They Disciplined Us For A Short Time As Seemed Best To Them

So today is Father's Day, and so happy Father's Day to you men. It's good work. It's an unending work. You don't stop being fathers when your kids get older. You don't stop being fathers when they graduate your house. You don't stop being fathers when they buy their own homes or any of that sort of stuff. In fact, you add to the work of fatherhood, grandfatherhood, if you're blessed. And so it is a good work. and a perpetual work in our lives. And so this morning we're going to be talking about fatherhood. We're going to be stepping away from Deuteronomy, and we're going to be reading and studying a passage in Hebrews. Many of you are young husbands and fathers, and many of us don't know what it means to be a father. When it comes to specifically what to do, what to prioritize, what to give on, what to focus on, we're not really sure.

And so my hope this morning is that this sermon strengthens you as a father in your work, and it helps you to understand God's calling on your life. Our text is from Hebrews chapter 12. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? These are verses 4 through 11. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin, and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, Do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them. But he disciplines us for our good, so that we may share his holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful.

Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. This is the word of the Lord. And you may be seated. One of the things that this passage says to us is that God deals with us as sons. Which means that when he gives us children, he's giving us a context in which to become like him. Okay? I want to be clear at the beginning that when you're young, holiness is theoretical. When you're little, your parents say, do this and don't do that. And you do this or you don't do that or you're disciplined or corrected for your behavior. And it's all theoretical. Your parents are saying, you should do this thing. And you're going, okay, or going, uh-uh. But it's not real. It's not really real yet. You don't understand why.

Then you get a little bit older and you get toward the end of high school and you start thinking, man, there's a world outside my parents' house. It's exciting. Maybe it's a little bit scary. It's unknown. Out you go into it. It's your first step really into the world that God's made. It's when you're going to start getting some of your experience as to why your parents might have told you all the things they told you. The theory starts to become a little more real. But we tend to look forward to the next thing and we go, oh, well, then it's going to be different. It's hard now, but it'll be better then. And then eventually you get married and all of a sudden you're like, oh, man, I'm getting married. I don't know how to be a husband. Or maybe you think, I know how to be a husband. But either way, about six, 12 months, I mean, if you're real lucky, maybe you'll get beyond a year. At some point you do realize, I don't know what I'm doing.

This is not what I thought it was. And this woman that I met, she's different. She's changed. And then, you know, life's getting real. I'm saying to you, as all this is happening, life is going away from theory and toward reality. And then you have a kid. And then all bets are off. You're like, oh, it's great. I'm looking forward. Oh, yeah, uh-huh. But a lot of men are like, uh-oh. On the inside, they're like, I don't know what to do. And you might think, well, my wife's good at taking care of kids. So maybe you'll get a few more years of theory. But at some point, it gets very real. As your kids get older, they need more and more, not just of their mothers. They do need their mothers, but they need more of their fathers. And then go, I don't know what to do. I'm not sure how to do this. Something's wrong with my kids. Maybe my wife taught them the wrong stuff. If she was a better wife, they'd be better kids. We have all kinds of thoughts that go through our heads. All of us go through it.

What I want to say to you from the very beginning is that when God gives you these good things, growing up, moving out, getting married, and having children, you should trust and know that God's going to use every one of those things to discipline you, to make you change. When you're young, you think, oh, well. I'll get more mature and I'll be more reasonable or sober-minded or generous or patient or kind or humble or whatever it is. I'll do that when I'm older. But if you've lived a little while, you know that you don't do that stuff voluntarily. You don't let go of your weaknesses and your sins and your shortcomings and your fears just by the passage of time. It takes pressure. Scripture teaches us in many places that the pressures that he applies on us are so that we will become more holy. He describes our weaknesses as impurities in gold that have to be burned out of the gold by fire. You have to heat the fire, the gold up, not just so that it gets liquid, but so it gets hot enough that it releases its impurities, its pressure, its heat, its hardship. It's involuntary on the behalf of the gold. There's this age-old question when men get married, are they ready? And the answer is always,

