God's Pattern for Parents, Part 2

Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. All the matters of life, all behavior, all conduct is linked to some heart condition. And parents, your task is to set yourself to the heart of the child. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.

I'm your host, Phil Johnson. What does it take to protect your children from ungodly influences? Well, you could follow the example of a farmer in England. He managed to hide his family in a literal castle that he had built behind a huge wall of hay bales. For almost five years, the family lived in this hidden world, tucked away from neighbors and from just about everything else. That's one way to keep your children from the world's negative influences. But as you think about protecting your kids, consider this.

Is it possible to create other problems, even bigger problems if you completely shelter them? Bottom line, how can you teach your children to reject the world's value system, but stay involved in ministry to the world as Scripture teaches? John MacArthur considers those questions today as he continues his current study titled The Fulfilled Family.

And now here's John. Open your Bible to Ephesians chapter 6, Ephesians chapter 6. A key verse, really, here in the New Testament that gives to us God's design for parenting is 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. 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. 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 honor God. Both parents must be involved in this wonderful privilege, this wonderful opportunity. And as we look at the thing itself that is indicated here in the verse, you'll notice there's a negative and then a positive in terms of the instruction, and we want to consider both. The negative is this, do not provoke your children to anger.

That's how the Word of God sums up what you don't want to do. You don't want to make your children mad. You don't want to make them angry. You don't want to make them hostile or bitter. You don't want them to turn against you and all that you hold dear. Colossians adds, lest they be discouraged. You don't want to destroy them. Provoke, you will notice, is used only here and in Romans 10, 19, that term, and it means to irritate. It's an intense form of to make angry. Don't do that which angers your children. Don't do that which irritates them, provokes them, frustrates them, exasperates them, or embitters them.

And my, is there being a lot of that done today. Angry, sullen, bitter children, unimaginable hostility and anger. Ten to fifteen percent of children have contemplated or tried suicide. One-fourth of admissions to the psychiatric unit of children's hospitals are suicide-related.

Even children as long as...as young as six and seven have tried to take their life. How can you provoke your child into tragedy? How can you provoke your child into anger? How can you get a bitter, sullen, antisocial delinquent?

Here are some easy steps. Spoil him. Give him everything he wants, even more than you can afford.

Just charge it so you can get him off your back. When he does wrong, nag him a little but don't spank him. Foster his dependence on you. Don't teach him to be independently responsible. Maintain his dependence on you so later on drugs and alcohol can replace you when he's older.

Protect him from all those mean teachers who want to discipline him from time to time and threaten to sue them if they don't let him alone. Make all of his decisions for him because he might make mistakes and learn from them if you don't. Criticize his father to him or his mother so your son or daughter will lose respect for his parents. Whenever he gets into trouble, bail him out.

Besides, if he faces any real consequence, it might hurt your reputation. Never let him suffer the consequences of his behavior. Always step in and solve his problems for him so he will depend on you and run to you when the going gets tough and never learn how to solve his problems.

If you want to turn your child into a delinquent, let him express himself any way he feels like it. Don't run his life, let him run yours. Don't bother him with chores. Do everything for him. Then he can be irresponsible all his life and blame others when things don't get done right. And be sure to give in when he throws a temper tantrum.

Believe his lies because it's too much hassle to try to sort through to get the truth. Criticize others openly. Criticize others routinely so that he will continue to realize that he is better than everybody else. Give him a big allowance and don't make him do anything for it. Praise him for his good looks, never for character.

And on it goes. You want an obsessive child? Be critical, snobbish, domineering, sick. You want an accident-prone child? Fight with each other? Ignore the child and the child will hurt himself to get your attention.

And so it goes. The point is, you have this treasure, you have this child, and you can exasperate that child. How do parents do that? I've just given you a little litany of things that you can read about in a typical book on child raising about how to raise a delinquent. But let me give you my own list here of how to provoke a child to wrath.

And I'm going to give you this list rather rapidly, so stick with it. Ten ways. Number one, by overprotection, by overprotection. Fence them in.

Never trust them. Don't give them the opportunity to develop independence. And deprivation will instill an angry mood. Parents must give children room to express themselves, to discover their world, to try a new adventure, gradually releasing them to live independently. Let the rope out. Overprotection frustrates and angers a child. We live in a world where that's a tendency among Christians. Keep them under your control all the time.

You have to be very careful about that, or they become exasperated. Secondly, you can do it by favoritism. Isaac favored Esau over Jacob.

Rebekah favored Jacob over Esau, and the sad results are well known. Don't compare them against each other. They're each unique. Love them the same without regard for each, without special regard for each.

