Please open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 6. We're gonna continue the exposition of this great passage of scripture. We've been speaking about the commands that are directed to children in this passage, and there are two commands, to obey and to honor, and then there's a promise associated with it now we turn to parents and we've been saying in different ways you know that God has structured the family to be a picture of the gospel. Husbands love their wives like Christ loved the church. A husband represents Jesus Christ.

That's who he is. He has to know who he is. A wife represents the church. She is a submissive and a respectful church. She's not her own, that's her role in life.

And children represent an obedient submissive church. And this is a picture of the true gospel. And so now we turn to parents, and parents together actually are also a picture of the gospel of Jesus Christ, because in this passage, parents are designed by God to rescue their children from sin. Children have their sins exposed by their behavior in the presence of their children, and parents deal with that sin. Many sins are secret sins.

Dishonor is a secret sin, but it manifests itself in outward ways as well. But parents here in this passage also have duties. They have things to do, they must do them. And so let's read just one verse, Ephesians 6 verse four. And you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

So there are two commands. The first is negative. Do not exasperate. And the second is to bring them up. It's a positive command.

So there are there are things to do You know in the first three verses, it was very clear that children must honor and obey their parents. But God doesn't leave it there. There is a balance. And this next verse tells us that parents must rise to the occasion. Parents must do something, they need to do their part, and God makes it very clear what parents are supposed to do.

Now, over the last few months, I don't know if I've read 20 or 30 new books, more modern books, that have been written on child-raising and parenting. And some of them have just made me want to scream because they don't really speak of what the parents' duties are. They speak above the duties. I have a whole stack of books, gospel-centered parenting, grace-based child-raising, grace-based, gospel-based, this or that. They all contain some valuable things, but very few of them actually tell parents what to do.

But the Bible tells parents what to do. In fact, if you read the older books on child raising, well, they use the Bible to tell parents what to do. And it's critical that parents do what they're supposed to do. They have duties. And we live in an age where people don't want to be told what to do, so there's a whole new generation of extremely popular books that really start out saying, this book isn't gonna tell you what to do.

But The Bible doesn't do that. The Bible actually tells you what to do. This passage is a glorious example of that. And here we learn that there are things that fathers do that are harmful on the one hand, they provoke to anger, but they must not neglect doing something else on the other hand, they must not neglect the training and the admonition of the Lord. And the Apostle wants us to understand that you need to get a grip on the idea that if you do harmful things to your children, defined as neglecting what God has commanded.

It's a very serious matter. And so the apostle Paul here is pointing out to two dangerous pitfalls of parents. Now I'm going to use the word parents. The apostle uses the word fathers. I believe that parents is code, or the word fathers here in verse 4 is code for parents because in the previous verses there is the command to honor your father and your mother.

These are implied, there are two authorities in a home, a father and a mother. And there's this danger, first of all, to provoke to anger. So I'd just like to spend a little bit of time on that. To provoke children to anger is to speak or act in such a way to make children feel resentful. This causes them to stumble and it's the parents fault.

And it's very dangerous for parents to cause children to stumble. The Lord Jesus Christ said, whoever causes one of the least of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he be drowned in the depth of the sea. Now this is a very heartbreaking judgment against parents who caused their children to sin. Parents have many opportunities to provoke their children to wrath. Even Martin Luther understood this.

He had a very harsh and abusive father and to help fathers avoid that harshness he suggested that they place an apple next to the rod so that they would remember. They would just remember to encourage their children and not just let their relationship be characterized by wrath. Martin Luther had a hard time calling God father in his prayers at the beginning because of his harsh father. But children should be fondly cherished and dealt gently with. This is what the fruit of the Spirit does.

It's gentleness, it's self-control, it's all these marvelous things. But here's one thing that I think we should be very careful to understand. If we are parents, we should not automatically conclude that our children's bad attitude is 100% their fault. It may mean, it may be that the child has been hurt by sinful behavior of a parent. And these words provoke to wrath or exasperate here mean to discourage.

