Christian fathers in every culture are breaching this wall that God has given to protect children.

Am I Scaling the Protective Wall of Fatherhood?

Ephesians 6:4 & Colossians 3:21

Pastor Kerry Kinchen, Bridgeway Bible Church

Please turn to Ephesians 6:4. Bookmark that particular passage, and then find Colossians 3:21, and then bookmark that one too. These are the two primary passages we will be focusing upon this morning. While you are turning there, I want you to be thinking about a Proverb that is of extreme importance when it comes to the influence of others on our lives. Proverbs 22:24-25 says,

"Do not associate with a man given to anger; Or go with a hot-tempered man, or you will learn his ways and find a snare for yourself." Proverbs 22:24-25

The Bible is full of amazing words of wisdom like these that will bless our lives if we will heed them. As I begin this sermon, I want us to think about this Proverb in respect to those people, who for some reason, we must associate with, who are angry, or who are hot tempered, like for example when children must associate with parents who happen to be this way. Children learn anger from their parents who are their primary teachers in this life. Parents can teach their children to be patient, loving and kind, but parents can also teach their children to be hot tempered, angry, and unkind. This is a very important revelation to get out of the way this morning, because we are going to look at more biblical revelation on how parents influence children toward a life of anger. Please read our passages with me, starting with Ephesians 6:4

"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4

Now Colossians 3:21,

"21 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart." Colossians 3:21

I want us to keep these passages in mind, as we prepare our hearts to learn from God's word this morning in this sermon titled,

Am I Scaling the Protective Wall of Fatherhood? [prayer]

This morning, I made the sermon title to be an important question:

"Am I Scaling the Protective Wall of Fatherhood?"

Now at first, it might seem like I mean that the protective wall of Fatherhood is Fatherhood itself, and that Fatherhood is supposed to be a protective wall. Certainly this is true. God has ordained that godly fatherhood should be a protective wall for children. But, this is not what I mean by the title of this sermon. What I mean is that the protective wall is a composite that is made up of the two verses I just quoted. There is the first layer:

"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4

Cemented to that one is,

"21 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart." Colossians 3:21

God has ordained these to be a protective wall to continuously stand before us fathers. As the wall stands there, we fathers are to stand before it each and every day. We are to notice it. We are to recognize that it is a barrier of protection. We are to submit to its presence as that which God will never remove, and that which we should not attempt to scale. The two layers of the wall--Ephesians 6:4, and Colossians 3:21 are there from God to protect children from us fathers.

As we look into these two passages this morning, the address of Paul's instruction sticks out in a stark way--doesn't it? Immediately we notice that Paul's instruction is about parents not angering, and not exasperating children. We see that. But more importantly, we see that Paul is interested in one particular parent. Paul is interested in fathers. This is clearly a passage that deals with fathers in relationship to their children. This is so very important. One reason that this is so important is because, as Christians, (and I am talking to us Christian men--men who know Christ as their Lord and Savior); our fatherhood as men, is a direct reflection of God Who is our heavenly Father. We are in Christ spiritually and positionally. Christ is God's only begotten Son. Being in Christ, the Son, is our position in salvation, and so this is the way that God knows us, as new creations in Christ. What this means, is that in Him, we are children of God, the Father. So, the urging for us fathers, is to live in such a manner that our children see us reflecting the image of our Father God.

It gets even deeper. There is another special reason why this is so important. Paul explains the family authority-submission structure throughout Ephesians 5, and into 6, where we are studying now. When we look at the family unit with spiritual eyes, along with the fact that the man of the household is to be looked to as the head, in submission, just as the church is submitted to Christ (where the wife is referenced), we get the sense that the Christian family unit is a church type. The man represents Christ, and in practice, the man is the spiritual and physical shepherd of his family. Maybe you have never thought of your family as a church type, but it is. You see, the Christian family is a beautiful working-metaphor of the church. The father is like a pastor of the flock. What this means, is that we fathers have a great responsibility to care for, and nurture, our families, as the primary spiritual leaders of our families. With these things in mind, we look at the word of God. We see the writing on the wall, and we see the first big concern that we are to nurture as Christian fathers:

