This podcast is part one of a two-part series as an encouragement to parents. The Bible gives parents instructions on how to bring up their children in such a way that draws them together. With Ephesians 6:1-4 as a backdrop, our discussion with Joel Beeke reveals the wisdom of God for doing just that with our children.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture. And today we want to be an encouragement to parents who are raising their children who are in those wild days of bringing up the next generation and we want to just remind of certain things. I hope it's a blessing and encouragement, maybe a reminder of things that you've known and maybe need to get back to or maybe just affirmed in what you're doing. But we really want to be an encouragement to parents.

And you know, you see so much in Scripture that calls parents to give such great energy, such love, such diligence to the raising of the next generation. All over the Bible there are admonitions to tell the next generation about the great deeds of God and then details of discipline. What we want to focus in on this session is Ephesians 6, 1 through 4. And so Jason, we have Joel Beke with us to talk about this, how about that? It's great.

Hi Joel. Hello Joel. Glad to be with you. Joel, it's such a blessing to have this conversation. We know you've talked about this, thought about it, lived it, and it's a big thing on your heart.

So we're really thankful to be able to talk about these things with you. So I wanna just read Ephesians 6, one through four, because it speaks about this remarkable duty, this blessing that parents have to bring the next generation up. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth. And you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." What a fantastic calling.

What helpful detail. So, brothers, what—let's encourage families on this. We might start by just setting that text in its context. In Ephesians chapter 5, you have the admonition to be filled with the spirit, and then the apostle Paul begins to describe different relationships in your lives. Husbands and wives, what does it look like when you have a spirit-filled relationship?

Parents and children, what does it look like? Bond servants and masters, what does it look like? Christian citizens, what does it look like to have a Spirit-filled relationship with the civil government? And so this is really what we want. We want our relationships.

And The one in view right now is parents and children. We want it to reflect spirit-filled disposition and lives Amen. Yes, I think honoring the Lord and teaching principles on the part of parents to children, showing them how husband and wife honor each other, going back, as you said, Jason, to Ephesians 5, and then saying, you know, now we need this relationship of children honoring parents, and we will raise you in the fear and ammunition of the Lord. We will honor the Lord's precepts. This whole concept of honor in in the the fifth commandment is so so critical to all human relationships but particularly to family.

So it's great to talk about this honoring and this this the honoring on the side of using proper authority from the parents to the children and the honor on the side of the children showing proper respect to their parents. What's really striking to me about this is the way that God wants parents and their children to bond together, because everything really here draws parents and children together. You have the honor going toward the children and then you have fathers not provoking but bringing them up, you know, nourishing them. But it's very interesting. The implication is, find the right ways to be close to your children.

Help your children be close to you so that they honor you and you are bringing them up. You're present, you're with them. I'm just so struck. It's almost a bonding relationship. It's not, hey, I'm gonna discipline you and you be you and me be me.

No, it's actually a melting together of parents and children. You have two things in view here, and they're closely related, but they're not exactly the same thing. You have honor and obedience. I think it's accurate to say that honor is a disposition of the heart. It's sort of an internal posture of honor towards the parents.

It describes what's happening in the heart towards the parents. But that is supposed to, if it's genuine, it's supposed to have an outward manifestation. It's supposed to look a certain way on the outside, and that is compliance with the wishes of the parents, so that's where obedience comes in. Yeah, interesting double focus there. Yeah, I just got back from Brazil and there was a boy there who was six years old and he's seeking for the Lord.

His parents are bringing the gospel to him and he said to his mom and dad, he said, you know, you love me so much, but I disobey you so often. I can't be a Christian." And he's struggling with his own sin of disobedience. It was just a joy to talk to that boy and tell him, you know, that in the Lord, there can be strength for obedience. And I think bringing the gospel to our children has a way, and modeling the gospel ourselves has a way, doesn't it, of instilling honor in children. And a sense of right guilt when they disobey their parents so that it should trouble them and this boy was sweetly troubled by his disobedience but had to be encouraged to go to Christ with that and find forgiveness.

Yeah, isn't that interesting that the sin, the dealing with the sin of dishonor softens the heart and as what you're talking about toward God, and hopefully toward the parents as well, that the loathing of sin would be a feature. Of course, sin is what separates us from, not just from God, but from one another. And so you have this movement toward one another. Paul is quoting the Ten Commandments here. He's quoting the Fifth Commandment, and he points something out about the Fifth Commandment, that it's a commandment that comes with a promise of blessing.