And parents should always ask, have I done anything that would make my child unnecessarily exasperated, angry, discouraged, disappointed, sullen, unmotivated? Now, in the last talk, I was asking children to examine their hearts to see if there was any rebellion in their hearts toward their parents and really to call them to repent and run, run to Jesus now and repent of your sin, of rebellion because it's so damaging. Well in the same way it would be proper to do the same thing, to ask every parent to search the heart and ask, is any of my neglecting or sinful behavior contributing to the rebellion or the disappointment or the listlessness or the sullenness of my children? And the apostle makes parents face that reality. It's very, very critical that we ask that question.

We've always got to be considering our parenting style, the things that we actually do, because it is possible by our attitudes, by our styles, our way with words, the looks on our faces to dishearten our children and actually drive them not to care. You can just suck the motivation right out of a child by sinful behavior. And if your children lack motivation, it's very important that you consider if you have demotivated them yourself. Are you a contributor to their sin? And it's most of the time, it's both.

And so both have to recognize their fallenness and their frailty, their sinfulness before God. Repentance is always the way out. And repentance is always the way in to happiness in a family. And there are many common ways that parents provoke their children to anger. Harshness provokes children to anger.

Not listening provokes children to anger. Being too quick to respond. Correcting in anger. Favoritism can provoke children to wrath. Unreasonable expectations for success in some area of life.

Withholding affection can provoke children to anger. A critical spirit. Cruelty. Belittling your children. Tell them that they'll never be this or never be that.

Not taking enough time to solve problems is a way to exasperate your children. Breaking promises, being late. No laughter. No joy. Unforgiveness of your children or someone else.

Making comparisons. Inconsistent discipline provokes children to wrath. Rash discipline, not communicating. Not casting a clear vision for the family provokes children to wrath. Hypocrisy on the one hand, overindulgence on the other hand, overprotection on the one hand.

Perhaps one of the most damaging things that parents can do to their children is to not give them a biblical understanding of the gospel and the pervasiveness and sin in all of us. Caring only about outward appearances in public can cause children to wrath. Disregarding their unique constitution because all children are different you can't treat them all the same way. Blatant double standards. Little time as a family.

Addiction to work and success. Oh, there are so many ways. Let me count the ways that parents can exasperate their children. I've done it in various ways. So the first danger is provoking them.

And don't think for a minute that your children are the only offenders. Search your own heart. You may need to go to your children and confess and repent of the things that have caused them to be angry. You know, the Bible says a gentle answer turns away wrath. In other words, it really matters what you do as a parent.

Well, the second danger here is the neglecting of the biblically required rigors of training in the home. Here, we really get to a New Testament fulfillment of many Old Testament commands in the passage of scripture. I believe this is a direct fulfillment of Deuteronomy 6. That children should be taught when they, when you sit in the house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. Here's the New Testament explanation fulfillment of that Old Testament principle.

Now training here, this word training is critical. It has to do with an all-consuming occupation. If you have children, the training of your children is not a side business. It is the business of your life. This is a fulfillment really of the Abrahamic Covenant, which is all bound up in the role of parenting.

In Genesis 18 verse 19, it makes it very clear that Abraham's calling in life was all caught up, dominated by commanding his children. God says, for I have known him, Abraham, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they might keep the way of the Lord to do justice and righteousness that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him. Well, what God brought to Abraham, speaking it to him was a promise that all the families of the earth would be blessed. This is just a New Testament explanation of that blessing. And parents owe it to their children to bless their children in that way.

Every governor ought to look at himself as obligated to saturate their families with the word of truth. And that's what this means here. And then to bring them up, it means to nourish and to maturity, to rear them. And it's not confined to just providing food and clothing and shelter. It's the rearing in every department of life.

And the word that he uses here for bring them up, ek-trefo, you know, training them up, It's the same word that the Apostle Paul uses in Ephesians 5 25 for husbands to nourish and cherish their wives, to nourish them, to fill them up with something. And parents must do that. There's content, it's meaty, there's something that he, a husband gives to his wife and there's something that parents give to their children. You know, I was so delighted for Don Hart appealing for wives to come home and be with their children. We're not done with needing to say that.

You know, I was so, on the one hand, delighted to hear President Trump's State of the Union address a couple of months ago where he said that children were made in the holy image of God. And a president has never said that before. I couldn't believe it. I said, did he say that? He did say that, arguing against abortion.

