December 1, 2013 | Colossians 3:20-21 - The New Man and the Home

Sunday we looked at what Paul says about how the gospel transforms us as children and parents. The last two chapters in Colossians are very practical and his words here are no different.

²⁰ Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. ²¹ Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.

 




Audio
Notes



August 18, 2013 | Colossians 1:1-8 - Faith, Hope, and Love: The Greatest of These is Hope?
September 1, 2013 | Colossians 1:9-12: The More You Know
September 8, 2013 | Colossians 1:13-23 - Salvation is Creation: A Biblical Theology
September 22, 2013 | Colossians 1:13-29
October 6, 2013 | Colossians 1:13-23 - Tear Down This Wall: Tearing Down the Secular & the Sacred Divide
October 13, 2013 | Colossians 2:1-7 - Walk in the Lord: A Call to Agonize for the Christ’s Bride
October 20, 2013 | Colossians 2:8-15 - Beware of Counterfeits: Why Jesus is Better. Period. - Part 1 
October 27, 2013 | Colossians 2:16-23 - Beware of Counterfeits: Why Jesus is Better. Period. - Part 2
November 3, 2013 | Colossians 3:1a - “Raised with Christ”: Why the Resurrection of Jesus is More than HisStory
November 10, 2013 | Colossians 3:1-4 - Putting on Christ or You Ain’t From Around Here Are You?
November 17, 2013 | Colossians 3:5-17
November 24, 2013 | Colossians 3:18-19 - The New Man and Marriage

December 1, 2013 | Colossians 3:20-21 - The New Man and the Home


For more:
“Children Learn What They Live” by Dorothy Law Nolte: A Poem
10 Ways to Irritate Your Child
"Take My Life and Let It Be"
All You Need is Christ: MacArthur on the Sufficiency of Jesus
Ravi Zacharias' 12 Arguments For the Historicity of the Resurrection  
Jim Monroe: I Am Second
Strengthen Your Hearts: Fun With Mark Lowry
The Secular vs the Sacred: Brand on the Influence of Luther
The Secular vs. the Sacred: Wax on the Lordship of Christ
Martin Luther on the Secular/Sacred Dichotomy 
Nancy Pearcey on the Secular/Sacred Dichotomy
Is Colossians 1:15-20 a Hymn?
"That's My King"
Faith, Hope, and Love: An Early Christian Confession 
MacArthur on a Faith that Saves  

“Children Learn What They Live” by Dorothy Law Nolte: A Poem

While preparing for Sunday's sermon, I came across the following poem. It serves as a great word of exhortation to parents in the spirit of Colossians 3:21.

If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If children live with hostility, they learn to fight.

If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.
If children live with pity, they learn to feel sorry for themselves.

If children live with ridicule, they learn to feel shy.
If children live with jealousy, they learn to feel envy.

If children live with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If children live with encouragement, they learn confidence.

If children live with tolerance, they learn patience.
If children live with praise, they learn appreciation.

If children live with acceptance, they learn to love.
If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves.

If children live with recognition, they learn it is good to have a goal.
If children live with sharing, they learn generosity.

If children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness.
If children live with fairness, they learn justice.

If children live with kindness and consideration, they learn respect.
If children live with security, they learn to have faith in themselves and in those about them.

If children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live.

August 18, 2013 | Colossians 1:1-8 - Faith, Hope, and Love: The Greatest of These is Hope?
September 1, 2013 | Colossians 1:9-12: The More You Know
September 8, 2013 | Colossians 1:13-23 - Salvation is Creation: A Biblical Theology
September 22, 2013 | Colossians 1:13-29
October 6, 2013 | Colossians 1:13-23 - Tear Down This Wall: Tearing Down the Secular & the Sacred Divide
October 13, 2013 | Colossians 2:1-7 - Walk in the Lord: A Call to Agonize for the Christ’s Bride
October 20, 2013 | Colossians 2:8-15 - Beware of Counterfeits: Why Jesus is Better. Period. - Part 1 
October 27, 2013 | Colossians 2:16-23 - Beware of Counterfeits: Why Jesus is Better. Period. - Part 2
November 3, 2013 | Colossians 3:1a - “Raised with Christ”: Why the Resurrection of Jesus is More than HisStory
November 10, 2013 | Colossians 3:1-4 - Putting on Christ or You Ain’t From Around Here Are You?
November 17, 2013 | Colossians 3:5-17

November 24, 2013 | Colossians 3:18-29 - The New Man and Marriage


For more:
10 Ways to Irritate Your Child
"Take My Life and Let It Be"
All You Need is Christ: MacArthur on the Sufficiency of Jesus
Ravi Zacharias' 12 Arguments For the Historicity of the Resurrection  
Jim Monroe: I Am Second
Strengthen Your Hearts: Fun With Mark Lowry
The Secular vs the Sacred: Brand on the Influence of Luther
The Secular vs. the Sacred: Wax on the Lordship of Christ
Martin Luther on the Secular/Sacred Dichotomy 
Nancy Pearcey on the Secular/Sacred Dichotomy
Is Colossians 1:15-20 a Hymn?
"That's My King"
Faith, Hope, and Love: An Early Christian Confession 
MacArthur on a Faith that Saves  

