“To the Fathers on Father’s Day”
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:1-4
As I was growing up, I learned about the Ten Commandments in Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. When I heard that the commandment about obeying parents came with a promise, it made a lot of sense to me. As a kid, that was the hardest commandment for me to obey, and so I could see why God would give me a special reward for obeying it.
Later on, when I was a teenager in my church youth group, I read the book of Ephesians and saw the verse that was connected to the commandment about obeying parents:
Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
When I read this, I thought: “Yes! I’m showing this to my dad who is always exasperating me.”
When I became a father, I understood why this verse appears after the commandment. It was because I was constantly being tempted to exasperate my two sons and even my grandson. Usually this takes the form of dad jokes. For example, whenever we go to Hawaii, I look for the opportunity to toss out:
You know what they say, here today gone to Maui!
I also like to make sure that the theme song to Hawaii 5-O is playing on the radio of the rental car when I drive it up to the loading zone at the airport to pick up my family who are waiting for me there with the luggage. It’s the little things that make vacations fun for fathers. Unfortunately, they exasperate the kids.
But then I learned that the Greek word for exasperate, that’s used in the original Greek translation of Ephesians 6:4, literally means, provoke to anger. Could it be that I found a loophole in the Bible that allows me to exasperate my children?
We fathers are a lot bigger and stronger and smarter and more powerful than our children when they are young and growing up with us. It’s not hard to take advantage of this and do things that provoke them to anger. It’s even tempting to make use of this advantage.
Our Father in Heaven knows what it’s like to have this advantage. And yet, God is a loving Father:
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16
When we strive to be loving fathers to our children, as God is a loving Father to us, we won’t have to worry about provoking them to anger. We might even find a way to tell dad jokes in love.
Happy Father’s Day!
In Christ,
Pastor David
