In the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the United States’ women’s 4 x100 meter relay team took the track in the finals as the favorite. After the first two legs run by Angela Williams and Marion Jones, the United States was in front as expected. But as Jones attempted to pass the baton to her teammate, Lauryn Williams, they were unable to make the exchange, and as a result they finished dead last. That is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that the relay team with the fastest athletes fails to win because of a botched baton exchange.
Unfortunately, the same thing can also happen when it comes to passing on our faith to those who follow behind us. Paul certainly recognized the importance of passing on his faith to the next generation. That’s why he spent so much time and effort training younger pastors like Timothy so that they would be equipped to carry on his work. But Paul also realized that the primary place where the baton of faith is to be passed on is the family. That is clearly Paul’s focus as we continue on our journey through Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. Let’s read our passage out loud together.
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
Ephesians 6:4 (NIV)
This verse contains two commands – one negative and one positive. Last week we looked at the negative command: “Fathers, do not exasperate your children...” We looked at some very practical ways that we can avoid exasperating our children as well as others in our lives. This morning we’ll look at the second, positive command.
You’ll notice that the two commands are separated by one word – instead – that Paul uses to contrast the idea of exasperating our children from that of bringing them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. In fact, that word of contrast seems to indicate that training and instructing our children in the Lord is the primary way that we avoid provoking them to anger. That certainly would be consistent with our discussion last week of how a lack of consistent standards is one of the primary ways that we exasperate our children. And therefore the antidote is to apply standards that are consistent with God’s Word.
Paul doesn’t necessarily give us a whole lot of detailed instruction on how to pass on the baton of faith to our children. But we know that Paul would have certainly been familiar with an Old Testament passage that does contain that kind of practical instruction. Let’s also read that passage together:
And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Deuteronomy 6:6-9 (NASB)
This text is part of the best-known portion of the Scriptures among those of the Jewish faith. Jews commonly refer to verses 4-9 as the Shema, which means, “hear,” the first word in this section. The Shema is the Jewish creed that opens synagogue worship and is recited twice a day by devout Jews. Fortunately for us, when we look at that passage in conjunction with our passage from Ephesians, we discover some very practical principles that will help us be more effective in passing on the baton of faith to our children.
Once again, although thee principles deal primarily with passing on our faith to our children, all of us, regardless of whether we are raising children or not, can apply these principles in same way. Maybe you have the opportunity to help pass the baton on to your grandchildren or to other children in your extended family. And all of us can use these principles in helping others in the body of Christ to grow in their faith. In fact, these are even guidelines that I can use as a pastor as I oversee the spiritual development of this flock here.
HOW TO PASS THE BATON OF FAITH:
1. Develop my own relationship with Jesus
...of the Lord.
I’m going to begin with the last phrase of verse 4, since it is the key that will unlock our ability to apply all the rest of the principles we’ll discuss this morning. This phrase – to the Lord – should look pretty familiar to us by now. I’ve actually lost count of how many times Paul has used this phrase and others like it throughout his letter. There are a lot of things that we can and should teach our children. For instance, it’s important to teach them good manners and to develop their character. But none of that can be done in a vacuum. All of the training and instruction that we give to our children is to be done within the framework of our relationship with Jesus. We can see this even more clearly in our passage from Deuteronomy:
And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart...
Moses is addressing this admonition to the parents, primarily to the fathers. And he very clearly makes the point that the first step in passing on the baton of faith to our children is that we must first have the issue of our relationship with God settled in our own lives. There is no way that fathers can bring their children up in the training and instruction of the Lord unless they first have a vibrant, growing relationship with God that comes from saturating their lives in the Word of God. Until God’s Word is on our hearts, we will have nothing of value to pass on to future generations.
Earlier in his letter, Paul had pointed out the need to be constantly growing in our knowledge of Jesus and getting to know Him better day by day:
You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.
Ephesians 4:20, 21 (NIV)
These same fathers that Paul is now commanding to train and instruct their children could only do that because someone else had previously take the time to teach them about Jesus and help them to grow in their relationship with Him.
Although this point is indeed the key to being successful in applying the remaining principles, that doesn’t mean that we have to wait until our relationship with Jesus is complete and fully mature before we start training our children. If that were the case, I couldn’t even be your pastor because I still have so far to go in my own relationship with Jesus. The real issue is the heart, which is exactly what Moses said to the children of Israel - these commands are to be on your heart.