No, they're not ready. Like the older men look and they're like, that guy's an, he's an idiot. Like he is going to make such a mess. And we think the same thing about women too, but we're talking about men today. So you think he's not ready, but then there's this thing in our heads that we go, but God is faithful and God is sovereign. And it may be. And what we pray it will be is that marriage will be the catalyst for him to put aside his video games or his, or his, his. Time-wasting hobbies. We realize that he may not put those things away until he gets married. So what is it about marriage that makes a man put away his childishness? Well, it's the gift and the responsibility of a wife. All of a sudden, his time's not only his anymore. That's discipline. You realize that. That's God's discipline.

That he grows us by giving us things that demand our time and our energy and our lives. That's how we grow. Fatherhood is at the top of the list of things that will discipline you as a man. And if men don't rise to that occasion, then there's a certain disrespect or a disdain for that man that's almost impossible to overcome. A man who won't take care of his own children. Scripture says he's worse than an unbeliever. And so fatherhood is one of the disciplines that God gives to us in his kindness. It's one of the indications he's dealing with us as his sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. For those whom the Lord loves, he expects much of. From those whom the Lord loves, he gives children.

that you will be accountable for to God. He disciplines us, and fatherhood is one of those disciplines. And later in the passage, it says that he disciplines us not for our misery, though it may be hard, and not for his pleasure because he likes watching us struggle, and not because he's angry with us, not because we're real good at it, but he disciplines us for our good. Why? So fatherhood is an instrument in God's hands to make you more holy. So the sermon this morning starts with the reality of fatherhood being an arena where God deals with you as men. He disciplines you. This is the reason some men don't get married. Or if they get married, they don't want to have children.

Or at least not yet. What is it that's being rejected when children are being rejected and put off? It's the discipline of the Lord. It's the constraints and the responsibilities that children present. Children get more expensive as they get older, but when they're little, they're not very expensive. And there's two adults and there's one little baby in most situations. It's not like they ruin your entire life. It's that they become, there's a certain dependence. A dependence that's different than the dependence of a wife. With a wife, you're dealing with an adult. You presume you're dealing with someone that's rational and thinks through things the way you are. And to varying degrees, that's true. Men and women are different.

I had a young man, not from our church recently. I was joking with his dad. We were talking about young men's perceptions of marriage. And his son, who's, you know, late teens, was just saying, I just don't understand why mom acts like that. Like, it's just not logical. And we just laughed and went, your mother is a wonderful woman. And God's made her this way. And it's just beautiful. And you're an idiot. And if you think you're going to lead your home into peace through logic, we'll be here when you realize that doesn't work. But men see the benefits of marriage. There's things that entice them toward it. But when it comes to children, they go, oh, that's work. I don't see the benefits there to say the way I do with marriage. And so they go, I don't know about all this. But really what's underneath it is that they see the discipline. They see the pressure coming.

They see their own inability to meet the demand and they go, oh, I don't know what to do. So they put it off. But what they're putting off is God's kindness to them. We have this idea that God's discipline or God's dealing with us is always because we did something wrong and we're being punished. But it's not God dealing with us when he disciplines us and he exposes our weaknesses and our sins. And we're called to repentance. That's not his anger toward us. That's his love toward us. He works for our good. In other words, we would rather not have that kind of good done for us if it were up to us. But God disciplines us for our good so that we will become more like him. And so fatherhood is one of the disciplines that he gives to men. It's like going to school and taking a class that's very difficult for you.