But then he talked, then he was praising the administration because all these extra women have been flooding into the workforce and he gave numbers about that and all these marvelous public schools and I thought man if I was president I'd be wanting to say 500 million thousand wives have gone back to raise their children that's what I'd want to say in my State of the Union address we've shut down 40, 000 schools that are that's what I want to say you know So you won't see me running for president because of that. But you know God has designed husbands and wives to co-labor together, particularly wives, to give the best years of their life to train their children. Somebody needs to be there. It's a lot of work, absolutely it is. And then this is the whole training and nurturing of education.

It's the whole picture of life. And then there's this word admonish. You know, there to admonish their children. It means to counsel them, to exhort them, to teach them what's wise about the world. And it includes, it doesn't just include correction, it includes encouragement.

And even dealing with their bad attitudes and helping them to understand what is good in the world. Wise people get on the right side of what's good. They get on the right side of what works. And parents are supposed to help their children do that. Bring them up, train and nurture, admonish.

These all refer to a total picture of education, and they're all sort of mixed in together. They're part of a package. And how to be a marriage partner, how to be a worker, how to be a church member, how to be a citizen, how to treat your brother and your sister, how to treat your friend, how to do anything. Parents had been designed by God to do that. And you know, how to be a son, how to be a father, how to be a mother, how to be a grandmother, how to be a grandfather.

You know, these are the roles we play. Who am I? Well, I'm a dad. I'm a son. I'm a grandfather.

I'm a husband. That's who I am. That's what I have to do. I'm supposed, there's stuff to do for me. That's who God says I am.

And The weight of scripture here is that the responsibility is on the parent. There's nothing that lets parents off the hook to this, and so they are to bring their children up in the training and the admonition of the Lord. The book of Proverbs illustrates the role of parents in so many ways. Proverbs was written by a father, two fathers, for the training and admonition of the Lord for their children. And God has particularly focused this jurisdiction of parents to perform this function.

They have something to do and it is it's it's a lifelong task. It actually never ends. Moses actually says you your son and your grandson all the days of your life. In other words, you're not done when they turn 18. You're never done training your children and your grandchildren and if you have great grandchildren after you.

You know, The Proverbs is just so full of these admonitions and we could go over them. You know Proverbs 19, 18, chasin' your son while there's hope and do not set your heart on his destruction. When's the time of hope? Well it's when they're young. That's the time of hope.

And during this time of hope, parents must secure honor and obedience from their children. And it's a painful job, but somebody's got to do it. And The writer of Hebrews says that no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful. I found that that's both painful for parent and child. Nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who've been trained by it.

You know children, it doesn't seem to be joyful at the moment, but if you allow yourself to be trained by it, it will empower you like nothing else. Parents, don't be lackadaisical in the training, the admonition, and the chastening of your children. It does hurt. I found as a young father, I didn't like to spank my children. I hated it.

I hated it. I needed Deborah. She taught me how to do that. I did it because God commanded me to do it. It was the right thing to do.

But children need to recognize that the Chastening may not seem joyful, and parents need to understand they have to face that. Parents have to face a child who's dealing with that problem. But It brings forth the peaceable fruit of righteousness. You know, there was a remarkable thing that happened in our church Just a couple months ago. There was a little boy little boy he pulled a fresh hot cup of tea all on his face and he got second-degree burns rushing to the hospital.

We were having prayer week and right in the middle of prayer that couple had to leave and took their child to the hospital And I went to see this little boy in the hospital, precious boy, and he had been burned all over his face. Thank the Lord, it missed his eyes. But when I got there, Deborah and I were there in the hospital, and the doctors were scrubbing his face every four hours, okay, with soap and an abrasive cloth every four hours. And when the doctors would walk in that baby, that boy would burst into tears and his mama kept saying to him, all chastening doesn't seem to be joyful. It has to be done.

And apparently the treatment of burns, at least this kind of burn, required at least four times a day of the scraping and cleaning of the wound. You can imagine how painful that was. And that boy came over to the hospital and that went on for I think two more weeks. And it was really painful. And that whole family got a front row seat on how chastening doesn't seem to be joyful, but boy, it must happen.

That little boy was in church last Sunday. His face was clean and bright like he had never been burned because of the treatment. He had to go through the pain, but boy was it worth it. And parents must recognize that. It's so critical.

