We’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 6 this morning. Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1 through 4.

And this is what Paul says. He says, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. I watched a news story several years ago. It was one of those 60-minute kind of things. It was about deaths in small private planes, deaths in Cessnas and private pilots. Their deaths were astronomically greater than the deaths that happened in commercial flights. And the reason why so many people were dying is because training in aviation school was incredibly shallow. It was really poor training. So apparently, if you’re in a Cessna… If you’re in a Cessna or a small plane, you climb too fast, you stall out, and the plane drops. So it’s these make-or-break moments where a pilot has to have the right instincts and training to pull themselves out of that situation. A lot of pilots were not getting that training, and so many, many pilots and people were dying because of it. And I think, unfortunately, that is a parallel in the Christian life. A lot of times, we know. The gloss, like the big-picture stuff of the faith. But as far as it goes, how does the gospel work out in the smaller parts of life? What does the gospel mean in every corner and facet, in the critical application, when it really matters? We haven’t spent too much time thinking about it. And so I want us to see what Paul has to say about one of those smaller facets. The things that, if you gloss over it, it may seem unimportant, but in the end, it’ll be detrimental if you don’t. And what Paul’s talking about here at the end… He’s talking about his letter to the church in Ephesus, is the Christian home. He’s talking about the family. That’s what I just want us to consider this morning together.

So, recap here, because we’re at the end. We looked at something in Ephesians a couple weeks ago. But basically, Paul’s made this great, huge argument for the big-picture stuff of the gospel, right? He’s talked about how Jesus has come, and He’s resurrected the spiritually dead. And we were children of wrath. Remember, now we’re children of the Father. And it’s the gift of God. And He’s reconciled Jew and Gentile. And so it’s this really big, wonderful message that before time began, God had a plan to save the church. And that is great. And that is wonderful. But what Paul’s doing at the end of the letter is saying, because that big, beautiful message is true, it should get down into all the little crevices of your heart and mind. It should get down into every little arena and context. What good is a robust, accurate gospel message if it has no power or influence over your everyday life? And I want to say to you, it’s your everyday life that matters the most to the Lord. We think of the mundane. We think of our normal routine as what we must do. But what we need to see is that’s the most important place where the gospel must be applied. Thank you. You and I, we get duped a lot of times by our own culture into thinking life should look big. Life should look fast. Life should be glamorous. Life should be luxurious. It’s easy to throw up beautiful pictures of yourself on social media or videos. Or I’m going to put some pithy quote. And people are like, wow, that person just lives this glamorous, glorious life. And it’s not true to life. And unfortunately, that same mentality bleeds in the church and we start to think the same way. Hey, church life must be big and fast. How are our numbers? How do we get more people here? How is the experience of the service? Was it high energy? I hear that one a lot. Was it high energy? We think in terms of customer satisfaction. For all of our age brackets, are we offering the very best cutting edge program that we can? And those things, all those things are not innately bad. But the problem is this for a lot of churches today. And that’s the problem. And it’s an easy thing to do. It’s to fall into the trap of having a method that’s not God’s method. It’s easy maybe for a church to say, this is our method for making disciples. But the only question that really matters at the end of the day is, are your methods God methods? And at the end of the day, are we going to have results in discipleship and godly growth that are the results God wants to see and God’s calling for? I would think when you, we must use God’s methods to get God’s results in Christian,

discipleship. What I really want us to just highlight this morning in this passage is this phrase, God in the ordinary, God in the ordinary, because God in the ordinary is what is most extraordinarily important for us as Christ followers. And that place is here, the home. You spend a significant amount of time in your home with your brothers and sisters. blood relatives or by means of adoption with your family and and that’s your family you know and and that are those are the people you do life with most right so as parents you’re responsible for your children your children are responsible to you and even when you’re not home you’re responsible for your children your response your children are responsible to you so you have these relationships that are incredibly important to god that we maintain the way that he calls us to maintain them and apply the gospel to them it matters to god what these relationships look like so it’s a two-part formula if we’re going to have a christian family paul says here’s the first thing you need to have in the home christian children that’s not like whoa i’ve already come up with that one but it’s the first thing paul talks about to have a christian home friends do we have in our homes christian children so look back at verse one 1 the apostle paul says children obey your parents and the lord

