Christ the King, Who has all authority in heaven and earth, miraculously births His children into His eternal family. Therefore, the NT epistles speak of Christ’s church in familial terms—fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. All of this is Christ’s glorious work of adoption, which has in view their glorious reign as joint-heirs with Christ in the new heavens and the new earth.

Ephesians 6 verses 1 through 4. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth." And then this key verse, which will be the bulk of my presentation to you this afternoon, and ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And I want to look particularly at those two words, nurture and admonition, nurture and admonition. Let's pray.

Great God of heaven, we need thy help once more. Always once more. Please come near. Help us in speaking. Help us in listening.

Holy Spirit, be thou the applier of this word. Bring it home to mind, to souls, to hands and feet. And let this truth, this wisdom of the Apostle Paul, family wisdom, bear fruit, together with this entire conference, to thy glory. We thank thee so much, Lord, that thou hast in mind the well-being of fathers, mothers, teenagers, children and we pray that that may be the fruit of this conference so that solely day of Gloria may be the result and Christ Jesus would be loved more, sin-hated more, holiness-pursued more in our hearts and in our lives. So be with us now, we pray, In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, I need to tell you that Scott Brown gave me an impossible, I mean impossible, assignment. How can I cover the family in all the epistles of Paul? That's like seven doctoral dissertations pile on top of each other. But I never say no to Scott Brown, so I said yes. But I asked him, and he was gracious, he is a gracious man, I asked him, could I focus on one passage after I gave some general principles?

And he said yes. So I felt more comfortable with that, and then I came out here and I saw the title. It was not families in Paul's epistles, but it was authority, families, and eternity in the New Testament epistles. Like it was five times larger than he even told me in the first place. That's like 35 doctoral dissertations.

So I sent out a SOS distress message, but he said, no, it's okay. Just keep with what we did. So the new title, the new title really is, I'm just going to talk to you about Paul's message for child rearing for parents and particularly focus on Ephesians 6 verse 4. But I do want to say some general things first about Paul's family instruction. I'll keep that fairly brief so we can get some depth in the latter, that is Ephesians 6, 4.

So when we read Paul's epistles in the New Testament, we notice that, and I'm sure you've noticed this, that the first part is always didactic, we call it theologically indicative. It's teaching you doctrines and truths. This is just the way Paul writes. And then the second half, he has some transition where he says, now therefore, or wherefore. And then he gives you practical guidance that flows out of the first half.

That's actually the way ministers used to preach in the olden days. They would cover two, three, four points of doctrine and then they would have a section called applications. And you get all the applications. Today we can't do that anymore because of modern entertainment media. And what happens, people are used to seeing things change before their eyes like that, and we can't remember things 10 minutes later.

And so we need applications. I tell my students now, we need applications every seven minutes in the sermon no more than seven minutes of doctrine and you've got to start to apply it and if you apply it save all your applications to the end like Paul did well people will forget what you said in the first 30 minutes so it doesn't work today but it worked in Paul's day and it works when you can study it of course on paper so that's what Paul does and in Ephesians like all the other epistles he first has three chapters of doctrine, didactic indicators. Then come the imperatives, moving from apprehending to acting, from setting the foundation of truth to setting out an agenda for daily life. Now, it's in that second part of all his epistles, also in Ephesians, that Paul talks to us about how to behave in family life. Often, he resorts to family life.

In fact, in the Ephesians section 5 through 5, 21 through 33, He gives us the best theology of marriage in the entire Bible. It's amazing, just in 13 verses. Basically what he says there is that men must love their wives, let's just walk through it in a quick minute, Men must love their wives in a fourfold way as Christ loved the church. He says first of all, the husband is the head of the wife, and as Christ is the head of the body, he's the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject to Christ, let the wives be to their own husbands and everything husbands here comes Love your wives Even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it So number one you have to love your wife absolutely.

You don't tithe your love, you don't give 10% of your life to your wife. And you don't, marriage isn't a 50-50 deal says Paul. Marriage is a 100-100 deal. So the husband gives himself 100% to his wife because Christ gave himself to his bride, the church. So that's number one, you love your wife absolutely.