And These commands are directed to fathers and mothers. Of course, it's the responsibility of the child to honor and obey parents. God will ultimately hold them accountable for that. But children cannot do this alone. They cannot do it by themselves.

After all, they are children. They are immature. They need help. They need someone to help them deal with their sin, their narcissism, their selfishness, their stupid ideas about life. And they need parents.

They are too selfish to want it themselves. They need you. They need the compassionate parent to pull them out of it and not leave them alone in it. We ought to have compassion on our children and come to their rescue. This is how parents really become a picture of the gospel.

They come to their children in the state of their sinfulness, and they rescue them just the same way that you were rescued by Jesus Christ. He came to you and he pulled you out of waters that were too strong for you. A child's narcissistic bent is too strong for him, and he needs parents to pull him out. He needs a compassionate and faithful high priest to rescue him. God is so kind to provide these things.

Sin is crouching at the door of all children's lives. David in Psalm 103 speaks of this so beautifully. He says, as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him, for he knows our frame. He remembers that we are but dust. Here's a picture of a father who knows the condition of your soul and your susceptibility to sin, your immaturity, he knows and he comes to your rescue.

He knows your frame. What a blessing it is that God does this. You know, one of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 138, this captured my heart when I was probably 16 years old. And the words, though I walk in the midst of trouble, you will revive me. You'll reach out your hand, You'll reach out your mighty hand and save my life This is God doing it.

This is what theologians called monergism. God reaches out and he saves you You need help. So children need parents who are fiercely committed to obey the divine commands. And without it, the sinful inclinations that are at work in your children's lives will not be confronted. And we need to urgently and ardently rescue our children from their narcissistic tendencies, lest they be swept away and be destroyed.

And if we do not urgently and ardently set ourselves to securing honor and obedience we cause our children to stumble you must secure the honor and the obedience You are responsible to secure that territory as parents And you cannot be lazy and just see if it will come around. You must secure it by the power of the Holy Spirit. It's very dangerous to withhold a helping hand. You know, we cause our children to stumble when we just let sin run wild without resistance in our families. You know, dishonor and disobedience manifest itself in many different ways.

I'm going to give you 11 expressions of dishonor that you cannot let continue in your home. Don't let them continue in your home. Number one, the rolling of the eyes. Number two, arguing with you. Number three, delayed obedience.

Number four, whining. Number five, running and pulling away from you. Number six, hitting you as parents. Number seven, demonstrating negative behavior during discipline. Number eight, making excuses.

Number nine, temper tantrums. Number ten, resisting the rod. Number eleven, presenting alternatives rather than obedience the first time. Now, I know looking over this audience that many of you have many children, many of you have little children. What a blessing that is.

I have a very special compassion and tenderness toward mothers who have many little children. My daughters all have many little children, some of them born one year after another. And I pray for them. My heart goes out to them. I tell their husbands, you can't live like me.

We had four children spaced out in time pretty significantly. But you don't have that. So you dads, you got to live differently. If you have a wife that has a lot of children, You can't live like every other man. You just can't.

You need to be really dialed in to helping her. And these mothers, you know who you are. You have so many children in the home, you can't keep up with all the rebellion and disobedience that takes place. And you get to the end of the day, and here's what you say, I didn't do anything today. All I did was put out fires.

I didn't do anything. But you know what you did? You were there. You were standing in the way of the narcissism and the selfishness that would destroy your children. You were there.

You did do something. You did the most significant thing that anybody can ever do. And that is to stand in the way of the sins of children in order to rescue them in order to bring them to Jesus Christ in order to appeal to their hearts to turn to the Lord and serve Him, and to quit hating their brother or sister or their mother or their father or their circumstances. Mothers are put in the way of this. It's not an interruption.

And I'm encouraging my own daughters, girls, when you get to the end of the day and you say, I didn't do anything, honey, you really did. You did exactly what God called you to do. And that is to love your children like Christ loved the church. Seeing their sin and relieving them of it and helping them and teaching them. You did the most important thing in the world.

Well this is one reason why mothers should come home. They should have, they should abandon the workplace. The world wants to put a mother in a cubicle. God wants to put a wife in a garden where she can nurture and cherish and care for and bring up and deal with the sins of a rising generation. Which one's more important?

You decide. Well God has already decided. He's said that wives should be keepers at home. I praise God. I praise God when women are at home taking the hit, sacrificing, dying to themselves so that others might live.