for this is right honor your father and mother this is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land so i guess this this first sermon is for children okay so i want you to listen if you’re if you’re kids if you’re younger but even if we’re adults we still have parents you know possibly they haven’t passed away yet so still we need to hear what God’s saying and I want to ask this question how big of a deal is it to God that children obey their parents how big of a deal is it I want to look at a few passages to kind of discover that in Exodus 20 12 the Lord says honor your father and mother that your days may be long in the land and that your God that Lord your God has given you now that is the fifth commandment and two commandments but it is the first commandment relating to human relationships so the first thing God says to people in terms of how they ought to treat one another is hey the child parent relationship this is what it needs to look like in Deuteronomy 27 16 the law says curse to be anyone who dishonors his father or his mother you and all the people shall say amen Deuteronomy 21 18 if a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother and though they discipline him will not listen to them then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives and they shall say to the elders of his city this is our son and he’s stubborn and rebellious he will not obey our voice he is a glutton and a drunkard then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones so you shall purge the evil from your midst and all Israel shall hear and fear now fast forward to the very end of time to John’s John’s apocalypse and this is what Paul says to Timothy this is what it’s going to look like he says but understand that in the last days there will come times of difficulty For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive. Now catch this. In the middle of all these great wicked sins of the end times, disobedient to their parents. So of all the great sins you could think people would commit to mark the end of times, Paul’s saying to Timothy right there in the middle of them all, you will find this great wickedness. You will find children disobedient to their parents.

It seems to me like obedience to parents is a really big deal. And here’s why.

Children that fail to honor, revere, obey their parents are failing to honor, revere, and obey God.

Motherhood and fatherhood are the oldest institutions of human authority.

When you go back to the garden, what was it that, or before the garden, what was it that Lucifer threw off? Well, he threw off God’s authority. He denied God’s innate, natural place as the authority of all angelic creatures, of all corporal human creatures.

Satan denied God’s authority. So by way of extension, understand when God said to man, you have dominion over the earth, you cultivate it, you grow, you enjoy it. Part of having dominion doesn’t mean to dominate and crush it and destroy it, but part of that would mean raising up more people to know and love their God, to cultivate the world the way God intended. So God has put, by way of extension, His authority in every child’s life to know how to please God. So when the child throws off authority, he is throwing off God’s authority. That’s it. That’s why it’s an incredibly big deal when we don’t live, and we don’t live in a society where respecting authority, particularly respecting, obeying, honoring parents, is taken serious. Parental authority is a good thing. It’s a God-ordained thing.

Parental authority, Paul says, ought to be obeyed in the Lord. Why? Because it’s the Lord who’s going to bring all things into submission. All things that are outside of what He said is good, outside of what God has said is right. Okay? I’ll use the words chaos, and I’ll use the words anarchy. You say, now, those are too serious of words to be talking about the 8-year-old kid that throws a temper tantrum or the 13-year-old girl that slams her door in her parents’ face. I don’t think so. I think that you and I, when we think that way, we have a small view of how important it is to God that righteousness and order be among people. It is not some small thing when a child denies the authorized leadership of authority in their life. It is not a phase your child is going through. It is sin. It is against God. And more than that, I want you to see this, and what Paul’s doing, he’s reverting back to Moses, saying at first, it’s not even just obedience. He says, honor your parents. So it’s not enough when mom says, hey, go take the trash out. Fine. I’ll do it. Or mom and dad say, I can’t watch that movie, or I’m not allowed to listen to that music, or I have to be home by 1030. It’s not enough to do it with a bad disposition. Moses says, honor your parents. They’re worthy. They’re worthy of your best thoughts. They’re worthy to be valued and treasured by you because they’re the authority that God has put in your heart. So what you want to do,

whether you’re a child or an adult child, if you still have parents and you’re older, is make sure, do I have attitudes in my heart that are improper towards my parents? Because it may not be, oh, I’ve got a bad attitude today. It may be there’s a deeper, sinister desire there to throw off God’s ordered creation, in which… Someday, what’s going to happen? All righteousness will be manifested, and all wickedness and disobedience will be cast out forever. You say, that’s too serious. I don’t think so. Paul said to Timothy, Timothy, in the last days, this is what it will look like. In the last days, this will mark the godless. Children will be disobedient to their parents. Do you really want to see reform in America? You should stop looking. You should stop looking to Capitol Hill, because you won’t find it there. If you want to find, if you want to see reform, look to the home. There isn’t fear of the Lord in the government, because there’s not the fear of the Lord, and consequently, fear of mom and dad in the home. And that’s the great problem with our time. Our children are not raised to respect God-authorized leadership.