And that you feel compelled to pass, but don't feel equipped to pass. And it teaches you to rely on him. And we could say the same things of mothers, couldn't we? Many of you know I didn't grow up with a dad. And there were a lot of reasons, a lot of harm in my life or consequences of that. But many of you did grow up with dads. I grew up with father figures. My question to you is, did you ever get angry at your dad for disciplining you? Oh, I'm sure you did. Which one of us would say no? I always loved it when my dad said, no, you may not. And I said, yes, I will. And then he rose up to his full height and said, oh, no, you will not, young lady. No, you will not. And at some point you realize, I'm not going to win this battle. He's being a jerk, but he's bigger and stronger than I am. And I can't win it. Having a dad is hard. You know what's harder than having a dad? Not having a dad. It's about the only thing harder than having to deal with

with a dad is dealing with the absence of a dad. Because while we may not like our dads at various points exercising their authority, when they do it, are they doing it to be mean to us or are they doing it for our good? My assumption is that as you've gotten older, and none of these statements are absolute, I'm sure our dads have failed. I'm not saying your dads were perfect. But on the whole, I think most of us would say that when my dad really was adamant that I not do something or that I do something, he was actually doing it for my good. And he was fighting me and willing to fight me for my good. I didn't see it at the time. I just thought he was selfish or lazy or didn't understand. Having a dad is hard. And you should never wish that you didn't have a dad. I didn't have a dad growing up, but I did have men who filled those sorts of roles.

For me, a lot of it, at least growing up, was coaches. I had a coach threaten to punch me in the face one time. And I believed him. I really did think he was going to do it. Now, he would have gotten fired and gotten all this trouble. But in that moment, none of that actually mattered. I thought he was going to do it. And that was helpful to me. Men who don't have fathers in their homes often end up with fathers in society. And they often end up with discipline, but not with affection. Yet having a father is hard. And the reason it's hard to have a father is because his job is, as much as he understands it, his job is to discipline you. We all had dads that disciplined us. Maybe they were our biological fathers. Maybe they were coaches or they were police officers at various points in my life. Teachers, older men that you worked with, those types, those are all the men I would have had.

Their job was to discipline me. Their job was to say no, not good enough. And their job was to not listen to my excuses. And to the extent that they were faithful in those things, it was memorable to me and it was helpful to me. That was their job. Fathers are supposed to discipline their children. Discipline is the mark of fatherhood. Hebrews asks, what son is there whom his father does not discipline? In fact, if you don't have a father who disciplines you, if your father doesn't say no to you, then this passage says you're a bastard. The literal meaning of bastard is a child without a father. You have no one who loves you enough to tell you no. Remember I said the only thing worse than having a father is not having a father? That's exactly what this passage says. And yet having a father is hard because his work is to discipline us.

It's not the sort of thing that we should count the days down until we don't have to listen anymore, until we can get out on our own and do what we want. Discipline is for our good. And it's the primary work that fathers are to do in their children's lives. They're to discipline us, to train us, to teach us, to correct us, to lead us. Now, all of those things, especially when they come from men in general, and especially, especially if they come from white men, are despised. You're not supposed to do this stuff, says society. This is, what do they call it? Toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is fatherhood, many times. Our society doesn't want to have anything to do with it. They don't want men saying no. We're okay with women saying no. We're okay with children saying no. We're okay with black people saying no. We're okay with wealthy people saying no, or poor people, depending on the scenario. The one thing we're not okay with is fathers saying no.

But we're Christians. Before you're an American, before you're a husband or a wife or a father or a husband or any of that stuff, you're a Christian. And as fathers, your job is to say no. When your children are young, you'll say no in various ways. You'll spank them. You'll correct them as they get older. Your tools change. But your job is to discipline them. As your kids get older and they leave your house, do you still say no to them? Yes. Do you say no to them like they're five? No. But your job is to love them by disciplining them, teaching them, and guiding them, correcting them. We need this. We never outgrow needing this. This passage says in here, it is for discipline that you, son, endure. You need discipline. We need to be corrected. There's never, it's never going to be good for us when we say, I've now come to a place where I don't need a dad anymore. We're always going to need dads.

Those of us who are in our late 30s or in our 40s or in our 50s, we still have men in our biological families and in our presbytery that we regard as fathers. We call them fathers in the faith. And when they talk, we listen. And so if your conception of manhood and fatherhood is that you're going to graduate from needing this, it'll be to your harm. We need to be disciplined. It's for discipline that we endure. We're not done yet being shaped for our good. We're not done being fashioned into holy men. As you men raise your children, I'll tell you this, they will get frustrated with you. And scripture's admonition to you is not to exasperate your children so that they lose heart. There is a way of going too far with discipline, thinking that's all you ever do and that discipline is somehow opposed to affection or warmth or understanding or compassion.