It's nothing less than that, brothers and sisters. Keep on the task. Keep dealing with sin. It's not a waste of time. Obedience should be required without complaint, without excuse, and without delay.

Now when our children were growing up, we taught them a little acronym. C-E-D. C-E-D. Without complaint, without excuse, without delay. And we told them, God will bless you.

And He has, absolutely He has. I see it every day. It's amazing. First time obedience is very, very critical. Children will continue to manifest sinful and dishonorable behavior and you must be there to see it and rescue them from it to deal with it.

Now there are many telltale signs that you've been letting this go. There are signs that you have not been securing the honor, you've not been securing the ground that God has appointed you to secure and you know, watch for these things. Here are six warning signs that you've not secured the ground or you need to continue to be more Diligent in it. Are you exasperated and frustrated with your children? Number one if you're exact if you're exasperated and frustrated with your children you're probably not taking action either enough or consistently enough or lovingly enough.

Number two, are you repeating instructions and making threats? Number three, are you conditioning your children to respond to harshness? Oh, I'm sure none of you have ever done that. Children shouldn't need a harsh word, but often we fall into the trap. Well, they're only gonna obey if they hear the right tone of voice.

Well, that's for their destruction. Because guess what? They're gonna have a boss someday who's just gonna gently and kindly ask them to do something. Not harshly. And if they're just insensible to things until it gets harsh.

Oh my don't let that happen Some of their bosses will be gentle right up to the very moment they fire them and they'll fire them in gentleness They'll be just so kind and sweet about it. You just don't belong here, brother. For these five reasons, I'm so sorry. It breaks my heart. And it does.

And you're gone. Your children are going to experience that probably. So you need to get them ready for the gentle voice that's going to cut them off someday. Okay? So are you bribing your children, number four?

Number five, are you hearing, are you hearing nothing but excuses? Number six, are you inconsistent? Which means are you unreliable? It must be consistent. These are the signs that you have not secured honor and obedience and you need to take action.

But we need to remember that this is all about a compassionate heart of God who rescues. God reaches us, He stretches out His hand, He holds us in his everlasting arms and he carries us. Your children need to be carried in obedience often. They're not mature enough to get there themselves. They need you to take them there.

And you must get to their heart, absolutely. But we must rescue them. You know, Proverbs 22, 15 says foolishness is bound up in the heart of the child, and the rod of correction will drive it far from him. Well, that's a conditional promise. There's something you have to do to deal with foolishness.

Doing something specific will cause something else specific and observable to happen. If you don't use the rod properly and drive the foolishness out of him, he will retain his foolishness and he will not have any hope for wisdom and it's your fault as a parent because you didn't do what you're supposed to do. Frankly I am sick and tired of all the books that say it's all about the gospel. Well, in one way it really is. But if that means there's nothing for you to do, you're not talking about the same gospel.

Because God calls for obedient children. That's part of the gospel. And when their hearts are changed, they obey. And that's the sequence. Their hearts have to change first.

You know, one of the most popular books on the market right now on the subject of parenting, there's a statement, he says, you cannot change your children. That's what he says. Two things at the beginning of the book. This book isn't going to tell you what to do. And you cannot change your children.

That is a big bunch of baloney. You can! You really can. You can train your children. You know what?

You can train a worker. You can even train a dog. Don't tell me you can't change your children. That's ridiculous. You can't save them, but you can prepare them to be saved.

Well, Solomon said, correct your son and he'll give you rest. Yes, he will give delight to your soul in Proverbs 29, 17. I mean, the most famous verse in the Bible on child raising is in Proverbs. It's Proverbs 22, six. Train up a child in the way he should go.

And when he's old, he will not depart from it. It really matters what parents do. What parents do has a profound influence on their future. God was the one who said, train up a child in the way he should go and in the end he will not depart from it. Parental action causes things to happen.

All parental styles are not created equal. And passivity in parenting is a losing proposition. There's a right way and there's a wrong way to deal with sinfulness in your children. The Bible just explodes the whole idea of no-fault parenting. The Bible rejects the idea that you just raise your children and you give them opportunity and choices and you say this you say that and they just decide for themselves the Bible doesn't say teach that you know what what Eli did with his sons made a difference.