So I want to say to you as well, then, our children are not raised to respect God-authorized leadership. Our children are not raised to respect God-authorized leadership. As Christians, it’s undeniably linked to the home life. What is this great gospel message we preach that changes someone from death to life, from darkness to light, from stone to flesh, yet it raises hellions in the home?

And that so often, I’m afraid, marks quote-unquote Christian homes. Friends, let that not be true of our home lives. Let them be marked by children who honor, respect, reverence, severe obey our parents and and if you’re saying why though why well one because god said so and that’s enough two because it’s good for you authority for authority’s sake i would agree i think that’s tyranny someone just wants power for power’s sake but the authority that comes from god in his personal administration of justice but secondly in his institution of human authority be it governments and as we’re talking about here with parents it’s good in other words christian children need christian parents we need rules to guard and keep us from harm uh the proverbs say in proverbs 6 20 my son keep your father’s commandments forsake not your mother’s teaching bind them on your heart always tie them around your neck when you walk they will lead you when you lie down they will watch over you when you awake they will talk with you for the commandment is a lot a lot a lot and the teaching of light and their proofs of discipline are the way of life toddlers don’t know what’s best for them teenagers don’t know what’s best for them young adults and old adults often don’t know what’s best for them so so what do you and i need that lucifer lacked and that you and i lack apart from the spirit humility humility to see the truth you see and believe i don’t know what’s best for me and god loves me enough to put authority in my life to be a help to me for the practical parts of life you know how do you tie your shoes don’t be alone with boys when you grow up and get a job pay your taxes you go to jail right these things uh but onto the on to spiritual matters so so so having a christian home and by grace you know we’re you know fight for that as as셨ic Christian in our church but when you grow up with christian parents what a joy that is from a young age to be able to see the way of the lord and grow up with the knowledge of god and what it looks like to please him and live for him paul says that it will go well with you life will be long

now does that mean that necessarily if you obey and honor your parents you’re going to have this extremely long life maybe probably but sometimes you know the lord allows his providence obedient children be taken early so you say if i go and find a child that was obedient and for some sad reason they were taken early so it doesn’t mean we still don’t live in a sinful world but here’s what that means it means that god honors the life that honors the life of his parents god thinks well of those who think well of authority and righteousness and obedience and so it is a promise that you would have to live for him paul says that if you obey and honor your parents have a long life in obeying and living within god’s created order but there’s this question i want to tack this on what do i do if i didn’t grow up in a christian home and a lot of people don’t and what do i do if i didn’t even get like good practical stuff my parents were not good parents they didn’t teach me how to tie my shoes they didn’t teach me how to drive a car and teach me how to change oil and then teach me this stuff am i off the hook from obeying my parents when they fail because even good parents fail to be good parents sometimes no someone else is wrong never validates you doing wrong i think what we have to do is the best we can honor the position of authority our parents hold when they don’t honor that position themselves and as best we can obey our parents when it doesn’t run counter to the word of god we’re still responsible and here’s the thing you know and this is probably more relevant for uh adult children who made you’ve never maybe had a great relationship with your your father um what what will be i think most useful in service to the lord is going out of your way to give undeserved honor to them helping them revering them checking in on them that will be a gospel message to them that you know i wasn’t a great parent to my child but look at how they’re honoring me and loving me in my old age that’s a gospel witness i would say to you you know so we have to ask that question why why is it very normal um to hear about kids even even in grade school i think um cussing out the teacher why is it normal to hear about children being abusive to their teachers and hitting and why do we hear about these things it’s really not again because schools are broken it’s not because government’s broken um it’s because the home is broken friends and and what we need again i sympathize with people who who say oh well we need a revival let’s pray for revival let’s pray for revival revival revival revival is a phenomenal movement of god god’s spirit chooses to do a supernatural work that’s not the nominal or normal means of how god wants his church to grow on earth you know how god wants his church to grow is slow and quiet hey mind your own business work hard with your hands raise a family that’s how god’s wanting to work so it’s easy to say i want revival in my time but not take the time to raise up your child in the fear of the lord you see you see what i’m saying pray for revival i’ll come back and i’ll come back and i’ll come back and i’ll come back and i’ll come to that prayer meeting too but teach your child the fear of the lord that’s how society that’s how the world will be changed for the power of the gospel so again to to younger children and to older children let’s be abnormal and that we’re normal and that we do the bible says we’re normal in heaven’s terms we obey our parents we think well of our parents we’re grateful for our parents i want to say to you if you’re younger and i still need to hear this be a learner uh humility that’s what we often lack in the child parent relationship is mom they don’t know nothing i know enough i know enough it’s very it’s a silly example i’ll give it to you though when jessica and i had just gotten married um we were about to get married all that i was gonna buy her a dog i was like man i’m gonna get her a dog this is gonna be great it’s her birthday she’s graduating college so i’m on craigslist of all places looking for a dog and i found this basset hounds i’m gonna get this basset hound it was pretty it was really cheap i had the money for it whatever but i told my dad he i’m gonna get this but he said man if you get that dog they shed real bad you’ll be dealing with hair all over your house for you know as long as you have that dog that made me mad what does he know you know so i wouldn’t talk to him anymore i got off the phone as long as we had that dog you know what drove me absolutely crazy there were dust bunnies and dust bunnies and dog hair