Number two, you love your wife purposefully. Look at verse 26, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church. So the goal that you are to marry a woman for is that on the day of judgment, may I just put it bluntly, on the day of judgment, she might be able to look at you in the presence of the Lord of glory and say, you see, Lord, that man there, standing there, because I was married to him, I was made more godly, I was more prepared, more quickly to come before thee on this day because he led me in the green passions of thy word. He led me to thyself as Jesus Christ, as the be all and the end all in our lives. He sanctified me and cleansed me with the washing of water by the word through his spiritual leadership Now Let's have a show of hands here How many men?

Married your wife for this purpose that you might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word to present her on the great day in the presence of Christ without spot and without wrinkle." Most men don't even realize why they're supposed to marry their wives. We think selfishly. But marriage is a very unselfish thing, Paul says. We're to love our wives purposefully, to prepare them above all for eternity. Then thirdly, we're to love our wives realistically, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

Paul Washer was in our church a few weeks ago talking to young people and I think I mentioned this in another talk that he was saying to the young men, you know, or to the young women, today you're beautiful but tomorrow you'll be ugly. And he said it more blunt than that. And all the men laughed and then he looked at the men and said, and don't you laugh too hard because tomorrow you'll be ugly too. You know, we're going to have spots and wrinkles, and in marriage you learn each other's faults. So When you love your spouse, when you love your wife, you love her realistically.

Now my wife has very few faults, so you know, exception. But you see, every man, every woman has faults. So when you get these husbands and wives who complain and moan and groan over every little molehill problem in their spouse, they're living in a very ungodly way. If you know yourself and your own wicked heart and the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life that plague you and you confess with Paul the good that I would I find myself not doing and the evil that I would not I find myself doing O wretched man that I am you're not quick to complain about your wife's faults so you love your wife realistically She has her spots and she has her wrinkles. And then you love her sacrificially.

So what men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes that even as the Lord the Church. So men, if you get something in your eye, what do you do? Well, You go to a mirror and you try to get it out You don't say to your eye.

I would you just wait till tomorrow And I'll work on this no, your body's in need and Paul says when your wife is in need you help her right away You sit down with her you listen to her you cherish her and you nourish her as you do your own flesh. So there you have it, that's your duty men. You love your wives absolutely, purposefully, realistically and sacrificially. And you women, you are to show reverence to your husband, you are to show submission to your husband, and together unto the Lord. As long as your husband doesn't command you to sin and you talk things over, you have a right to speak to him about your opinions and so on, of course you do.

But ultimately, when there are times of disagreement, you can agree and he feels that we make, and I'm talking about non-sinful decisions now, and he feels that In this disagreement he finally needs to make a decision You need to give him the freedom to make that decision because you can't have two heads in a home That's his role he needs to be able to make that decision without pressure from you. A very wise wife would say to her husband in that case, honey, I love you and I trust you and I trust your leadership and I've expressed my opinion and I leave it now with you and you have the heavy responsibility of making a decision. It's not always easy to be head of the home. And so sometimes the man will then choose if he's a wise man, he will choose what his wife actually desired because there's not sin involved and he thinks, you know, she cared about that more than I do so I'm going to choose what she desires. Other times he may be convicted, no, I've really got to go this way.

But you see then it's your responsibility, dear wife, to fully accept that without any resentment, to love back the man who loves you. And you see this is Paul's motto then, this is Paul's panorama, this is Paul's mantra for marriage, that the man loves his wife the way Christ loves the church, the woman, the wife, respects and shows submission to her husband the way the church does to Jesus Christ. That's the role God has designed for you. And that role is particularly picked out for you, Paul implies here, because that is the natural weakness of men and of women, that they fail in these very two areas. Men tend to be more selfish than women and tend not to love as unselfishly.

So the command to men is to love. Women tend to not want to be submissive. They love more easily. So you don't read in here once, love your husband, do you? But no, Paul picks on the weakness of the woman due to our fallen Adam and says, be submissive to your husband.