I'm not saying discipline is opposed to any of those things, but if all you ever do is discipline, there's a way of doing it that will exasperate your children and will cause them to lose heart. But fathers that discipline their children will have children who are upset at them from time to time, who will not like what they're being told to do. Don't we as adults still get frustrated with God about the things he says no to in our lives? Like, have we outgrown it? I haven't outgrown it. We still get frustrated at our heavenly father for the things he says no to. And we realize that we ought not to. And so men, if you think that fatherhood is having you being the good parent and the cool parent where your kids are always like, dad's great. Dad understands. Dad's always saying yes. You're missing something very important. And here's what I'll tell you. If you have your kids love you in that way and admire you in that way when they're young, they'll despise you when they're older. Because they're without the thing they need from you.

which is discipline. Here's the thing about fatherhood, is that as you raise your kids, you should want them to become like you. You should expect them to become like you. Now, we talk a lot about our sins and our weaknesses, and we don't want them to emulate that. And that's all true. But brothers, you should expect and put into your children that they would become like you. And what is that to you but pressure to be like Jesus then? They want someone to emulate. They want someone to look up to. They want someone to do like. And if you say, no, no, no, not me, they'll find somebody else. And you know what that other person will do? Do you know how they'll pick the person? They'll pick the person who disciplines them. They will pick the person who says no to them. Even if it's just an online guy who says no to them. If somebody says, don't do that, they'll say, I don't listen to him because he says no to them.

without berating them and belittling them and embarrassing them and exposing all their weaknesses. But he says no to them. And he cares about them. And he says, don't do that. It's not good for you. It doesn't make any sense. Stop it. If your children get upset with you for telling them no, realize that that's okay. It's okay. Your children are not grown. Your children are not mature. Your children are not experienced in the ways of God. And because of those things and others, they will get frustrated at you from time to time. They'll think, you just don't understand, Dad. And you'll say, I understand you feel that way, and that's not true. I said, no. As you get older, haven't you realized some of the stuff I said earlier about your dad being right? Has life went from being theoretical to being more reality-based? You're like, you know, I think my dad and mom, I had known something. I shouldn't have been so angry at them, but we were. So if your kids get angry with you, if you're pushing them to be honoring the Lord,

and honoring you, you shouldn't be ashamed of that. As I said, the other option is that they would be bastards. We would be without fathers in their homes. I want to talk a little bit about fatherhood and the failures of fatherhood. This passage acknowledges that fathers are not perfect. It says they screw things up. They don't do it right. They make mistakes. They get angry. They fail us. You're like, where does the passage say that? It says it right here. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the father of spirits and live? For they, referring back to our earthly fathers, for they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them. But he, the Lord, disciplines us for our good so we may share our holiness. What does it mean for a father to discipline his child as seems best to him? Well, it means that he's going to do what he thinks is right and that he's going to be wrong sometimes.

Maybe even a lot of the time. That's what it means. Fathers, our earthly fathers, they're not perfect. In fact, they're full of sin just as much as we are. They mess things up. Becoming a dad doesn't mean that you somehow graduate out of a certain levels of temptation. It doesn't mean that if God calls you to a work, he'll equip you to do it in such a way that you don't fail. When he calls you to the work, he uses that work to then purify you. But what about the kids that are there present and the recipients of your failures. What are they supposed to do? Say, I had a terrible dad who didn't know what he was doing. He failed me and didn't equip me for this world. God knows he did. God gave you to him when he was weak, when he was foolish, when he didn't know what he was doing, when he wasn't a Christian. My point is, none of us are perfect. And it's a really hard pill to swallow. You know, when you take a test,