As I pointed out last week, our children are pretty good at spotting hypocrisy, and they are going to be able to see pretty easily whether or not we really have a heart for the things of God or whether we’re just going through the motions.
2. Take a long-term view of the process
...bring them up...
The word that Paul uses here is a word that means to nourish up to maturity. It is the same word he used in Ephesians 5:29 when he described how husbands are to care for their wives in the same way that they care for their own bodies. The word itself, as well as the fact that it is a present tense command, makes it clear that this is a long-term process.
It is very similar to the way we have to nourish and care for our physical bodies. I can’t just eat one big meal and then never eat again. I have to continue to feed my body day after day for my entire life. Or if I want to get in shape, I can’t just go exercise once. I have to have a consistent schedule of exercise in order to maintain and improve my physical condition.
So we need to take a long-term view of this process. The Jews certainly understood that Moses’ instruction in Deuteronomy was to be a life-long process, not just a flash in the pan. The process of training and instructing our children is much more like a marathon than a 100 meter dash. If we don’t have that mindset in mind from the beginning, we’re going to wear ourselves out at the start and never make it to the finish line.
3. Train my children systematically, constantly and appropriately
...in the training...
Some other translations translate the word rendered “training” here in the NIV as “discipline”. It is a word that implies systematic training and instruction for the purpose of developing and forming proper habits of behavior and guidance for responsible living.
One aspect of this kind of training involves establishing rules and standards that are enforced by appropriate rewards and punishment. The book of Proverbs is a great place to go and find some practical instruction in this area. Here is just one example:
Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him.
Proverbs 22:15 (NIV)
But training is a much broader concept than just meting out punishment when our children disobey, as important as that is. Our Deuteronomy passage gives us some further insight:
...and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up...
The Jews were very successful at making religious training an integral part of life and not just an add-on. Their approach, as we see from this passage, was to make religious training life-oriented rather than information-oriented. Their philosophy was that if you want your children to follow God, then you must make God part of your everyday experiences from the time you rise up in the morning until you lay your head down to go to sleep at night.
Their approach was exactly the opposite of the compartmentalized approach that we often employ today where we separate our lives into the “spiritual” and the “secular”. Instead we need to understand and then help our children to see that everything in life is connected to God in some way.
Jesus was the master at this. He constantly drew lessons from the things and people around Him. He walked through a vineyard and explained how He was the vine and His followers were the branches. He walked through a field and explained how a man reaps what he sows. He used the examples of sheep, pigs and wolves to illustrate truth. Jesus helped His followers to see that everything around them could be used to learn about God.
Although I would certainly encourage the family to have a worship and devotional time together on a regular basis, I think that we need to be careful that we don’t compartmentalize our lives into the “spiritual” and the “secular” and allow that formal worship time to become the only time that we seek out God. Frankly it is a lot easier in some respects to plan a family worship time each day rather than to use everything around us to teach our children about God. So we need to pray and ask God to open our eyes and help us see how we can find God in the world around us and then use those examples appropriately with our children.
This approach also requires that we actually spend time with our children. The culture that Moses was speaking to was certainly much different that ours. The children would usually work right alongside their father in the fields or in some kind of craft. So there were constant opportunities to teach the children about God. Today, we have to work a lot harder to make the time to spend with our children. That means that as parents we need to be willing to be inconvenienced. Maybe instead of coming home and watching my favorite TV program after dinner while my kids are playing video games or chatting on the computer in another room, we find a TV program that we can all watch together and then talk about how God would feel about the lessons being taught by that program. Maybe it means setting aside a weekend to go camping and discuss how nature reveals what God is like or talk about creation.
So far we’ve seen that training has to be systematic with standards and rules that are enforced by appropriate rewards and punishment. We’ve seen that training has to be constant as we interact with the world around us. There is one more aspect of training that is described in the Book of Proverbs:
Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
Proverbs 22:6 (NIV)
Many of us are very familiar with this verse, but there is an important principle here that I think we often miss. On the surface, this verse seems to be a promise to parents that if they train up their children properly when they are younger that they will remain true to their faith when they get older. But we have too many examples, both in the Scriptures as well as in our own personal lives of children who have been trained properly who nonetheless fall away from God in their adulthood. As we pointed out last week, that is not always the parents’ fault because our children are ultimately responsible for their own behavior.