No respective persons. If a child feels that you love another in that family more, that is a very, very frustrating experience. Thirdly, you can cause a child to become angry by setting unrealistic achievement goals. Some parents literally crush their children with pressure, pressure to excel in school, pressure to excel in sports, in music, in any activity they do. And it really has little to do with the child and everything to do with the reputation that the parent wants. This becomes very frustrating when the child has no sense of having reached a goal, no sense of having fulfilled an expectation.

It leads to being angry and bitter. And I have dealt with such children, I have dealt with such children who have killed themselves. I think of one girl in particular who killed herself to get her parents off her back. She never could accomplish enough to satisfy them, and she was so angry she wanted to hurt them in the most profound way she could, so she took her life so they would have to live with the pain of causing that.

Devastating. You can frustrate your child to anger by overindulgence, by giving them everything they want, by picking up after them always, by allowing them to throw all responsibility and accountability on others. You can't exasperate them by letting them sin and get away with it, so they learn to do that successfully.

Ultimately, when they face the world and people don't serve them and don't take all the responsibility for them and for their misdeeds, they will get angry and bitter and violent. It's just exactly the kind of generation we're seeing raised today. Fifthly, you can exasperate your child by discouragement. And I think that comes in two ways, lack of understanding and lack of reward, because both of those destroy motivation and they destroy incentive. You must understand your children, understand what they're thinking, understand what they're trying to accomplish, understand why a certain thing happened, why a certain behavior occurred, why a certain incident went a certain way. Grant them a listening ear and an understanding heart and reward them graciously and generously with love. Give them approval and honor and be patient with them, or they get very defeated and discouraged, and that turns to anger. You can provoke your children to anger, number six, by failing to sacrifice for them. In other words, by making the child feel like he's constantly an intrusion into your life, constantly an interruption, always a bother. You want to do what you want to do.

You and your husband want to go where you want to go. You just farm these kids out somewhere. Leave them. Let somebody else take care of them. You're not about to change your lifestyle.

You're going to do what you want to do. You're going to have your fun and your pleasure and you're going to have...the kids are just going to have to fend for themselves. Leave them, make them prepare their own meals. Don't take them places because you can't be bothered with them. And they will resent your being uncaring, unavailable, and self-centered.

It's one of the things that I'm so very thankful for and my own family is Patricia's devotion to our children all the years when they were growing up in the home, many years when I had to be going and traveling, and she refused to do that because she wanted to be with those children all the time. Number seven, you can provoke your children to anger by failing to allow for some growing up. What does that mean? Let them goof up a little. Let them make mistakes. So they knock something over at the table.

Laugh it off. They just don't quite have the manual dexterity yet or the coordination. Give them a little job and if they do it in an unacceptable way but it's a little bit of progress, commend them. Let them share some of their ridiculous ideas. Let them plan some silly things to do and do them. And don't condemn them. Just expect progress, not perfection.

The best of men are not perfect...are not perfect. The New York Tech many years ago defeated Rensselaer Poly 21 to 8. In that game, the only Rensselaer touchdown was set up by a 63-yard pass play, says the newspaper. On the play, there appeared to be a breakdown in the Tech defense. The next week when reviewing the films, Tech coach Marty Sonal noticed that the defensive back on the play, freshman John Smith, stood frozen on one spot while the receiver flew by him for the winning touchdown. Hey, Smitty, why didn't you move? the coach yelled.

Said Smith, I couldn't. My contact lens had just popped out and I covered it with my foot, waiting for a time to put it back. If I had left the spot, I never would have found it again in that grass and my parents would have killed me for losing it. Now I'm telling you, when you're in the big game and you live with that much fear of your parents, you've got a problem. Let your kids fail.

They're going to lose things. Hey, I remember when Matt flushed my watch down a toilet. I said, why did you do that? He said, I just wanted to see what it would look like going down. Did I spank him? No. In fact, I wish I'd have been there.

I'd like to see what it looked like when it was going down. Allow for a little growing for a few experiments. Number eight, you can provoke your children to anger by neglect. If there's any biblical illustration of this, it's probably David and Absalom. David spent no time with him, no time shaping him, and Absalom ultimately hated his father with a passion, tried to pull a coup to dethrone his father and take his place. Neglect. And the worst kind of neglect? Lack of consistent discipline. That's the worst kind of neglect. I'm not talking about the neglect of time and things. I'm talking about the neglect of discipline.

Teach them discipline, consistently using the rod in love. Number nine, you can provoke your children to anger by abusive words. You understand that a little child has a very limited vocabulary and you have a very comprehensive one? Verbal abuse is a terrible thing. A barrage of well-chosen words from your adult vocabulary can cut that little heart to shreds. And what is as devastating as anything are words of anger, words of sarcasm, or words of ridicule. Frankly, we say things to our children we would never say to anybody else. And lastly, by physical abuse. An angry child is often a beaten, abused, over zealously punished child, usually from an angry, vengeful parent who only cares that he has been inconvenienced or irritated, not that the child needs correction for his own good. Well, those are some very simple, practical things.