Of course, God has no obligation at all to bless us for obedience. We were made by Him and made for Him, and it's our obligation to obey Him. But in this case, he actually sweetens the deal. And he offers us a promise of blessing. So this is actually telling us something about how God has wired the world.

And that is that to honor your parents and to obey them is to put yourself in the path of favor and really invite blessing in a way into your life. Amen. You know, the word honor actually comes from the root meaning of heaviness or weightiness. So when you honor someone in a relationship, you consider that relationship to be of great value. And I think when it works both ways again, you know, when the husband honors his wife, considers their relationship to be very valuable and shows honor also to their children in a different way, but still the value of that relationship comes to the foreground.

Then, as you said, I believe, Scott, it was you who said, Well, then, you know, children can more easily respond with honor as well. JC Ryle said soul love is the love is the soul of all love. So honor and love are closely related. You know the hypercaricasm says something beautiful about the Fifth Commandment. It says what does God require?

It says that I show all honor, love, and fidelity to my father and mother all in authority over me and submit myself to their good instruction and correction with due obedience and then notice this and also patiently bear with their weaknesses infirmities since it pleases God to govern us by their hand so It's not saying that just as our children are not ever perfect and we don't ever have to teach them to disobey us because it comes naturally. But so parents are not perfect. And I would say to you parents, your children aren't really looking for perfection in you. They actually, they're quite resilient with their forgiveness. If you actually go to them and say, forgive me for this or for that.

Yeah. Sure, sure, dad, I forgive you. But what they're looking for in you as parents is the same kind of weighty honor and respect and love to them. Really in many ways that God is requiring them to show you, you of course are in the position of authority and they are not, but that honorable love that you generate as you treat them with dignity and with love and compassion, that will help generate honor from their side to you. I'm glad you brought that up because I wanted to ask this question, what are some of the mistakes that parents make in trying to secure honor, to try to secure this closeness?

And of course, you've talked about this matter of a parent who doesn't see himself as a sinner that is lifted up and proud, sinless, never confessing sin, never humble. That's one mistake. So what are some other mistakes that parents make when they're trying to be faithful to this text. And just to camp on what you just said for a moment, the obligations here are two ways. In other words, there are obligations laid on the children towards their parents, but there are also obligations of the parents towards their children.

Fathers aren't to provoke their children to wrath, but to bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. So there are definitely things that parents can do to actually tempt their children to dishonor them, to sin by dishonoring them. And parents are warned not to tempt their children in dissent by doing things that are really provoking. And one of those things is an overt harshness. Some parents act like they're mad at their children all the time, and it provokes their children, attempts them to sin.

Absolutely. I think that's really, really true. But I think, too, that the husband or the father who's the head of the home. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is say, now you listen to me children, because I'm head of the home and I'm your father. You know, that's all true.

But the tone of voice of which it said, I think can provoke children to anger. And I think a quiet tone of voice and simply asking for obedience, and there may be occasional time where you sit down and say, now I am your father and you need to you need to obey me. And I love you very much has its place. But but mainly your love and your godly walk with the Lord should generate an honorable response to your honorable walk from your children. I think that's a huge, huge help.

When I grew up, my parents were such wonderful examples. I didn't dare sin against my dad because I was afraid of what he would do to me but I didn't want to sin against my mother because their love was so overwhelming for me And love can be even more powerful than a spanking. Let me just say it that way. Love is very, very powerful. In fact, I'll give you a real quick example.

One of my older brothers started to go with a girl in the neighborhood when he was like 17 years old and started to see her and my parents were opposed to it because she wasn't a Christian. And when he would come home after walking her home from school, I mean, that's all he gives walk her home from school. But my mother was so upset with that because she loved my brother so much that when you come home a little bit late, she knew she knew he did that she'd be crying and my brother actually went to that girl and said hi I can't go with you anymore I can't walk you home from school because I I my mother loves me so much and I don't want to offend her love so I need I need to break this off that's the best story ever she never She never told him to break it up. Just the love the love and the tears were so powerful that he had to honor his mother. And I felt that same Same thing.