"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, ..." Ephesians 6:4

"Fathers, do not exasperate your children, ..." Colossians 3:21

Okay, We know that our Father is God. Now think about this; it is never your Father-God's intention to provoke you to anger. It is not in your heavenly Father's plan to exasperate you so that you will lose heart. God covers us with grace while He saves us. God showers us with grace while He teaches us from His word, and God blesses us with His grace while He sanctifies us unto holiness in our Christians walk. God is the perfect example of the perfect Father. We are human, and so what happens for many of us in so many pockets of our lives, is that we manifest human errors, human motives, and human reactions in what we do. In other words, we don't always cover our children with godly grace while we raise them up. We don't always shower our children with grace while we teach them lessons for life, and we don't always bless them with grace while we apply correction to them to bring sanctification and obedience. So, we must be careful. It is so easy to manifest human traits like lack of grace, inconsistency, and carnal anger, to our children. It is really easy for us to not put on Christ, and instead, we don't show grace toward our children. Oftentimes it is not a matter of a father losing his temper. It is simply the way the father thinks about his child, and his relationship to his child. God knows this. Paul knows this. We need to walk as wise men as Paul says in Ephesians 5:15, and we need to walk knowing this too, by continuously being aware of this wall of protection that God has erected for our lives to warn us, to urge us, and remind us of what to do.

In addressing fathers here in respect to provoking children, Paul more than likely recognized the harshness, and the all too prevalent gracelessness of fathers in the Roman world. In the Ephesian culture, as well as most cultures, including our own, fathers typically have a tendency to be harsh with children. It may not happen all the time, but typically the father is harsher than the mother; in most instances. Mothers are generally known to be more sensitive. The main point is that these particular male traits can be magnified, and so they effect the way the father expresses grace to his children. In Paul's context of Colossians and Ephesians, harsh fatherhood was a really big cultural problem. In the pagan Roman culture of that time, there was what was called Patria Potestes. Patria Potestes is Latin for "the father's power." Patria Potestes meant that the father had absolute power over his entire family. Legally, a father had the power to sell off any member of his family into slavery if he wanted to. The father had the power to make them work in the fields in chains if he wanted them to do so. There are actually records of this happening. Fathers were harsh. A father could inflict the death penalty on his own children as long as he lived--even if he was 90 and his children were 70. There was no age limit on the patria potestes. When a child was born, the child was placed before the father's feet. If the father lifted up the child, it meant that he acknowledged the child and decided that it should be kept; If the father turned and walked away, then the child would be thrown away--aborted. This kind of thing happened often. It was the father's power. A father could be completely graceless in the pagan Roman world, and his actions would be considered to be just fine. The very fact that father's had so much power had a lot to do with this. In any culture, when one has the power of authority, there is a very strong human urge to rule with such high expectations that gracelessness raises its ugly head. In a Christian family, this is the exact opposite of what God wants. Christians fathers; you and I rule, but we rule under Christ, so our authority is based upon Christ and His nature. So fathers, I want us to keep thinking about this; God has ultimate, unquestionable, power. Anything God wants to do, He does. So think about what God could do to us based upon His own authority. He could condemn all of us to eternal hell, and He would be justified to do so. He could make our salvation contingent upon our works, if that is what He wanted to do. He could make forgiveness be based upon your works. He could make blessing you be based upon earning blessings from Him, or losing blessings from Him. But, for us who are His adopted children, God has modeled, in Himself, the great principles of love, grace, correction, and patient nurture of perfect fatherhood. In contrast to harsh, graceless, fathers of the world, God demonstrated an amazingly beautiful example of His love and grace for the elect. He did this by coming as a man to be sacrificed for lost people. God wants us fathers to demonstrate His kind of self-emptying, costly, grace, with our own children. So, to do this, we must be honest with ourselves, and we must probe our actions to see if we have been comfortable with our own patria potestes over our own children. We may not do what the Romans did, but we can be harsh. We can be graceless with our children in our own ways. In other words, we can scale the wall when we want to do so. Let's be honest:

Father, how many times have you scaled the wall?