so that’s what i get for saying dad knows nothing that’s a small example but still i think the lord is kind to give us parents for those smaller things and for spiritual instructions as well so be a learner look to your parents to learn from them in practical things and spiritual matters and again i say to you be a light to your friends be a light to the world in the way that you honor and revere and respect your parents when you’re at school and your kids they you know other kids are running around and they’re saying i’m not gonna get a dog i’m not gonna get a dog i’m gonna roll their eyes because mom and dad, you know, did something that made them mad or not let me do this. You don’t do that. Well, hey, I love my parents. You know, my parents, they seek my good. They seek what’s best for me. Honor your parents. Be different. And lastly, I would say this. If you’re in that place saying, this is a great sermon, but I didn’t experience that. You know, Paul talks about being a spiritual father to Timothy. And I think God is gracious in this. When we come into the church, even if we didn’t have a great upbringing in the home, the Lord is faithful to bring along people to still teach us and guide us in the faith and to help us with practical things. There are, outside of the Bible, a numerous number of great books on what godly parenting looks like. It’s something that I hope there’s a culture here in our church where we’re not parenting alone, but we’re still able to say like, hey, I’m struggling with this, or this is going on. And we can kind of learn how to parent better together so that we have children that grow up in godly homes. So the Lord has no lack. When we feel like we have lack, you know, in attempting to be obedient for Him. So, Christian children, you’re all going to be very obedient this week to mom and dad, alright? You’re in big trouble.

Okay. So that’s the first part of the formula for the Christian family, is Christian children. And here’s the second thing I want to talk about, because Paul talks about it, is you have to have a Christian father in the home. Christian father. Verse 4, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So if one side of the coin is Christian children, the other side of the coin has to be Christian parents.

Fathers, particularly Paul’s talking about here, have not been given power to command, to control. They’ve been given the privilege to rear up children. And the two are very different things. And Paul’s drawn that out. He condemns the one. He encourages the other. The one’s easy, and it leads to the ruin of a child. The second one’s difficult, but it bears fruit for an eternity to come.

He says, fathers, don’t provoke your children to anger.

Now, it’s easy, isn’t it, to bark orders at people. It’s easy to scream and yell. It’s easy when someone does something, or maybe you just don’t like, preferentially, to chide them, to scold them. And that’s just true in all human relationships. It’s easiest to do with children. You know why? Because children are helpless. If you are cross and cold and rude to your friends, guess what? You’re not going to have any friends pretty soon. If you’re cold and cross and hateful to employees or fellow co-workers, they’re probably going to figure out how to get away from you. If you’re like that with your neighbors, they’re running inside when you’re, you know, going outside but what can a child do when a father chooses to not be a father but to be a task master to be a hard man all they can do is bear the brunt of it all they can do is take it but in taking it and this is the paul’s point they grow up with a resentment towards you and worse and sometimes irreversibly everything that you stand for so paul says fathers you you have not been called to dominate your children you’ve been called you’ve been blessed with this gift to rear them up in godliness so the gospel message then you see it’s uh marred and the gospel message is rejected when it’s on the lips of a father but it’s not in his behavior children are not dumb are they and i find that all the time my children hear things i didn’t think heard they comprehend things i didn’t think they comprehended children put things together. Children see hypocrisy. They call me out on it sometimes. They see the difference when you say one thing and you do a completely different thing altogether. I love this saying by Peter O’Brien. He’s a commentator. Here’s what he says. He says, effectively, the apostle is ruling out excessively severe discipline, unreasonably harsh demands, abuse of authority, arbitrariness, unfairness, constant nagging and condemnation, subjecting a child to humiliation and all forms of gross insensitivity to a child’s needs and sensibilities. Behind this curbing of a father’s authority is the clear recognition that children, while they are expected to obey their parents in the Lord, listen to this, they are persons in their own right who are not to be manipulated,

exploited, or crushed.