Have you ever had these dreams of like, I could pass it. I could never miss a question. I might get 100%. Jesse's like, no. I used to think when I watch goalies, I think goalie is the most miserable position on the field, of a soccer field. It's just awful. Because what's the goalie supposed to do? Supposed to not let them score, right? That's just the goalie's job, right? Actually, it's not. It's the whole team's job. If the strikers mess up, they can really get their goalie in trouble. But it's the goalie's job. And every goalie wants to keep a clean sheet. You know what a clean sheet is? Jesse, what's a clean sheet? Yeah, no goals. No goals. Now, he knows I can't keep a clean sheet for the whole season. But each game, he says, I want to keep a clean sheet. I just want no goals against me. And that's his thing. How often do you think that happens in the course of a season, that he keeps a clean sheet? It depends somewhat on how good his team is. You can put a great goalie on a bad team.

He's not going to overcome it. My point is, he's being put in a position where he is going to fail. By and large, he's going to fail. The idea that he would never let a goal by is just unreasonable. It's just not statistically or in reality, it's just not possible. However much he might practice, however much he might try, he's going to fail. They're going to score. He's going to mess things up. Basketball players might say, you know what? I'm not going to miss any shots. I'm going to be 100% from the field and from the free throw line today. The pros can't do that. It's kind of unreasonable for you to think that you would or that you'd think that your teammate would. So why when we come to fatherhood or motherhood for that matter, do we have these expectations that everything will just be done perfectly and that there won't be any missteps or failures or goals scored against us, so to speak? Why do we get so angry at our parents for failing us in these ways? They're just people.

They're just sinners. Why do we expect our spouses to be so good at things they have so little experience doing? Being a dad's hard. Just not to say that being a mom's hard isn't hard, because it is. But being a dad is hard. You have not only the pressure of being the provider and the leader and all of these things. It's when the difficult time comes, you're like, okay, well, I'm the one who has to figure this one out. My wife's got lots of opinions and lots of priorities until there's the potential for failure. And then she's like, we'll do whatever you want, honey. But she doesn't want to actually bear that part of weight. And it's not hers to bear. I'm not saying there's something wrong with that. But you're sitting here going, well, who can I turn to? Well, Adam just pointed it back to his wife in the garden. Remember, it was me. It was the woman you gave me. But it's not manly. It's not fatherly to do that.

These responsibilities sit on us. And they're inescapable. And they're heavy. And as our kids get older or we have more kids, we start to realize the failures. But we don't realize the failures of today. We realize the things we screwed up like 3, 5, 7, 10 years ago. We realize the failures we can't change. The concrete's set on those failures. So what are you supposed to do as a father? You go, well, it doesn't matter. Well, shame on you if you say it doesn't matter. Don't your kids matter? It does matter that you screwed up. What's to be done about it? What's to be done about it is to trust God with your failures. That's what's to be done about it. Okay? And this is a message that you wives and mothers really need to hear. Okay? Every wife here is scared to death that they are going to screw up as a mom. If I could just lance the boil and say, you already have. And I don't mean it as a joke. I mean, you've actually done harm to your kids. You really have. And some of it, it's going to have left a mark.

on them. So can we please do away with perfection? And can we realize that our fathers and our mothers were disciplining us as they seemed best to them and that they made a lot of mistakes along the way. And there's freedom in it when you realize that right after that it says, but God disciplines us for our good. Somehow he takes the failures of our parents and our failures as parents and works out good. So, dads and moms, stop worrying about screwing up your kids. Okay? They're going to be bent just like you. Which means they're going to have some of the quirks and the messed up stuff that you are. It's going to show up in them. Okay? I used to spend a lot of time walking on my toes. I still do a little bit, but since I've gotten heavier, my heels touch the ground more often. But all through high school, I just walked on my toes. The stupidest looking thing in the world, right?