10 Ways to Irritate Your Child

Next week we will be discussing Colossians 3:20-4:1. Verses 20 and 21 discusses parenting and children. In verse 21, Paul warns parents not to irritate, provoke, or exacerbate their children. In his sermon on this text, John MacArthur offers the following 10 ways to provoke a child. So avoid these.

1. Overprotection. I hear the "Amen" corner over here really going at it. A couple of overprotected people over here. Overprotection. No trust. All rules. All deprivation. You never ever allow them any liberty. You draw the lines so narrow and the boxes are so closed that they soon feel that you do not believe in them. You do not trust in them. No matter what they do to earn that trust, they never experience that trust. Consequently, they give up and say, "What's the difference anyway?" Then you've got that seething rebellion. You can really irritate your children by overprotecting them. Give them a sense of trust. You don't have to cover every single detail of every single thing they've ever done. well, what did you do? What did you do after that? Well, then where did you go? Well, when you got back from there, where did you go? Why did you go over there? let them live. You know, when they're born, they're born with an umbilical cord and they're connected. And from then on, their whole life, you're just letting it out. And it ought to sometime be cut and the kid ought to be so far out that he doesn't even know he's not connected anymore, it's just so natural.

2. Favoritism. The second way you can really irritate your children is by favoritism. Make sure you always compare them with the other kids in the family who do better than they do. Why can't you be Like Albert? He always does his homework. It's very irritating for a child to be less than an individual. It's very irritating for the child to be a lemon on the assembly line. Favoritism. Favoritism means you constantly compare the child with the other child.

3. Depreciating his worth. A third way you can irritate your child is by depreciating his worth. One good way to really depreciate his worth is whenever you have company, have him eat in the kitchen. That'll really let him know that he just really isn't worth having around anything important. or else, when he comes in and has something to say, you say, "Hush up and go back an the den. Go to your roan." And then you get the autistic kind of child who finally tries to communicate and gives up and so then he can't communicate at all and he won't. And then you get that ultimate kind of autistic person who doesn't say anything anytime, because he never did get listened to when he tried to. We were talking about this with Howard Hendricks when we were back at the conference last weekend, you know. And he was saying, "Look -- if you come to my house for dinner, you've got to get ready. They're all going to be there, staring you right in the eye. The whole bunch. When we have Company, the kids are all there, looking right dawn your throat." Because they're part of our family. They have every right to be a part. Don't depreciate their worth. Don't tell them to shut up and go to bed. There are boundaries -- yes.

4. Discouragement. A fourth way you can irritate your child is by discouragement. Don It ever -reward him for anything. Make sure that he never feels like he's succeeded. I know a girl that killed herself for that reason, because no matter what she did, it was never enough. No matter what her grades were, it was never enough. No matter how well she did, it was never enough, let's face it. A parent who feels that way about a child is trying to get a child to he something the parent never was. That's not fair. And this girl couldn't handle it, so she killed herself. That's sad. Discouragement -- no rewards, no honors.

5. No affection demonstrated. Another good way to irritate your child is never demonstrate any affection for him. Don't ever go out of your way to love him or hug him or kiss him or pick him up...squeeze her or be gentle or thoughtful in a physically affectionate way. Very, very discouraging. So if you want to discourage your child, don't reward your child, don't honor your child, and never demonstrate any love or affection. So the child just begins to feel totally alienated, totally unacceptable, can't do anything right, isn't worthy of your love, isn't worthy of your affection -- he gets very, very discouraged.'

6. Not providing his needs. Another thing - this is kind of practical. You can irritate your child by not providing his needs. You know what a child's needs are? Believe it or not, in our society, do you know what a child needs? A room. Yes, he does. He needs a room, a little privacy. That would be good. Now, you can overcome that, maybe your economics don't make it possible for every single child to have his own domain, but provide some place for him. Your child needs a place to play and if it can't be at your place, then take him to the park, because he or she needs a place to play. Another thing is clean clothes. That's a good thing to provide your children. And when they get a little older, somewhere to study - you know, I think that one of the reasons that some children never do well in school is because they don't know where to land when they some home. They sit down at a table and you say, "What are you doing in here with that homework?" "Get out of here and go to your room." And they go to their roan and they get backaches from sitting five minutes on their bed, because there's no where to sit. Provide some place for them to study. Another thing is to give them something that belongs to them -- whatever itis. Another thing is to feed them good meals. Let them know that you've prepared something special just for them. These little practical things, where a child begins to know that you are concerned about him and about her as a person.