That’s so good. That’s what it means to truly have children. They all are, and this is what’s being said here, they are image bearers. So what is the hardened father not seeing grasp? Every child is an image bearer. Every child carries the image of God, and they are given to us as parents, not for very long, really, not for very long, to teach them about the Lord who gave them to us. But it’s so true, isn’t it, that the way we’re tempted to parent oftentimes looks nothing like the way God parents us. The father is kind, and the father is gentle. The father is patient. Does the father discipline? Yes, but always with the end of improvement, always with a mind for correction. So really what we should desperately want is for our children to have a very small, I think, but a very accurate picture. Of the love of the father in our human father. I want, we should want our kids, whether they’re 15, 25, or 55, to smile when they think about us, because they saw the love of God in our parenting.

Particularly the love of God as it’s shown in Christ, who was meek, who was mild, who was lowly, who was gentle. Did Jesus speak truth when he needed to speak truth? Yes, he did. Did Jesus whip him out of the temple? Yes, he did. But you know what Jesus never did at the end of his discipline? He never made anyone feel unvaluable. And I think that’s at the heart of what it means to discipline and love our children. It means to leave our children, even when we have to correct them, they should still feel loved, and they should still feel valuable, just as God makes us feel loved and valued. God, you must really love me to spank me that hard. I mean, I think that should be essentially the same kind of thought when, you know, when we’re in a situation where we’re when our children walk away from an encounter of discipline with us. So don’t provoke. Paul says fathers, you rear up, which really means to nurture. It means you have this great calling from God to help your child not survive in life. You’ve been given the calling to help your child thrive. Impractical things. Dad, how do you change the oil? You know, how do you do this? How is this done? All these smaller things that matter. Let’s go open a bank account, get a job. You know, this is how you treat women. This is how you do this. This is how you treat all those things that are still important to God and matter. But on into the things of the Christian life to to know the love of God, we have been given that responsibility. And so, again, I want to say to us, you know, as as dads, if you’re here, never, I think in our time, our country, has there been such a depletion of not just good fathers in the home as godly fathers in the home? You want to change the world. You want to do things for God. It doesn’t start out there. It starts in the home. It starts with opening up your Bible with your wife and children. It starts with praying with and for your children. It starts with making a Christ centered community with your children. It starts with doing evangelism and hospitality in your own home so your children can see what that looks like. And I love the Martin Luther phrase. You know, my first church is my own home. Do you want your kids to grow up someday and say dad was faithful to take us to church or dad was faithful to make our home a little church where Christ was manifested? See, I think that’s the great joy and responsibility set before us as fathers. And if we do that as dads, you know what we’re doing. The very thing we’ve been told to do, fulfill the great commission. It’s not disciples. It’s not parenting and disciple making. It’s just disciple making. And the hardened criminal is not your first person to disciple. It’s the boy. It’s the girl in your home. These are your responsibility to raise them up to follow Jesus and know the Lord. If you’re a dad and you have kids, you have been given rich soil by the Lord. Rich soil. Rich soil. To plant the seed of the gospel and to see that seed grow up to be a healthy, vibrant plant to do great things for God’s kingdom. I pray we would not waste the wonderful opportunities we have under our own roofs to point our children to Jesus. You know, and they always say, preach a sermon to yourself before you preach one to anybody else. And this is just something preparing this man. I’ve got to preach this to myself because, man, I can just. Oh, yeah. I can see so much in there where I’m not doing it and I’m not correcting and tying it back to the gospel or I’m sure I’m just telling them what to do. And I’m not being selfless the way Christ and the father is selfless with me and gentle and kind of patience. Like I need God more and more just to work just those fatherly, tender hearted, just characteristics in me because I lack them. I lack them.