And so Paul's talking about marriage redeemed from all the negative effects from the fall. He knows it's not going to be perfect. Both sides are going to have spots and wrinkles. But this is the goal in marriage. This is the way to live in marriage.

And the way when this marriage functions the way it is to function, blessed, blessed are the children in that family. Because one of the best things you can do for your children is to model this Christ church relationship in your marriage. So that when your children grow up and they see the love and the respect between you as father and mother, they can enter into marriage with that expectation that this is what marriage is all about. And you can teach children endlessly what marriage is about, but if they don't see it modeled, it is so much harder to learn. Marriage is more caught than taught.

And so we need to listen to Paul here. We need to strive prayerfully. And maybe some of you, some of you men may have to go home and confess to your wives, I haven't been loving you the way I ought to have been. And let's get down on our knees and let's pray for forgiveness for me and Let me pray that God will help me to love my wife absolutely, realistically, and sacrificially, and purposefully. And you women might have to go to your husband and pray for forgiveness as well.

And ask for genuine submission and respect, and vow to one another that you will strive, God helping you, to live this pattern of marriage for yourselves, but also for your dear children. Now, Paul says then a great deal about marriage, but he also says a great deal about family and about child rearing. He says that children are to submit to the authority of their parents. Parents are to love and support their children. Ephesians 6, Colossians 3, 1 Thessalonians 2, Titus 2, 2 Corinthians 12, it's everywhere.

And parents are to discipline their children in the context of nurture, Ephesians 6, 4, love and instruction. And because many of these instructions mirror the standard literary form of the household codes of the Greek old Roman world, it is easy to miss sometimes how unique Paul's family instructions are in three areas. In their Christ-centered motivation, Paul is always bringing it back to Christ. Love your wives as Christ loved the church. Respect your husbands as the church respects Jesus Christ.

You see, everything is Christological. It's that way with child rearing as well. So this is unique. Unique Christ-centered motivation, unique world-reaching mission. Paul is saying we must raise our children in such a way that the world sits up and notices, and that The world says there's something special about those Christian families.

And then, unique end time expectation. Covenantally, we expect God to do great things even to the end, even though the ungodly will get more ungodly, and we know there's many prophecies about that, the darkness of the last days, but we also know that there are prophecies that are not yet fulfilled about revival, that the godly will get more godly. And Paul participates in that. And so Paul presents us with a theology of how to raise our children that is marinated in this Christ-centered motivation, this world-reaching mission, and this end-time expectation. Now, far from mimicking the common family instruction of the day, therefore, Paul's instruction to individual Christian families is the culmination of his instruction to the divine family, the eternal household of God, Ephesians 2 19.

And this is the new society of followers of Jesus who in Christ have been reconciled to God and called to be holy and blameless and to grow in unity and maturity as a display of God's wisdom in the world. The watching world most clearly witnesses the character of this new society by the character of its individual families. So Paul is saying that in every age, the home must be the place where above all, the peace and harmony, the love and discipline of Christ are most clearly manifest. Now unfortunately, even in many Christian homes, we tend to treat strangers better than we tend to treat our spouses and our children. These things ought not so to be.

I must treat my wife better than I treat any other woman on the face of the earth, by far. And you to your husband and to our children and you brothers and sisters to each other. You are to love each other as brothers and sisters. Now, our forefathers, especially the Puritans, called this a little church and a nursery for heaven. And they said that's the goal of God-fearing parents, even though there will be imperfections, even though there will be sin in every family member, including the parents, the goal is that the home becomes a little church, that the home has a worshipful spirit, in other words, and a nursery for heaven, longing to see sprouts of new life coming up in the children under your instruction.

And Paul summarizes all of this in the words nurture and admonition. Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, or you could say fathers and mothers provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in a nurture in the admonition of the Lord. So as parents, we are to be prophets and prophetesses, if you will, to be our Lord's representatives as we teach and train and mold our children in the ways of the Most High God. And in doing so, we give them a foundation on which to build the rest of their lives so that our children know the ways of the Lord, the truths of the Lord. Now, how then are we to approach this task?