He didn't, you know what, Eli corrected his sons, but he didn't restrain them. And God caused judgment to fall on his entire family lineage and destroyed it. Eli's descendants are gone. Because he did not restrain. He did command them, but he did not restrain them In other words, he didn't carry them.

He didn't help them You know one of the quickest ways to understand what's going on a child's heart is to hear the words that they say, particularly what they say to their siblings. And I just want to urge you, in terms of just an application of all this, is to be uncompromising in the government of the speech that takes place in your homes. Parents can always expect to hear various kinds of sinful speech from their children. They will hear arguments. Gimme that.

They will hear name calling. You stupid idiot. They will hear screaming. Stop it. They will hear overreactions.

She hurt me. Misrepresentations. He pushed me. Or the classic of children riding in the car. He touched me.

You're going to hear these things, you know. Don't be surprised. And you're going to hear all kinds of self-serving and unkind things come out of the mouths of your children. Hurtful things, slanderous things, misrepresentations, presumptuous speech. Really, all of your sins of the tongue and all of my sins of the tongue are going to come out of your mouths of your children.

What happens to us is we become insensible to it. It's just so normal to us that we don't take action against it. I grew up in California really close to a railroad track. I remember when we first moved there, we heard the train go by all the time, but after a while we never heard it anymore. Well, that's what happens with children a lot of times.

You know, one time, I bet this was 20 years ago, we had a family over at our house, a really close family, some close friends, and I can't remember what child did this but one of our children said something to either Deborah or I and after the table was cleared you know that friend said, do you let your kids talk to you that way? Deborah looked at each other and said, oh my, we've let this slip. We just got used to it. And I was really glad they said that. I wasn't offended at all.

It was absolutely true. We should not allow our children to talk that way. And you know, there are vital reasons you should deal with sinful speech in your home. First of all, words are always reflections of the heart. Secondly, the Bible teaches that the tongue is a killer.

Well, let's talk about this first one. Words are a reflection of the heart. The Bible says that the mouth speaks what's in the heart. Jesus said, for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth good things.

And an evil man, out of the evil treasure of his heart, brings forth evil things. You need to understand what's going on inside of your children when they say certain things. Jesus taught that your outward life is like a tree of good and bad fruit, but the root, this thing that's feeding it, is the critical matter. That's why Solomon says, keep your heart with all diligence for out of it spring the issues of life. And then he says, put a deceitful mouth, tongue away from your mouth and put perverse lips far from you.

That's in Proverbs 4 23. And Solomon commands parents to deal with the outward as well as the inward. Both. You don't just deal with the inward. It's not just all about their heart.

It's, yes, partly about their heart because that's where everything's coming from. But don't think that you shouldn't deal with the outward. You know, that's not sinful outward for conformity to tell your children to quit slandering their brother. That's wisdom, that's a call for holiness. You know, in that same text in Proverbs 4, in verse 27 it says, remove your foot from evil.

In other words, do something about it. Do something outward about it. And you don't want to fall into the wrong thinking that the heart is the only part of the problem. It's the root of the problem, but there's an outward manifestation that leads right to that root, and they're connected. They're connected.

It's not like you have the behavior that's disconnected. So when you deal with behavior, you're also dealing with that heart. The Bible teaches that the tongue is a killer. Proverbs 18, 21 says that life and death are in the power of the tongue. You know, there are two issues here.

What the tongue can do to others. It can either promote health or death. It can be a killing instrument, but you also eat the fruit of your tongue. That's what Proverbs 18 says. You're going to eat the fruit of what you say.

Well I don't know how many words I wish I could take back that came out of my wicked heart, self-serving, proud heart. And you know I've had to eat the fruit of some of the things I've said. But we often think that our children's arguments and harsh speech are small matters, but they're not. James says that the tongue is a fire, it's a world of iniquity, unruly evil, full of deadly poison, and it defiles the whole body. In James 3, verses 6 and 8.

Now I'm gonna give you particular sins of the tongue that you should be mindful of and waging war against. Now I'm gonna say this to you in terms of your children, but don't think for a minute that it doesn't have a double meaning. That it doesn't also point to the parents. Number one, speaking harshly. This includes arguments and outbursts and sharp rebukes.