7. Lack of standards. On the other hand, you can irritate a child by a lack of standards. You know, there are children and young people, and when I use the word child, I mean anybody who is still in the home, but you can really irritate your young people by not giving them any rules. Because then they are totally left on their own and they can't handle that kind of liberty and they are constantly getting into problems that they really can't cope with. Cross some lines; make some fences.

8. Criticism. Another way to irritate your children is by criticism. A well-known doctor, Dr. (Haim Geno) says this: "The child who lives with criticism does not learn responsibility. He learns only to condemn himself and find fault with others. He learns to doubt his own judgment, disparage his own ability, distrust everybody. Above all, he learns to live with continual expectation of impending doom." End quote. Now that is no way to live. Criticism. Don't irritate your child with criticism. Create a positive environment, an uplifting, up building one.

9. Neglect. And then I think another way to irritate a child is by neglect. You know what a classic illustration of that is? Absalom. Absalom was a tragic young man, who tried to kill his own father, David. And Absalom is a classic illustration of a son who was neglected by a father. You can really irritate your child by indifference, neglect. Play with your children.

10. Over-discipline. And then, of course, and this is the last one I'll mention, you can really irritate your child by over-discipline. This is where your discipline is hurtful, you know, when you haul off and really hurt them. Or it can be when you just scream at them all the time, or holler at them or yell at them, or shut them in their rooms. Or you're actually some people even discipline their children in a show of their superior strength, if you can believe it. You talk about battered children, or whatever. But the idea is that of over-disciplining children. You can do it by yelling and screaming at them for every single thing they do. You know, they can knock -- this happens all the tine -- bang! Over goes the milk at the table. You stupid... Or you can say, "Well, here we go again. Laugh about it. You can over-discipline them. I man, he didn't do it on purpose. You can over-discipline them by actually using your brute strength to show your superior power over your child. I've often thought that we say things to our children we'd never say to anybody else, don't we? Don't ever discipline them in anger.

Married With Children . . . Lots of Them!: What We Can Learn From the Duggar Family

This Sunday for Mother's Day, I will likely be referring to an article I wrote regarding the growing Duggar family. As many know, the Duggars have 18 kids and will probably have more. They have their own show and my wife watched it constantly in the weeks prior and after she gave birth to our own son, Elijah.

After their 16th child, an article was written in the San Francisco Gate regarding this family that shocked me. The author goes beyond journalist objectivity and attacks the family as a bunch of homophobes, bigots Christians in whose kids will grow up as mind-numbed robots just like their parents and will not receive the type of attention they need.

In response to the article, I wrote an article critiquing the argument from the SF Gate. I encourage you to read both articles and see what you think. The reason I bring this up is being that this Sunday is Mother's Day, I am reminded of the confusion our culture has regarding children, family, and marriage. The culture is left scratching its head when watching the Duggars and yet as Christians, we must give God the glory for a family willing to raise children, not to mention 18 of them!, to obey and follow our Savior.

As a culture, and even as Christians, we need to recover this understanding of children. They are not burdens, but blessings. Children are worth the investment (lack of better word) and time. There are two ways in which we are called to fulfill the Great Commission: evangelize and have children.

I encourage you to read the articles for yourself as I believe they will open your eyes to conversations taking place in the culture that are rather shocking. It is this sort of rhetoric and nonsense that rationalizes abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, divorce, cohabitation, the culture of death, and the many other issues we face today. Whenever we view children as a burden and marriage as just a certificate (rather than a covenant) is the moment our culture (including the Church) begins, and has begun, to decay before our very eyes.

Here are some excerts from the SF Gate article:

...this might be the most disquieting photo you see all year, this bizarreDuggar family of 18 spotless white hyperreligious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair, the kids ranging in ages from 1 to 17, worse than those nuked Smurfs in that UNICEF commercial and worse than all the horrific rubble in Pakistan and worse than the cluster-bomb nightmare that is Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise having a child as they suck the skin from each other's Scientological faces and even worse than that huge 13-foot python which ate that six-foot alligator and then exploded...

...if you study the above photo (or the even more disturbing family Web site) too closely you will become rashy and depressed and you will crave large quantities of alcohol and loud aggressive music to deflect the creeping feeling that this planet is devolving faster than you can suck the contents from a large bong?...

Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyperbreeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words -- assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right -- where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?

See why I am concerned?

McDanell - Married With Children...Lot's Of Them!

SF Gate - God Does Not Want 16 Kids: Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe?

Official Family Website - http://www.duggarfamily.com/
The family have also written a book which I believe you can check out at our local library - 20 and Counting.

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! -Psalm 127:3-5a

Basic Christianity: Ephesians 5:22ff - Submit to Others

To download my sermon notes, click here.