Well, Paul envisions two approaches. The first approach is a father and mother that provoked their children to wrath. So now we're into Ephesians six, verse four for the last half of this address. Fathers provoke not your children to wrath. That's the disciplinarian.

The primary parental example is discipline, Discipline, discipline. Saying no all the time. Cutting children off. You do it my way or else. Punishing.

Infractions. Get punished, every one of them, According to a whole list of rules children must tow the line children must obey me. I'm your dad you must obey me I'm your mom you must obey me and love Is missing? Don't raise your children this way Paul saying fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath. Charles Hodge says under this, his commentary under these words, fathers, don't provoke your children to wrath, he says, this is what parents are not to do.

They're not to excite the bad passions of their children by severity, injustice, partiality, or unreasonable exercise of authority. A parent had better sow tares in a field from which he expects to derive food for himself and family than by his own ill conduct nurture evil in the heart of his own child. Now the other approach is a combination of roles that involve education, physical and spiritual nurture, and moral training through discipline. Such a parent is a teacher, a loving teacher, a caring coach, and a shepherding pastor to her own children, as well as a true father, and a true mother. And that approach is what Paul summarizes in two words, nurture and admonition, nurture, paideia, which is the general training of all parts of the child, all parts of the child.

Instructing his mind, shaping his character, bending his will, awakening his conscience, enriching his soul, building his body. Raise them up this way, says Paul, in the nurture of the Lord, struck in his mind, shaping his character, bending his will, waking in his conscience, enriching his soul, building his body, all out of love. And then, admonition, nutasia. This has to do with conduct. See, nurture has to do with training.

Abolition has to do with conduct. So, when you admonish your children, he's not talking about coming down hard on them here. This word in Greek means to encourage them, actually. To encourage them to do what is right. To reward good conduct.

Yes, to confront them when what they do is wrong. And to punish their misconduct, but in an appropriate and measured way, commensurate with the infraction committed. Listen to Charles Hodge again. As Christianity is the only true religion and God in Christ the only true God, The only possible means of profitable education is the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That is, the whole process, the whole process of...

Sorry. The whole process of instruction and discipline must be that which he prescribes, which he administers, so that his authority should be brought into constant and immediate contact with the mind, with the heart, and with the conscience of the child. Now that all has to be bathed in love. Our children must know, you see, that we have a clear vision for what we want them to become and that we want them to grow into that through our loving encouragement and our loving admonition. Speaking of Charles Hodge, I once read just a beautiful story about Charles Hodge.

You know when he was called to Princeton seminary to become one of the early professors there. There was a home on campus for him. He accepted the call and they took him around the home and they asked him afterward, Mr. Hodge, is there anything you would like changed in this home?" And Charles Hodge said, you know, the home is beautiful. I'm very satisfied.

I look forward to teaching the students. Glad to be here. But there's one thing, one thing I'd like you to change. He said, I noticed that the doorknob on the door into my study is too high for my two-year-old to reach. Would you please lower the doorknob because I promised my children they could have access to me 24 hours every day as I have access to my Lord 24 hours every day Wow Once you want to be one of Charles Hodges kids You see it's that kind of love, that kind of love.

Nurture and admonition. A child can receive even punishment from a father who loves like that so much easier. A woman can receive the grace of submission so much easier from a husband who loves her like that. You see, that's how our Lord himself grew up. Luke 252, Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.

He grew from infancy to adulthood. He developed in a well-rounded way of nurture and ammunition, physically, intellectually, socially, spiritually. We are to train our children. This is really our goal, that our children might increase in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and with man as Jesus did. Now clearly what Paul is implying by both of these terms, nurture and ammunition, is that this work is not something you accomplish in a couple of days.

Generally speaking, this is a 20-year journey from infancy to the 20-year-old who then leaves the home, maybe for university or for marriage or whatever, or maybe it's 25 years. But it's a process. It's a journey through infancy and childhood and adulthood that we make hand in hand with our children. And so just as we spiritually experience all the ups and downs of sanctification once we're safe, but the trajectory goes up. So in child rearing, There are so many ups and downs, aren't there?