And you know, my mother would, my mother would, if we would argue as children, I mean, I grew up in a very sheltered home. You know, most parents who just let their kids duke it out, but my mother would just walk out of the room and we, oh, we kind of, oh, oh no, she's going to pray. Oh no, we've, yeah, we've been disobedient. We've been arguing. And we just stop arguing as she walks in the other room, because we know we know she's going to the other room to pray for us.

And that's the power of love. It just stops you in your tracks. So I think that's a mistake that many parents often don't see. They think that a harsh, punitive, force you into my mold thing is going to work, but they forget the power of love. Would it be possible to clone you and your brother?

I think a lot of parents would like to have children like that. No, it's not me and my brother. It's my mother. Your mother. There you go.

Her love. My wife once said about my mother that she's so pure that if she was the only person alive in the face of the earth, you'd never believe in the doctrine of total depravity. Oh my. You know, I heard somebody once say, on this matter of yelling, barking commands at your children, you know, treating them harshly. He said something like, don't expect mature behavior from your children when you're not acting in a mature way.

I thought that was really helpful because you know the whole tenor of this is the nurture, the bringing up. You know I think parents might read this and say well I'm here to lay down the law. You get in line. Well, of course, that's what you're looking for, honor and obedience, you know, that matters. But how you get it matters.

And of course, in verse four, we're told, you don't get it through provoking. You actually cause your children to sin in that way. Scott, I think we could peel back a layer here by looking for what's underneath the surface here. It is that God gives parents to children for their good to be a channel of blessing to those children. And children can actually break that by dishonoring and disobeying their parents.

God intended their parents to be a force for good and blessing in their life, but children through Pride and rebellion head off what the good that God had intended for them by dishonor disobedience. Yeah. Amen. Yeah, I'd like to say two more quick things about this whole area. One is that I think that we as parents should remember that children learn a lot about honoring authority by watching us.

So true. Do we honor the policeman when he stops to tell us we were speeding? Do we honor authority in the church? If we show that we don't honor authority, We are breaking the fifth commandment. It's not only about honoring your parents, it's about honoring all those in authority over you as the Hebrides' catechism puts it so well.

So children need to see us in positions where we are to be the submissive person to authority over us, being submissive and obedient, lovingly obedient, even when there's the things we don't like. And so even the way we talk about political figures, you know, it's one thing to say, you know, this particular person's views, we don't agree with children because he supports abortion. So we can never vote for him. It's another thing to slam him and just as a person and mocking. Then we're teaching our children that when they don't agree with us in something, they have the right to go ahead and mock us and say bad things behind our back.

So that's one thing I wanna say. The other thing I wanna quickly say is One of the greatest helps that we can exercise is to use family worship every day to really communicate about real things to our children, real principles, real biblical exercise of instruction. And when we have a good communication system with our children in family worship, that will spill over into our lives as well. So if you're used to talking to your children about all kinds of issues of life and having intelligent a loving discussions in family worship When something happens outside of family worship that is disturbing you see you have that good communication base established and you can communicate better with them and resolve this thing without the whole thing blowing up. So true.

Amen. Well, we're going to have to continue this discussion in the next session because we're going to have another session on this. But these are just such helpful principles for how parents and children draw near one another through dealing with real problems and their ways that they, that we're designed to operate with our children. It's such a wonderful opportunity to draw near to children, to give children the things that God wants them to get from us in the way that he wants us to give it, not provoking them. So let's keep talking about this.

I think in the next session we're gonna talk about Disciplining children and Joel, you know, here's a little tip tip off I'd love I'd like for you to talk a little bit about this book that you wrote about this subject when we come back to the next session. So Scott, one parting shot. Yeah, sure. Parting shot here. Parents are on both sides of the Ephesians six, one through four equation.

Here's what I mean by that. You never age out of the obligation to honor your parents. I still have parents both my parents are alive I'm still under obligation to honor them even though I'm no longer living in their home and haven't been for a long time no longer Under their authority haven't been for a long time the obligation to honor them is still binding on me, and it still has a bearing on whether I walk in the path of blessing or don't. And I think that's true even after your parents are no longer alive. It's still binding on you.

There are ways to dishonor your dead parents when they're no longer alive. Amen. Amen. Good point. Yeah, that's a good thought.

Okay, well, thank you, brothers, and we're going to keep talking about this in the next session. And thank you for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. I hope you can join us next time we're going to continue this discussion. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up.

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