Be honest. Think about how a child feels if we continuously point out his or her failures. Think about the damage we do to the heart of our children, if we treat them as if they hardly do anything right. God has high expectations of you, doesn't He? But, God also expects you to fail, and in your failure, He continues to love and nurture you in grace. Each and every day, our heavenly Father has a keen insight into the fact that our failures will beat us down, so God put Christ in us as our hope of glory. We fail and we fall and so with our Father in heaven, when we fail, we can fall into His ever loving arms for support while He molds us. When we fail, we ask,

How much does my Father (God) really love me?

And He always says,

Through the cross my child; through the cross.

There is no love greater and more enduring when we fail to accomplish the high standards that God urges us to from His word. But, we fathers can also be accomplishment oriented. Ask yourself,

When my child makes a mistake, do I treat it as a failure?

When I correct my child, do I do so with love?--recognizing expectations that are God's expectations, and not my own?

Or do we look and act as if there is no grace? Is this the image our child gets at his end of the deal? When it comes to our own children, do we forget the cross that God is always pointing us to? What do our children see? Do we look and act like we ridicule them for their short comings? When our children do not get the grace that they need from us to grow in a godly relationship, disappointment, and condemnation is the result. They are not edified. They are stupefied. When a child is raised by a father who manifests this kind graceless living, then the child is raised in such a manner that the grace of the Bible is merely a concept that seems like it comes from another world, so to speak. It seems more like a great fairy tale that the child hears about existing somewhere else, like at church. Do I hear an amen? The child thirsts for the grace of Christ to come from his father. The child seeks and seeks to find the grace that is so desperately needed, and is not a fairy tale. But, the child is drowning, and growing calloused, because the child can not find it in the very representative of God that has authority over the church type of the family. Look to the wall. Stare at it. Learn from it. Heed every single word of it;

"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord."

"Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart."

Grace--We talk about it all the time as being the substance and foundation of the Christian experience, but children in Christian families all over the world are starved from seeing it in manifested from their father. Children see graceless living in the father, and so what happens is that the father sees deep anger in his child. The sad fact of the matter though, is that the father is the one responsible for provoking the child to anger. Let's ask ourselves if this is how the relationship is in our own families? It's a simple question really;

Is it your affinity to provoke your children to anger?

We children of God have a special connection to our Father in heaven. We know that He cares for us because He tells us He does; And yet, He also demonstrates that He does. But when a father is one who provokes His child to anger, he loses that same kind of loving connection that we have with our God. So, he loses a God ordained connection that God wants us to have with our children. What happens is that because of our own selves--not our children--(its so easy to blame your children--but it is not because of our children) but because of our own selves, our children become angry with us, which means that fathers are reaping the fruit of the seeds that we (fathers) have sown. What I mean is that because the father is graceless, his child learns to become graceless. This folks, is the deadly spiral where fathers have reproduced in their children the underlying attitude that they have had toward them. And so what happens is the opposite of something that the father, in self deceit, believes will soon pass. It is not merely a stage that the child is going through. In other words, it is easy to say that the child will get over it, but the fact is that they won't get over it because the anger is not something that has to do with a stage in life, or a particular character trait. It is graceless anger that is provoked, it has been planted, it has been fertilized, and so now it is being harvested by a graceless father. He has scaled the walls of God's word. He has provoked deep anger; (and listen to me) He has raised his kid in the carnal admonition of his own self. He is not being obedient to the word of God. So, the anger is the father's fault, as God says in his word. So, instead of growing up with godly respect for fathers, provoked children are growing up despising their fathers. It is not uncommon for children who are oppressed in this situation, to look at their father's with stiff lips, while they hold back the tears, only to walk away thinking,

I hate you. I wish you were dead. I never want to see you again.