In the sanctification of our own children, if they're born again, if they're not born again, it's even more of a struggle. But there's ups and downs. But gradually, gradually, the trajectory is up if we train them and the Holy Spirit blesses it in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. Now you don't expect perfection here. And even when your children marry, You know that you're not handing them off to their future spouse as finished products.

And that's a little stressful sometimes because you want to do that. Your goal as a Christian is to present your own children to that child's future spouse ready for marriage. But you see, every person has spots and wrinkles, faults and flaws. And so, you hand that son over, you hand that daughter over to that future spouse, and you think, oh boy, this is not a finished product. We still got some areas we didn't resolve.

She's all yours, son. But, you see, God is gracious. And often what you'll find, if your child marries a very God-fearing person, the very things that you were working on, and you didn't see as much progress as you thought you should see, the spouse sees the same weaknesses. And the spouse takes over and sometimes does a better job at that point than you do. At least that's our experience.

We said, that's unbelievable. Did you see what our son did? We couldn't get him to do that. She couldn't get him to do it. That's amazing.

That's good. He just, she just took over where we left off. You know, so, but you're in process, aren't you? And you're training and molding and the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And you do that with authority, but it's a loving authority.

God said to Abraham, I know him that he will command his children, and they shall keep the way of the Lord. See, there's certain areas of life where you command your children because you're bringing them up in the nurturing and admonition of the Lord. You don't ask them, will you go to church with us this Sunday? No, they're under your roof. But you don't say, you must come to church with me.

You say, it's Lord's Day morning. We get to go to hear the word of God. Children, it's amazing. God's going to be speaking to us through his servant. Come for breakfast.

What a day, what a happy day. We get to go to hear the voice of the living God, what his word is for us today. You make it positive. It's not negative, it's not drudgery. Even if you get the feeling that your child may think it is drudgery.

No, no, you treat it as a positive because it is. So, God is saying we must teach our children truth. We must command them lovingly, persuasively, verbally to follow him. We're not just Rogerian counselors who effective listen our children and give them no solutions. No, no, We're not just neutral prophets passing out information and saying I'm a disinterested party and you've got to make up your own mind No, we are commanding them.

This is the way of the Lord. This is the Word of God We are prophets tasked by all God Almighty to command our children to follow in his way. But as we do so, we do so in love and we do so trusting him as a covenant-keeping God. And so we rear our children, telling them they need to be born again, they need to come to faith, they need to come to repentance. But God's a covenant keeping God in families.

You see, that's our past, that's our present, that's going to be our future, so we trust that God will work in those children. At his time, in his way, doesn't mean he will in every single child, but that sure is our prayer, and we want to raise tomorrow's fathers and tomorrow's mothers, God-fearing. We want to raise the next generation of God's gate keeping servants and witnesses, tomorrow's Christian leaders and teachers and authors and artists and scientists and doctors and nurses and lawyers and merchants and carpenters and tradesmen of all sorts and soldiers and police officers and firefighters, you name it. The whole world, every profession in the world needs Christians in the midst. So we have an awesome task, but as we raise our children, as we teach them, as the process continues through this covenant line of God from generation to generation.

For a thousand generations, we teach them. Now, how do we teach them? Well, in this last section, let me look at two things with you. First of all, catechizing, and secondly, modeling. Catechizing is often, too often today, delegated to the church.

No, it's fine if the church catechizes our children. I appreciate that. But what is that, 45 minutes a week? You see, when they're in your own home, every family worship, in a sense, becomes a catechetical instruction, doesn't it? The Greek word for catechize is catecheo.

A catecheo means to sound from above or to recount something or repeat something in order to instruct someone. Hence, we have catechisms. Catecheo means I ask my child a question and the child answers me and then I tweak the answer so that the child learns more. So I'm a teacher to my children. I do catechesis with my children in every family worship.

That's why that family worship Bible God I talked to you about. It's a tool to help you. Every one ends with a question. Then you have discussion every day. You're discussing the ways of God with your children.