But the Amplified Version helps us to understand an important principle that is not quite as obvious in most of our English translations:
Train up a child in the way he should go [and in keeping with his individual gift or bent], and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6 (Amplified)
The idea here is that the training of our children needs to be adapted so that it is appropriate to help each individual child develop in a way that is consistent with the way that God made them. Training our children is not to be a “one size fits all” exercise. We need to be students of our children so that we can help them to make the most of the talents, gifts and abilities that God has given to them. In other words, our training needs to be appropriate for each child.
Again, that means more work and less convenience for us as parents. It takes more time and effort to truly understand our children and then design appropriate training that will help them develop into the person God want them to be.
4. Teach God’s ways through His Word
...and instruction...
This word literally means “to put in mind”. In context, it implies the teaching of the Lord’s way through His Word. When Paul wrote to Timothy he explained all the different ways that God’s word can be used to instruct:
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV)
The idea here is that instruction from God’s Word is to be used for the purpose of leading our children to correct behavior. Often that includes warning our children about an improper course of action and the corresponding dangerous consequences that will result. That idea is certainly captured when the KJV translates this same word “admonition.”
It’s not just enough to warn our children that their wrong conduct will lead to unwanted circumstances. We need to use God’s Word to demonstrate to them that even though God will forgive their sins, He often does not remove the resulting consequences.
For example, when our kids are at an appropriate age and we want to warn them about the dangers of sex outside marriage, we could use the account of David and Bathsheba. Even though David asked God to forgive his sins of lust, adultery and murder and God did forgive him, his child still died. And his family became totally dysfunctional with his own sons trying to kill him so they could become king. Using Scripture in that way is much more effective than me just warning my kids about an unintended pregnancy or getting a disease using my own human logic.
Moses also described the importance of using God’s Word to instruct our children:
...and you shall teach them [these commands] diligently to your sons...
Moses could have commanded the Israelites to teach their children history, or math, or manners, or a trade. Not that there was anything wrong with those kinds of teaching. In fact all that teaching would be very appropriate within the family. But what really mattered is that the parents would teach their children the commands which comprised the word of God.
The word “diligently” comes from a word that means “to sharpen”, like we would do with a knife. It pictured the idea of honing the knife blade over and over until it was razor sharp. So when it comes to instructing our children in God’s Word, it means that we need to go over it again and again until our children become razor sharp.
5. Live what you teach
Although it is certainly implied in Ephesians, this last principle is derived primarily from our Deuteronomy passage:
And you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
This passage was originally intended as a way to remind the people about the importance of God’s Word. But many of the Jews took them very literally and developed "phylacteries", which are little leather boxes with a bit of scripture inside. Then they wore them on the back of their left hand or on the forehead between their eyes.
By the time of Jesus, the Jewish religious leaders had made this into a religious ritual in order to make a public show of how spiritual they were. But Jesus condemned them for the way they had twisted God’s Word:
Everything they do is done for men to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long...
Matthew 23:5 (NIV)
I suppose today’s equivalent would be those households who have a great big Bible out in a very conspicuous place in their home so that others will be sure to see it, but as a family they never actually read the Word of God.
.
But Moses made it clear that these were only to be visual reminders for parents to practice what they preach.
• The hands are our organs of activity. So putting a sign upon our hands is to remind us that our activity is to be consistent with God’s Word.
• The forehead pictures our minds. So placing God’s Word there is a reminder that our thoughts are to be consistent with His Word.
• The doorposts represent our place of contact with the outside world. So having God’s Word there is a reminder that our interaction with unbelievers is to be consistent with what the Bible teaches.
Just as the winner of a relay race often depends much more on the baton exchanges than how fast the individual runners are, our success as parents is usually determined not by how smart we are, or how “spiritual” we are, but rather by how effective we are in applying these principles in order to pass the baton of faith on to the next generation.
That obviously must begin with my own relationship with Jesus. And the key there is not that I’ve arrived in my own spiritual journey, but rather that I have a heart for the things of God. I must realize that training and instructing my children is a marathon – it won’t happen overnight. I must train my children systematically, constantly and in a manner that is appropriate for each individual child. I must use the Word of God to teach and to warn my children about the consequences of wrong behavior. And finally I must live what I am teaching. And if I do all those things well, even though there is no guarantee of victory, I will certainly have a much better chance of preparing my children to succeed in their life of faith.