They are full of graceless anger, which is an ungodly characteristic; but here's the point, they were provoked to it by their own father. Is this you, father? This is a sobering message, from a sobering passage in God's word. This leads us to look at the other thing that fathers can do to children,

"21 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart." Colossians 3:21

Paul says not to provoke children to anger in Ephesians. Here, in Colossians, he says not to exasperate your children. In the Greek, this word translated "exasperate" is a very general word. It means to stir up, or to motivate. This same word is often used positively. In 2 Corinthians 9:2, for example, Paul says that the Christians in Achaia stirred up the Christians in Macedonia to be more generous. In other words, they motivated them to give more to the ministry. In choosing this word, Paul is saying that fathers should avoid everything that pushes, strongly motivates, and stirs up a child to depression, and discouragement. This reminds me of a story that illustrates this pretty well. The story goes that a father wanted to illustrate to his son the difference between "anger" and "exasperation." The dad looked up the phone number of an arrogant man that he knew only by name and reputation. He called the man. When the man answered his phone, the father asked,

"Is Harold there?"

"There's no Harold here,"

the man bit back from the phone;

"Why don't you get the number right before bothering people at this hour of the night?"

The man hung up abruptly. The son overheard the man's answer. The father said,

"Now son, that, was an example of a simple annoyance. Let's wait a few minutes, and then you're going to learn some more."

After a little bit of time, the father hit redial. Again, the father asked,

"Is Harold there?"

This time the man literally screamed into the phone,

"What is the matter with you, are you insane!? I told you that this isn't the number, so stop bothering me, and don't call again!"

The man immediately hung up. The father looked over at his son, and with a calm expression, as if he was about to make some really profound point, he said,

"Okay son, that is an example of someone who is angry. Now be patient, because in a few a few minutes I'm going to show you the difference between anger and exasperation."

About 15 minutes had gone by, so the father pushes redial one more time. This time, when the man answered, the father said in a cheery voice,

"Hello, this is Harold. Have there been any messages for me during the past half hour?"

Okay, the point is that you can push, and push, and you can push so much that you end up pushing your child into anger, and then you keep pushing until you have pushed the child into exasperation, and the only thing you have produced is discouragement in your child. This is what losing heart, here, means. It means to be a discouraged child. Again, we fathers are the pastors of our church type, which is our family. And again, we fathers should be reflecting our heavenly Father. No place in the Bible does it say that our job description is to discourage. Our job description is the high standard of our heavenly Father. God's will is not to discourage His church.

In saying all of this up to this point, I've been focusing upon the negative aspect of the wall that Paul has built in the first part of his urging. But, there is more to the structure. We fathers need to analyze yourselves to see the imbalances, but we also need to learn and walk in wisdom to achieve the balance that God wants us to practice. The reason is because, in the balance, there are short term discouragement's that are good. Good discouragement's are instances where the child must be confronted. Confrontation is what God does to us. Confrontation is what Pastors do with the flock. So, here is where the balance comes in; sometimes in  confrontation, there will be the good provoking that comes from good discouragement, where we discourage our children from doing wrong. It is the good of being disciplined in an attitude of true love, true care, and true grace. This is what we find our Father God doing with us, (His children), in Hebrews 12. God lovingly chastises, disciplines, and molds us with His corrective hand. Such practices do not lead the child to lose heart. They do lead the child to gain a heart for what is right. As our heavenly Father God may bring us short term frustrations and discouragement concerning our path of sin. God may bring frustration and discouragement to sharpen our faith. Pastors practice this same kind of thing when implementing proper church discipline. I have had to do this on more than one occasion myself. I did not like it. But it needed to be done, and so in prayer, grace, and wisdom, I confronted a sin issue with someone with a view to see them being built up in the process. I did it, even though I knew that short term discouragement would be the initial reaction. The point is that in the balance of God's design for proper leadership, we must be careful not to throw away our leadership by going too far the other way. We must be careful not to throw away our leadership by deciding that we aren't going to do, or say, anything in governing our children that may cause them some temporary discomfort. Temporary discomfort is God's way of moving His children in the right direction. We want the balance. We want the balance, so, a good question that we fathers need to ask ourselves is,

What do fathers do that exasperates children, and motivates them toward long-term, detrimental discouragement, and hopelessness?