Rome was not built in a day, right? We’ve all. I’ve all heard that. And then I heard someone else say, but the Romans were laying bricks every day. You know, I think that your children, they they are not a product to finish, but parenting is not done overnight. I think we have to have a long view with our children. And I think it goes for adult children. I hope we don’t think 17. See, I hope you don’t fall apart in the world. I mean, I think parenting is still a great privilege and obligation as long as we have children. Right. So so two things to think about for you, if you’re a dad or even if you’re a mom, I’m not cutting moms out today. It’s Father’s Day in the passage has fathers. So it’s Paul. It’s not me. OK, but but two things, disposition and plan disposition. You cannot give away what you don’t have. In other words, if you’re not spending time with Jesus, if you’re not experiencing the love and the fatherly care of God through Christ. There’s no way in the world you could possibly do it yourself. So you will rob your children of godly parenting when you rob yourself of godly parenting. And as you have it in the spirit and in the word and your own times in the Lord. So forsaking your spiritual health is forsaking the spiritual health of your family. Don’t do that. Be a man of God that stays close. Keep a godly disposition. Secondly, have a plan. I think. I think we don’t do good things in life, not because we don’t necessarily mean to, because we don’t we don’t strategize the way that we should. And living by the spirit and doing things God’s way does not mean I’m just going to sit and just God is or isn’t going to do it like you’re not a marionette. I think we still have to say, OK, what does it look like with the Bible to faithfully parent my children? Lord, so few probing questions. Is it normal for you to pray with your children in the morning at mealtime and at night?

And my best season. We do that. We’re praying together just a little bit for, you know, the day starts. We’re just even if it’s just a quick song I read and we’re praying that together. It just it gets everybody tuned up for the day when you eat food. I hope you don’t eat food like some unconscious animal doesn’t know where it came from. Teach your children to thank God for the provision of food. It is an easy opportunity, an important one to help your children look to the goodness of the father in physical provision.

And third, I like to pray for my children at night because, you know, Matthew Henry says you sleep, but the enemy doesn’t sleep. And so the thoughts, the things just that go on in your head when you’re asleep or guard us when we sleep, guard us to wake up to serve. You can guard us from how the enemy may attack us even as we as we sleep. So is prayer something when your kids grow up and say, you know, dad prayed a lot. He really showed me what it looked like to be dependent on the Lord. What about the word? Do you have any sort of regularity in the word? Are you are you getting? Up in the morning or is there a certain time in the week where you’re working through a book of the Bible? Or there are a lot of children curriculums where you can be working through that with your kids. Right. So you have opportunities to do it God’s way. Resources are there for us in the church if you want them, if you want them. And so my prayer is Paul’s little encouragement here. Shake us up to be reminded. We only have precious few moments with our children, whether they’re newborns or five or 10. And time flies and your children will be gone. And again, you can still parent your children when they’re not in your home. But those years when they are under your root, those are very precious, special times to disciple them.

Well, Christian children require Christian fathers.

Will we sacrifice the way that God sacrificed, love the way Christ loved so that our children know the Lord? They know the Lord.

And I will say this. Wives aren’t off off the hook. Do wives do nothing for their children? Oh, come on. Of course they do. But you know what your role is as the father? It is to set the tone.

That’s your responsibility as the head of the home is set the tone for the spiritual agenda for what we’re learning. Set the tone for honor. Set the tone for respect. Set the tone for obedience. It’s it’s. It’s a calling you have as a father. So if we’re going to have Christian families, Christ must be the center of the home. And simply said, Christ must be present in the home where children grow up in the fear of the Lord, where fathers and mothers show the love of Christ to their children and where families with other Christian families make up the church, which is salt and light to the world. That is that is how it works. We disciple in the home and as families, we disciple together in the church. And it’s just like it’s bright in the world. You see a difference in the way that we live as the nuclear family, God’s institution there. And it is a blessed thing. It’s not a small thing to be a family. It’s not a part of your life. It’s a critical arena for Christian discipleship. And you don’t have the power to do it well, just as you need the power to fight the good fight in your own walk with the Lord. You need God’s great grace to be a godly mother, to be a godly father, to be Christian children. But God, God’s grace provides what he asks for. And so we can trust and believe that in knowing the father and in knowing the son, we will be richly supplied to do all that he’s calling us to do in the home, in the church. And in the world. And if you feel like, man, I’ve wasted a lot of time. Maybe I just haven’t done that. Redeem the day. Repent. Go forth, sin no more and disciple your children.