So that after a two year or three year period, when you move from Genesis all the way through Revelation, and you read the whole Bible aloud together with your children in front of the whole family and you do the family worship Bible guide and you answer all these questions, you're actually talking about every subject under the sun because the Bible talks about every subject under the sun. That's the beauty of catechesis. And when you do that year after year after year after year after year, you'll find that by the time your children become 20 years of age, they actually know a great deal about what to believe. What to believe. So, in family worship, you weave, you interweave catechesis into it.

So you have a conversational approach, a learning approach. You build on things they already know to teach them things they don't know about the things of God Especially about how the Holy Spirit works in the heart about the fullness of Jesus about the realities of eternity About about living Soledad Gloria for God in time So many things a thousand things. That's why systematic theology is so important. You fill your mind with it, and then you transfer it to your children at their level. It's also important, at that point, you see, part of catechesis is also teaching your children how to pray If you want to bring them up in the nurturing admonition of the Lord prayer is one of the most important things in this life You've got to teach them how to pray the Holy Spirit alone can teach them how to truly pray, of course.

But when they're three years old, you're sitting down in family worship, you take one on one knee, you take the other one on another knee, that is if they're under eight or nine, and you put your arms around them And you look them eyeball to eyeball and you say, now I'm going to teach you how to pray. You start with that three-year-old. You say, Daddy's going to whisper a few words in your ear. And you repeat them, and a few more, and a few more. And the child prays aloud, the Daddy's Prayer, as our kids first called it.

Praise the Daddy's Prayer. When they're four, you say, now you start the prayer by yourself and when you run stuck you just give me a little poke and I'll help you so they say three four sentences and then they run stuck and they poke you, and you say, okay, and then you whisper a few things in their ear, and a few more, few more, few more. By the time there's seven, you say, now you just take the whole prayer. And you teach them how to pray. And If God does convert them in that process, you'll hear a real advance in those prayers.

If He doesn't, they still know the mechanics of how to pray, and when He does convert them, they'll be able to pray in front of their friends. But they'll also be able to pray with more feeling because they've already been trained in the mechanics of how to pray. And you teach them. There's four things. I mean, you use the ax formula, especially for the older children.

Adoration, you adore God. Then confession, see. It's ax, right? Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. For the younger children, you teach them those four words.

You see, this is the way we pray. Now, you've got to model, You've got to model what you teach. That's my last thought and that's an important one. It's very hard to keep secrets from anyone who lives with you under your roof. They will know.

They will know who you are. Children are always reading the books of our lives. In fact, the most important book beside the Bible that they will ever read is your life, Father, your life, mother. And if they see that you care more about who won some stupid ball game last week than about Jesus Christ, you get more excited about some tournament than you do about Jesus Christ in front of your children, It tells them something, doesn't it, about your priorities. Don't do that, don't do that.

When your children see that you won't say, I'm sorry, to your wife or to your husband or to a child, It tells them something. You see, if you say walk this way and you walk that way, your godly modeling will undermine your godly teaching. So as our children read the books of our lives, they learn how important God and Christ and Bible and faith and prayer and family worship really are. If you move from the supper table over to family worship with a sigh, that says a lot to your children about personal and family worship. No, you've got to be excited about the things of God.

Our children will also pick up on the way we feel about them. Are we happy to play with them? Happy to talk to them? Happy to read books to them? Happy to vacation with them?

Happy to put them on our lap and just hold them tight Happy to just love them We've got one grandchild he's I think two maybe three and I shot a bless buck in South Africa that we had mounted on the wall. And he's fascinated with that animal. And every time he walks into the house, nobody else can do this, just grandpa. He comes to me and he says, over there. I pick him up, I take him over to the bus, but I say where's the neck touches the neck Where's the eye touches the eye?

Where's the nose? Where's where are the horns? Where's the ears? We go through this ritual every time same old thing every single day But he just loves it now two years from now. He won't be doing that, but this is a stage He's in right there, so I'm gonna be there and play that game with him.