I think that one of the primary ways that fathers can effect their children with long term detrimental discouragement, and hopelessness, is something that many fathers simply do not want to admit. What I am talking about is the big imbalance, where the father stays a mediocre Christian who shows no passion for the Lord, and no burning spiritual growth. So, what happens is that the child, as the sheep in the fold of the church type family, is looking for the substance that matters the most, and isn't getting it! The child needs the leadership that the father is privileged to carry in being consumed with God, but is let down over and over again. Just as a pastor who is consumed with the things of the world is letting down the church in spiritual leadership, a father who is consumed with the world is letting down his child in spiritual leadership. The point is, how we fathers actually are, in relation to God, is far more important than any particular parenting technique, or punishment technique, that we have read about to try to employ as a kind of method to mold our children, or to bring us closer to our children. I'm not saying that those kinds of teachings are not good. What I am saying, is that our children are already close to us in the most important ways. They are close enough to watch us. God says that they are close enough to experience losing heart if we are not obedient to our Lord. Our children are closer to us than we may realize, but we may be pushing them away from us. We may be tearing them down spiritually by imitating the mundane futility of the Gentile mind Ephesians 4:17. What we have covered so far, is that we are responsible for our actions under God, and we are responsible when we provoke our children. This leads us now, to what Paul says next in Ephesians 6:4,

"... but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4

Fathers, listen to me because this is so vitally important. Paul uses an important Greek word here in this passage for the God ordained technique of raising children. When Paul says don't provoke children, he then goes on to say

"Bring them up in the Paideia [Paideia is the Greek word for discipline] of the Lord"

"Discipline" here is Paideia in the Greek. Okay, I know that most of you are probably wondering what in the world that means. To really get at the amazing depth and thoroughness of what God is telling us fathers to do, we must recognize that the Greek verb Paideia, literally means

"To rear up a child."

It means

"To train up in discipline."

Paideia is the same word used in Hebrews 12:5-11 to describe how God, as the ultimate parent, trains or disciplines His children. This is important to know, but we also must recognize that the word had a very specific meaning to the Romans of the time, which is a meaning that Paul is borrowing here for his point. Paideia meant the full, robust, comprehensive training, instruction, and learning of the whole child that encompassed every facet of their lives. When someone of Paul's day spoke of the Paideia of the child, it was immediately understood, (in the secular sense), to mean comprehensive child raising that encompasses every area of discipline. It meant the teaching of the trivium, as in grammar; logic; and dialectic. It meant teaching in the arts, ethics, philosophy, sports, manners, and the necessities of cultural daily living in Roman society. Now, keeping this in mind, think about this;

Instead of telling the Ephesians to raise up their children according to the classical Paideia of the Greco-Roman culture, Paul is teaching us Christian fathers to raise up our children in the Paideia of the Master of the universe, who is the Lord of the church.