If you want to provoke your child to anger, you can do it by overprotection, favoritism, setting unrealistic achievement goals, overindulgence, discouragement, failing to sacrifice for them so that they can see your love, failing to allow for them to grow up by neglecting firm, consistent, loving discipline by abusive words and physical abuse as well. Don't do that. Turn to the positive with me. Rather, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, or the nurture and admonition of the Lord as the Authorized says. Bring them up. They won't get there themselves, I might add hastily. You've got to bring them up.

They're not going to get there by themselves. You have to bring them up. Proverbs 29, 15 says, a child left to himself brings his mother shame.

And that is what I told you earlier. It is not what parents do to children so much, although obviously if they do things that are abusive and painful it has effects. But it is what parents do not do that exasperates children, the lack of discipline, the lack of love, the lack of care. You must bring them up. This is a call to raise your children, to focus on it. Now let me give you some practical instruction at this point.

How do you do this? How do you bring your child up? What is the real key to this challenging work? I'm going to give you the key. Turn in your Bible to Proverbs 4 23, Proverbs 4 23. And here we are really going to get to the issue. This insight here tells us what is wrong with all of your children and all of mine.

It's the same problem. Proverbs 4 23 says, Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. Now what you have here is a clear-cut, divinely inspired statement that the issues of life come out of the heart. All the matters of life proceed from the heart. In Mark 7 and verse 21, Jesus said, For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within. And the same thing essentially is recorded for us in Luke chapter 6 and verse 45, The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth what is good, and the evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth what is evil, for his mouth speaks from that which fills his heart. Now what you want to recognize with your child is this.

You have a heart problem. You're not dealing with behavioral issues, you're dealing with the heart. In fact, let me go beyond that and say behavior is not the crucial issue. Changing your child's behavior is not the crucial issue. In fact, a change in behavior without a change in heart is nothing but hypocrisy.

It is a sham because the sin and the rebellion is still there and is only delayed as to its expression. All behavior, all conduct is linked to some heart condition, some heart attitude. And parents, listen, your task as parents is to set yourself to the heart of the child. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. Today John explained what it means to provoke your children to wrath as he continued his study, The Fulfilled Family. Now John, in the midst of all these basic principles on parenting that you've looked at this week, I know you don't want parents to lose focus on something even more foundational, and that is their marriage. It's too easy to let your parenting duties derail your marriage. So let me ask, what are some practical ways husbands and wives can prioritize the marriage relationship while they're raising children?

Yeah, really good question and very foundational. It's pretty simple in concept to me, husbands love your wives. That is a simple command, but it has vast implications. To love means to consider her more important than yourself. To love means to be totally committed to every need that she has. To love her with the love that Christ has for his church means that you are concerned about all her spiritual needs and her spiritual well-being.

So I get this question asked a lot, what's the key for a husband to love his wife? And it's this. What I've tried to do with Patricia, my goal has always been, whatever will be a spiritual benefit to her and or bring her joy? That's what I do. It's simple.

It's the way I define everything. I just ask that simple question, will this be a spiritual benefit to her and will it be joy to her? Will this be something that satisfies her heart, that makes her feel loved, protected, cared for, and all of that?

It's not complicated. It's the eagerness with which you give up your own personal will for that which benefits your partner. And that's exactly how Christ loved the church. He actually said in the garden, not my will but yours be done to the Father, and then gave his life for the church. And he made the ultimate sacrifice for us, and that's the pattern that we have to follow as husbands for our wives.

And I think that is what a woman longs for, the security and the protection and the love of a husband who sees himself as making sacrifices for her spiritual well-being and her delight and her joy. Tom as The Study Bible will help you get all you can out of your time in God's Word. Again, to purchase the MacArthur Study Bible, call us at 800-55-GRACE or visit us at GTY.org.

That's our website. When you visit there, GTY.org, make sure to take advantage of the thousands of free resources that we've created there to deepen your love for God's Word. That includes GraceStream. It's a continuous broadcast of John's verse-by-verse teaching. We start it in Matthew chapter 1 and go all the way through the end of Revelation. So, whether you have five minutes or a few hours, just log on and listen to the life-changing truth of God's Word, GraceStream. It's just one of the numerous resources available to you for free at GTY.org. Now, for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, reminding you to watch Grace To You television this Sunday, and make sure you're here tomorrow when John shows you four vital truths that Christian parents need to teach their children. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.