And when we walk away, we're just holding hands. You know, the warmth, the love, the fun times, the joy. You see, the greater percentage of time you can have this togetherness, this joy, this camaraderie, this loving, fatherly, motherly tenderness, and smiling at your children, at your grandchildren, and enjoying life together. Makes all the difference doesn't it? When affliction strikes you and you grumble and complain in front of your children But you just had family worship yesterday on the text, All Things Work Together for Good to Those That Love God.

What does that say to your kids? It says, well, mom and dad can teach us about how to respond during good times and bad times, but in bad times they don't respond very well, so what's their Christianity worth? You see, we need to pattern for our children a good marriage and good parenting if we expect them to grow up as solid contributing members to the church and to society and to their own families and their own marriages. Our children see what makes us angry. They see our unholy anger as well as our holy anger.

Blessed are those children who see their parents in holy anger about these 60 some million babies that have been killed. I want my children to see my just anger at that. But woe be to children who grow up and see that mom and dad when they do get angry, which I hope your children very seldom see in you when they do see it. If it's about you and your rights and you didn't get your way and someone injured you, That tells them a lot. It tells them, well, that's the way to get angry when somebody does you in.

Our children see how we honor others in authority over us. They observe how we treat those who are less fortunate than we are. We need to model godliness. You see, you're either doing one or two things. Even if you do all the outward rituals of being a Christian, if you are modeling worldliness in your heart, in your attitudes, in your anger, in your personality, in your demeanor, you're undermining all the godliness you're trying to inculcate.

Raise your children in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord, of the Lord. Now, finally, conclusion. You and I will never be perfect parents. Our children will see flaws in us no matter how hard we try, no matter how seriously we care. Yes, they need to hear prayers.

They need to hear our prayers, crying out to God for help. We need to be vulnerable in front of them. We need to share our weaknesses in prayer. Say, Lord, I can't do this today. Lord, help me.

I need thy help every day. They need to see us needy and poor, leaning on Jesus. But if your children can say to their friends, well I'll tell you what happened to me. I don't mean it in a boastful way whatsoever. Please understand this, but it was I think it was the best compliment One of my children ever gave me there was a man He was in a Mexico mission my son was a for two weeks in the Mexico mission And there was a man there who was kind of curious about how we raise our kids.

You know, some people aren't that way about ministers. They're kind of curious. What's the ministerial home really like? So he started asking my... We weren't there.

He started asking my son some questions. And finally my son said, look, he said, my dad has his flaws and his faults, but there's two things about my dad I love. I can go to him with any question. I can talk with him. Second, He loves the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the man, the man came back and told me that, confessed his guilt for asking too many nosy questions to my son. But he said, when your son said that, he said, that spoke to me. That spoke to me. And I mean, my wife is a whole lot better mother than I've been a father. So I've got lots of flaws.

But, my son was right. But, I want to be able to say, in all honesty before God, my children know, my children know that I love my wife and I love them and I love Jesus Christ despite all my faults. Bring them up in the nurture and ammunition of the Lord of love remember God's familiar work is not judgment God's familiar work is mercy Thomas Watson put it so well. He said God is a merciful God a merciful God It's His normal work to show mercy. It's His strange work to show judgment.

He said God is like a bee, a bee stings only when it's provoked. Don't you be like a bee father or a bee mother you let the positive come out you let the love of God come out in your home yes there will be times when you will be stung by the sin of your children and you need to exercise judgment but let mercy be the familiar work in your home. Bring them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. And God will bless it. Let's pray.

Great God of heaven, have mercy upon us. Have mercy upon us. Help us. It's such a big task, Lord. We make so many mistakes.

Oh, we thank thee that our children often turn out better than we raised them. Thou art merciful, but help us to do it with tender childlike fear of thee in our hearts and tender love for those entrusted to us. Lord, please, Please make everything well. Please help us to raise children in the fear of Thy name, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And please, please bless that nurture, that admonition, and use it as a means for their conversion, that they may know thee and love thee and serve thee and fear thee and adore thee all the days of their life.

We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen. God bless you all.