As fathers, we are the Christian trainers of the Paideia of our children, and as the pastors of our homes, our children look at us to show them what it means to be a godly man. They are looking at us, and they are learning. If our children see us relying upon the power of money over the power of God, then they are learning that money is more powerful than God. If our children see us fathers as being materialistic, then they are learning that being materialistic is what they need to be. Fathers, if we are not appreciating our wives, then we are teaching our children not to appreciate the spouse that God gives. We are teaching them not to appreciate their mommy. Whenever we demonstrate that something else in our lives is more important than being fervent for Christ, we are raising our children to treat temporary snares in life as more important than the eternal things of God, like reading the Bible, or supporting the church, or praying, or witnessing. You and I must recognize that we are the initial lesson plan that our kids get. We see it in the Paideia of the world, where the father is the big teacher of so much that is simply spiritual darkness. Fathers get drunk, so the child sees no problem with getting drunk. If the father spends money foolishly, he is raising his child to be foolish concerning money. If the father commits lascivious adultery in his heart by viewing pornography, even in videos that are not called pornography, but are called academy award movies, what happens is that the children grow up in the Paideia of the poisonous junk-food of disgusting images and philosophies of the world that their father has dished out. Whether in the world, or in the body of Christ, any father who doesn't appreciate his wife, is teaching his children not to appreciate their mom. When the child grows up, the son either doesn't appreciate his own wife, or the daughter will expect it to be normal to not be appreciated by men for more than what they can get from her, and so she grows up with a skewed view of masculinity, and men. These are negative outcomes of Paideia that come from our personal actions where we are training our children in a comprehensive manner, and the irony is that we often aren't even aware of the process. And so, the most important question a father can ask, is not what shall I teach my children, but rather who am I as God's representative teaching tool to my own family? If we live out our discipline of our children in an ignorant, or impulsive, or erratic, or inconsistent, fuzzy, or worldly way, then we are teaching them something different from the way God treats us. Such behavior confuses our children, and so they are raised confused, and the foundational Paideia of the stability of the Lord, is tarnished. What happens is that the child learns a curse. The child learns that the standard of the father is meaningless. It is not based upon the precepts of God, and so in like manner, the child becomes predictably worldly. The child becomes deceitful, always seeking to figure out ways around the father and his authority, which in Paideia, leads to deceitful, manipulation around other authorities. Further, when a child experiences inconsistency in identifying, and acting upon what is right and wrong, the child learns relativism, and situational ethics. The child learns the great lie of the devil that what is right and wrong is really up to one's own standard. On the other hand, when Paideia is submitted to God, and is intentional, and is filled with the Spirit, and is consistent, and is based on good clear rules and principles derived from God in the home, then a life classroom is created where children are nurtured according to the power of the Holy Spirit. Fathers, our children desperately need to see the attributes God, by seeing His attributes in us, in raising them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. God gives us the model in His son Jesus, and in the rest of the Bible. Now God wants us to show our children that we believe it by living it out, rather than looking like we pretend like we believe it. The raising up of Jesus is the perfect example of what all I have been talking about. In Luke 2:52, we see the relationship of God's only begotten son, to Joseph and Mary. We read in Luke 2:40, concerning Jesus, that,

"40 The Child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him." Luke 2:40

Fathers, notice the grace of God part. Jesus grew physically, and He grew in wisdom. Further, the grace of God was upon Him the whole time. This is the Paideia we want. The first thing we parents need to do in raising our children in the Paideia of the Lord, is teach our children the gospel of the grace of God in Christ. Fathers, as soon as your child is old enough to comprehend complex stories, start explaining sin to your child. Start explaining how sin separates us from God. Explain that because of sin, we all deserve death. Explain that being lost is bad. Explain that when lost people die, they go off to a bad place called hell, where there is darkness and continuous crying all the time. Then explain the good news. Explain the grace of God in sending His only begotten Son to be the One to die for us, so we do not have to go off to hell when we die. Explain that Jesus is our friend, and that Jesus is the boss. Jesus is the One who tells us what to do, so that we will know what is right to do. Explain that we are saved because of grace. We are not saved because of anything we do. We are saved because God's grace is upon us in believing in Jesus to be our Savior, and only Lord. When your child sins, explain the grace of God in forgiving your child of sin. When your child is obedient, explain that it is only because of Christ's grace that they can be obedient in the first place. Explain that everything in their life is given to them as a gift of God's grace for a reason. This is how you teach your children the grace of God while abiding in the grace of God. Okay, now let's look at verse 51,

