, Joe Rigney discusses this sort of thing,
“[A well-differentiated leader is] someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about. I mean someone who can be separate while still remaining connected and, therefore, can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence. I mean someone who can manage his or her own reactivity in response to the automatic reactivity of others and, therefore, be able to take stands at the risk of displeasing.” Joe Rigney, Leadership and Emotional Sabotage
Parenting can be very difficult. And so can leading a family. But when you see beyond the current struggle, a child throwing a fit, withholding affection, etc. then it won’t throw you into a fit of despair that leads to catering to your children. You see the end goal. And they can’t move you from that.
Plans may need to be modified. Courses may need to be corrected. But your goal is to raise them in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
You are instructed to lead your families in such a way that you ensure that this happens. I don’t think that parents often understand this.
I was in youth ministry for around 15 years. I am proud of a lot of the things I was able to do as a youth pastor. But the task, in part, was as it was because parents didn’t do the work of raising their children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
I had meetings with parents that went something like this, “My kid is very disrespectful to me at home. Can you talk with him?” “My child was drunk yesterday. Can you talk with him?”
Of course, I spoke with the teen. But it was far less effective than the biblical way, which is that the parent should have been watching over their child’s whole life. They should have taken raising their child in the fear and admonition of the Lord seriously all along.
Parenting is not a part-time affair. It’s not something in which we can decide to neglect our duties and everything will be okay. As parents, we are to give them a full education in what it means to live a life that honors the Lord.
That starts with the gospel. We teach our children that salvation is found in Christ alone and we declare to them the gift of redemption found in Jesus Christ alone. But it doesn’t end there. We teach them how they are to live as God’s people in the world.
As fathers, we are to ensure that this takes place. We have been charged with leadership within our homes. Your concern is not just about provision. It is also about creating children that love the Lord long after you are gone.
Conclusion
You don’t know the impact or importance of your role as a father. But you do know what you are supposed to do.
Like most things in life. It is the small labor, repeatedly done over time that adds up to make the biggest impact.
You want to impact the world for Christ. Start with your family. And I want to end this with an illustration from church history.
Theology is an old study. And America is not very old. Therefore, we don’t have many names on the list of history’s greatest theologians. But Jonathan Edwards is considered the greatest of the theologians America ever produced. He was born in 1703 and died in 1758. Back when Princeton was a Christian school, Jonathan Edwards served as president of the University.
He was a preacher during the First Great Awakening. It is thought that his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” kicked off this powerful movement across the country. George Whitefield and Jonathan Wesley would preach often during this time period all over the East Coast and in England. But it was Jonathan Edwards that had the most profound affect on America. And it wasn’t just because of his preaching and teaching. It was because of his and Sarah’s diligence to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
150 years after Jonathan Edwards’ death, he and Sarah had 11 children.
Jonathan Edwards’ legacy includes: 1 U.S. Vice-President (Aaron Burr—founding Father and colonel in the Continental Army no known for his duel with Alexander Hamilton), 1 Dean of a law school, 1 dean of a medical school, 3 U.S. Senators, 3 governors, 3 mayors, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 60 doctors, 65 professors, 75 Military officers, 80 public office holders, 100 lawyers, 100 clergymen, and 285 college graduates.
I have read some of Jonathan Edwards books and sermons. They still impact people today. But how much do you think his descendants impacted the founding and trajectory of America. One of his sons was the leading voices from the pulpit in the abolition of slavery. He had a grandson that was a founding father. And, as you can see there was a lot more.
Do big things for the Lord and take your family seriously.
R. Dwain Minor