Big, huge guy, big muscles, and he walks around, you know, on his toes. And you know that Joseph walks, when he was a little kid, he walked on his toes. It's not genetic, you know. He just watched his dad walk, and he's like, I guess that's how we walk, you know. And he's overcome it, and we're thankful. But, you know, I mean, see, you're glad you don't walk on your toes anymore, right? Yeah, see, he's like, now you've just got your hair working against you. But my point is, like, what, Levi? Yeah. Yeah, Levi's saying after his accident, he had to wear a boot when he slept for, like, six months that forced his Achilles to stretch so that he wouldn't walk like his pastor. He didn't say that very last part, but that's what he was implying. My point is, you guys, as parents, like, your kids are around you constantly. And if you think you're going to, like, insulate them from your sins and your failures and you're going to just do it all right,

You haven't even begun to understand what being a father or a mother is. Lord, help us. Lord, help our kids and give them tender hearts toward us even though we fail them. Because the best we can aspire to is to discipline them as it seemed best to us at the time. And then they get older and you're like, oh, don't talk like that. Oh, don't do that. And you're like, oh, where'd you get that? I know where you got that. You didn't buy that on Amazon. You got that at our dinner table and in our living room. Not in the car. We discipline our kids as we see best. Okay? We're not perfect at it. Okay? I could go through and I could say, well, this is what you're doing wrong, and this is what you're doing wrong, and this is what you're doing wrong. And the fact is, there's other people who look at me today and say, this is what you're doing wrong. The Lord disciplines us for our good so that we'll share his holiness. He gives us kids to teach us as fathers what he's like.

And children, he gives you fathers to discipline you and to screw it all up so that you'll have something to compare his perfections to. And say, you know, my earthly father, he tried. And these were the things he was good at. And we could point out the things he was bad at. But these were the things he was good at. And these were the good things he gave to me. And I praise God for that. But I don't have to hold him hostage to his failures because I have a perfect father in heaven who disciplines me for his good. And in his wisdom, He gave me a dad who wasn't perfect. And he's loved me through it all. So I'll be okay. And I can love my earthly father and honor him even though he doesn't do what he should do. We live in a day when feminine sensibilities are said to be better. That women are morally superior. They say, well, it used to be that men were the ones who ruled the roost. And look at all the terrible things they did, especially the white ones.

And now what we have are feminine sensibilities of gentleness and kindness and tenderness and all these things, which are wonderful when they're coming from a woman first, a mother, and they're paired with a man and he has his gifts. Moms and dads aren't interchangeable. What typically happens to a man who doesn't have a father? There's generally, he ends up in one of two places. Zach said one, he went, homosexuality is much more common when there's not a father in the home. That's what you're pointing at, right? What's the other thing they become? What? Thugs. Tyrants. Exploiters of women. What did you say, Mary? Criminals. Yeah. It tends to be if you don't have a man involved in a boy's life, that's what he becomes. He either becomes gay or he becomes a thug or a criminal and an exploiter of women. That's what he becomes. Now, how does a father prevent those things?

And it doesn't have to be a good father. He doesn't have to be a perfect father. He doesn't have to be a Christian father. How does a man in the home prevent those things? He says no. At a young age, he tells his son, no. And if his son thinks that dad didn't mean it, then dad shows him, no, I did mean it. And that's helpful. The reason I brought up the sensibilities and the purported superiority of feminine virtues these days is because That thing that men do, it's just seen as being real bad. Even in Christian circles who go, I don't want you to do that. That would be too mean. That would be harmful to the children. I know the Georges don't like when I tell stories on them, but when I was up in Michigan, or where was I? Wisconsin. I told them about how you taught Lucas to catch a ball. I told the story. And if I remember it correctly, Wendy, you don't like this story. I love this story. They duct taped Lucas to a basketball pool.

in the middle of the summer, and just threw the ball at him until he learned to catch it. And I said, you know, the most beautiful thing about all of it, as all the men were laughing, was I said, all Wendy did was come out and spray him with bug spray. And then she went back in the house. She never said, what are you doing to my poor baby? Because she wanted her poor baby to become a man. And she knew that he needed his dad for that to be accomplished. I mean, could you imagine? I'm nervous telling the stories because I don't want DCS to get caught. I mean, the kids are all grown now, but like, could you imagine if you had taken a video of that and put it on social media? Isn't this great fatherhood? I mean, seriously, we laugh, but DCS would have been at their door. There's no question. No question. But that was, what's that? What's that? He had a helmet on. A baseball helmet.