Jesus said, whose ever angry with his brother without cause shall be in danger of the council and whoever says you fool shall be in danger of the Hellfire. It's very serious when you have children speaking harshly to one another. Don't take it lightly. Number two, speaking rashly. This includes overreactions and presumptions.

Proverbs 29 20 says, do you see a man hasty in his words? There's more hope for him than a fool. I'm sorry, there's more hope for a fool than for him. Number three, lying. This includes not just blatant lies, but misrepresentations, twisting of the truth, half-truths.

Well, God said this in Exodus 20, you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Number four, grumbling and complaining. This includes all expressions of unthankfulness. You know God tells us in Philippians 2 14 do all things without complaining and disputing all things and that applies to parents and children. Number five, idle words.

This includes unnecessary, unprofitable, incessant, chattering about irrelevant things. And Jesus says in Matthew 12, 36 and 37, but I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give an account in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned." Number six, speaking wrathfully. This includes all angry and hurtful speech. Paul says to the Colossians church in Colossians 3 8, but now you yourselves are to put off all these anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.

Number seven, impure speech. This includes all impure and coarse and unthankful speech. Paul says to the Ephesian church in Ephesians 5, 3, and 4, but fornication and all uncleanness are covetous. Let it not even be named among you as is fitting for saints neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor course jesting which are not fitting but rather of giving thanks number eight flattery this includes all insincere and self-serving Manipulative speech you've heard it before go to Psalm 5 verse 9 and Psalm 12 verse 3 then there's tattling and gossip This includes carrying Either true or false slanderous stories around That's first Corinthians 2 Corinthians 12 20 Proverbs 16 28 and then there number 10 blasphemy this is taking the Lord's name in vain which includes dishonor toward God and pretending holiness. But positively, you know, we're called to impart grace to the hearer in Ephesians 4 29, to cover over the transgressions of others by your speech Proverbs 10 12 to speak words of wisdom Pro Psalm 37 30 to speak for the health of the other person Proverbs 12 18 to talk of the praises of the Lord Psalm 35 28 to speak the truth and love Proverbs 12 19 To speak words of encouragement to the weary, Isaiah 50, verse four.

To speak with kindness, Proverbs 31, 26. To speak to your neighbor, to your neighbor, not about him. That's Matthew 18 15. Now if you're concerned about the speech of your children, the first thing that you should do as a husband and wife is to think about your own speech. Often sinful speech in a home can just be traced to the sinful speech of their parents.

And the ungoverned tongues between husband and wife become the patterns for ungoverned tongues among children. You know, if your children are speaking sinfully to one another, the first step is to examine your own heart and to repent of any sinful speech that you've had together as a couple. Maybe you slander other people in the church and you think you can say whatever you want in your in your home. Well guess what? Slander is illegal everywhere, even between husband and wife.

Husbands and wives should be very careful about how they discuss friends and neighbors and politicians in the hearing of their children. Children should be taught from an early age not to speak evil of their siblings, you should not allow that to take place in your home. It's cancerous, it's dangerous. In Psalm 50 verse 20 there's this really heartbreaking scene that's portrayed there where the children of Israel are slandering one another, but here's how they speak against one another. He says, you slander your mother's son.

In other words, your sibling. You're slandering your own siblings. It's so wicked to do that. And that should be put to death in a home. You know, Solomon said, whoever guards his mouth and his tongue keeps his soul from troubles.

So, all of this to say, Securing honor and obedience is a responsibility of parents to their children. And God has commanded children to honor and obey so that it will go well with them. And parents are commanded to not exasperate their Children, but to bring them up in the training and in the admonition of the Lord. Don't miss the responsibility that parents have. And don't think in this relativistic culture that you can do whatever you want.

Do what the Bible tells you to do and just keep doing it. And forget all the psychologists and forget all the child raising experts, the Bible is actually very clear. And it does tell you how to feel and it does tell you why you should do what you should do, but it also tells you exactly what you should do. And so parents have been designed by God to come to the rescue of their children like faithful and compassionate high priests to help them deal with their greatest threat sin in their lives. So finally, and you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord.

Lord, I pray that that would be so, that we would be found obedient, faithful, humble, servants of yours, doing what you told us to do until you come again. I pray you would bring forth all the fruit of that in this generation that's sitting here now. Amen.