"51 And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them; and His mother treasured all these things in her heart. 52 And Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men." Luke 2:51-52

Notice that Jesus continued in subjection to Joseph and Mary. We must instill in the minds of our children that subjection is not something that we came up with. It is God's command that He came up with. We are the authorities because God made us the authorities. So, our children need to recognize this important fact. In this way, our children will respect us because God tells them to respect us. Secondly, we notice that Jesus kept increasing in wisdom. In the Paideia of the Lord, we fathers must teach our children to make wise decisions. The best way to do this is to teach our children God's precepts from His word. Fathers, if you do not have a regular time of going over the scriptures with your children, then I encourage you to start today. Wisdom is imparted by the Holy Spirit through His word. God's word has everything we need for life and godliness, but we must open it up. We must pull the riches out so that we can learn them. We must practice them for all that they are worth. Place a Bible on your dinner table. Why do I say to place a Bible on your dinner table? The reason is because it is there, and so it is part of the time together that a family typically spends in the evening. When you are finished eating, open up the word of God, and read a portion of scripture that you are familiar with, and then comment on it. Explain the meaning of certain words and concepts that you have read. Ask questions. This is what I do when we have our after dinner devotion. I read, and then I have my children explain to me what I read. Sometimes I need to explain to them something that they don't understand. After I do, I ask them to explain back to me what I just said. We are seeking wisdom together, and it is wisdom that comes directly from God's word. Attending church where there is the consistent preaching of the word of God is God's will. It is wisdom that imparts wisdom. We also see that Jesus increased in stature. What this means is that Jesus grew physically. To do this, Jesus had to eat properly. Teach your children to eat good food. Jesus lived in a time and place where the primary mode of transportation was to walk. He exercised all the time. He was the oldest son of a carpenter, so He more than likely grew up working hard physically. Carpentry was a lot of work. Translated--it was a lot of exercise. Teach your children the importance of exercise. Teach your children that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Teach them not to get drunk. Teach your children to grow in other ways. Teach them to learn. Teach them to learn to learn. Teach them to love to study and be knowledgeable. Help their minds to grow by providing materials that help their minds to grow. Get rid of everything that inhibits their mental, physical, and spiritual growth. Jesus grew in honor among men. When our children grow in all these things, they should be honorable among the body of Christ. What we are talking about is the Paideia of the Lord, where we raise our children up according to the mind of God, rather than the mind of the world. Finally, don't teach your children to seek honor from those outside the body of Christ. The world has a different standard of what is honorable. We do not want to teach compromise. Rather, teach your children to honor other people. Teach them to think of others as being more important than themselves, as was the attitude of Jesus we are encouraged to have in Philippians 2:3. Teach them to memorize and then practice the golden rule. The golden rule is not a cliche'. The golden rule is a rule for life. It is wisdom. It is gold;

"Treat others the same way you want them to treat you." Luke 6:31

Ultimately, pleasing God is the ultimate treasure of Paideia. We already have unmerited favor in Christ. It is grace. Teach your children that they have found favor in God's eyes through His grace. But then teach your children that to stand for the Lord, no matter what it will cost them, no matter what people do, or say, they should do all things to please the Lord rather than men. Paul said,

"For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ." Galatians 1:10

Fathers, let us teach our children that the highest calling there is in the world is to be a bond-servant of Christ. Let us teach them that it is going to cost them the favor of men, which means that it is going to require suffering. Think of the words of Peter in the great lesson plan, where he says,

"For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God." 1 Peter 2:20

We should know this. Our children should learn it from us. The bottom line this morning is that we, as Christian fathers, have a high calling to build up our children. We are not to provoke our children to anger. We are not to exasperate our children. We are to raise them in the Paideia of the Lord. I urge all of us fathers here this morning, make every effort to keep from scaling the protective wall of fatherhood. Use it as a tool that has been given to you from God to fulfill your Christian fatherhood to its fullest.--Amen.