Yeah, not a face mask. We wouldn't want, no, those don't, that's not part. Yeah, thank you. Now, listen, we can all laugh. And it's helpful because it's kind of a memorable example. But if you're like, well, they just, you know, why is it important if he can catch a ball? Actually, I don't think what he was being taught was how to catch a ball. I think he was being taught not to be scared. And not to give in to his impulse that Dan was like, and Wendy were like, you're going to need a skill in real life as a man that we need to impart to you. This is what fathers do. And you wives, you have to let your dads do it. Your husbands do it. They will do things like that that we won't laugh about and say that was good. They'll do things like that and we'll look back on together with your husband and say, that was bad. We're not perfect.

We don't do as well as we should. We do what seems best to us in the time. And what seems best to us in the time is impacted by our own sins. And yet God uses it to shape us. And so my point this morning is simply to say that fatherhood, it's hard to have a father, but it's better than not having one. And it's hard to do it knowing that you won't keep a clean sheet while you do it, but it's imperative that you do it. The passage ends by saying, all discipline for the moment seems not to be sorrowful. And you're like, wait, are we talking about being a dad or having a dad? And I'm like, both. Both. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, even the mistakes, who've been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Whether it's a dad being shaped by fatherhood,

or a mother being shaped by trusting her husband as he learns, or the child suffering through their parents' ignorance and foolishness, God promises that the training that's taking place and that everyone's enduring will produce good fruit. Will produce good fruit. So don't grow weary in it, and don't think that you're smarter than God in raising up your children. Don't think that you can thread the needle in such a way that God won't have to intervene because you'll have done it all right. That's unreasonable. Instead, trust that God will use what you do in faith and bless it. They who labor, labor in vain unless the Lord builds the house. They who raise their children up to trust the Lord, labor in vain unless God blesses the work of their hands. And that's it. He uses marriage, he uses children, and he uses many other trials in our lives to shape us and fashion us so that we'll share his holiness.

That's all your dads want for you young men. They want you to become more like the Lord. And so when they say no to you, when they upset you, even if they do it over the wrong thing, they're doing it because they love you. And I realize all of us want to say, you didn't know, but there was this time when this thing happened and it wasn't even that. I think he was just being miserable to me. If you don't learn to be gracious to people when they sin against you, then you shouldn't expect God to be gracious to you. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were yet his enemies, he was merciful to us. He sent his son for us. And so you have to learn to forgive the people who sin in bold ways against you. Even your parents. I've had the privilege of hearing some men talk about their fathers, knowing the whole story of who their fathers, like, you know, the rest of the story, the bad stuff. And to hear them say, this is the good thing my dad taught me.

And you'd be like, oh, wow, it sounds like a good dad. And then you realize that, no, his dad was abusive or his dad was an alcoholic or his dad was absent or his dad was a child molester, all these things. And yet I've heard men whose fathers were adulterers and molesters say, this was something good that I learned from my dad. And they weren't pointing to his sins. And they were trusting God to deal with their dad's sins, whether he was there or in jail or wherever he was. We have to learn to forgive our fathers for their sins against us. They're trying. We're trying.

In every area, we're trying. And I think that the mark of maturity in a man is their ability, or in a woman for that matter, is their ability to recognize a failure and still love the person who failed. Whether that's in their homes or whether that's in their workplaces or whether that's your elected officials or wherever you're at, you say, I can see they're trying and they really screwed up. They did the wrong thing here. But I see them trying. And I don't know that I would have done any better. The problem is we think we all would do better. When I have kids, I'll do better. When I get married, I'll do better. If I was the mayor, I'd do better. And yet it remains to be seen if we'll do better. And so let's trust God as we raise our kids. Let's take away the expectation of perfection and introduce the doctrine of repentance for our sins and ask our kids to forgive us when we fail them. Ask our spouses to forgive us when we fail them. To say, hey, you were right. I was wrong.

It's a much better way to live our lives and to offer them up to God to work in. Let's pray.