Glorifying God as Children and Parents - Ephesians 6:1-4

Several weeks ago, my daughter, one of my daughters, was in a car accident, she's fine. She was turning into the neighborhood, and got rear ended. So we've been working with all the insurance stuff, but this past week, I went to the mailbox, opened the mailbox, had this massive package in there, this big envelope. So I said, what is this about? Open it up, and it's this all this material from a local law firm who somehow gets information, if you were in an accident, saying, hey, you need representation. You need to make sure you have a lawyer to deal with the insurance companies. And I looked at it, and our daughter was fine. And so the car insurance have dealt with everything. There is no medical stuff. So I said, okay, throw that away. But there are times in life when we need lawyers, right? When we're interacting with maybe an insurance company or something else, you're writing a contract, and you go, I need to get a lawyer involved to make sure we're handling this correctly. But imagine at your home. You're just hanging out, parents and kids, and every time there was a dispute, someone said, well, wait a minute. Let me get my lawyer 1st and then we'll talk about it. You know, mom, if you said, hey, I need you to go clean up your room. Well, hold on. Let me get with my lawyer, let me consult and see if I have to do that or not. Let's make sure we can negotiate this. If there's constantly this sense of what are my rights? What am I entitled to? We grab the lawyer, make sure we have all our rights covered, but if in our houses, in our relationships, That's how we're thinking about our rights and not our responsibility. We're not thinking in the way Paul is calling us to think in the book of Ephesians. If you have your Bibles, you can turn to Ephesians chapter 6. We've been working through Ephesians for quite a while now. If you go all the way back to Ephesians chapter 4, verse one, Paul switches. He told us who Christ was in the 1st 3 chapters, who we are in Christ, what it means to be a follower, all the theology. And then in chapter 4, he switches and says, because this is true about who Jesus is and who we are in Christ, when we're his follower, then this is how life should look. And he starts chapter 4, verse one. Therefore, walk in a manner that is worthy of the calling to which you have been called. So he says, walk in a manner worthy of a follower of Christ, and he's been unpacking what that looks like. Last week, we started kind of a three-part miniseries around household codes. Paul is looking at the typical household in Ephesus and saying there are certain relationships that exist in those households. And how are we then to live within those relationships? And that last week talked about husbands and wives, kind of the foundational relationship within a family. Today he's going to talk about parents and children. But if we think in our relationships as parents and children primarily about my rights, about what I'm owed, what's due me, we're totally missing, what Paul is telling us to do. If you look back in chapter 5, verse 21, he says, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Jesus flips the relationship dynamics. It's not myself with a lawyer against some impersonal company in my relationships with people. It's how do we live out the life of Christ, who humbled himself, gave himself up for us. And Paul says he's framing all these relationships in that context. And today we're going to look at parents and children. The main idea of this message is extremely simple to understand. It's extremely difficult to live out for both children and parents. Here's the main idea. You'll walk away with this, but it's kind of like me telling you, hey, you should go run a marathon. It's 26.2 miles. That's easy to understand, right? You have to go do all the training and put in all the work to actually accomplish it. It's hard to do. Easy to understand. Here's the main idea. Children, honor your parents, and parents disciple your children. That's not rocket science. You don't have to have an advanced degree to understand what Paul's saying here, but it takes a lifetime of work to figure it out. Like, how do we do this well? How can we live this out? How can we walk in a manner that's worthy that captures this idea of children, honor your parents, and parents, disciple, your children? Let's start with children. Children, obey with honor is what Paul says in Ephesians 6 verses one to three. Here's what he says. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. That's not complicated. But let's break it down bit by bit. He says children. What probably pops in your head initially is young kids. Like little kids, maybe getting into teenage years where you think... See, we have a, let me see if that fixes. If not, I'll switch mikes. Hey, Noah, whoever's on the sound, switch me over to Mike. With that. There we go. That's too loud. Mike is a little softer spoken than I am. That, when we, so I think children, we think little kids. Like, we just, here's how little kids are children. The word in the original language for children would have just been kind of about a relationship. It's the offspring of someone. So we can talk about as I've gotten older and older. I can talk about my children. My children keep getting older and older. My parents who are both still alive can talk about their children. Their children are in their mid 50s by this time, but the word children is not an age specific term. So it's not like toddler, where you would go, this is a young person or a teenager. But he says, children obey your parents. Now, in the context of the passage, we do know that Paul is speaking to children who are still in the household of their parents. They're still under their authority in some sense, but he's also going to give us some nuggets about, what do we do once we, as children, grow up and move out and move on our own. But he says, children obey your parents. That word obeys interesting. A better translation probably would be to listen to. The actual Greek word is a compound word. It means just to listen under. What it means is the same thing we use when we say, listen, are you listening to me? Hey, listen to me. I got to tell you something about what I need you to do. We don't typically say to our kids, Hey, obey me. We would say, just listen to me. And by that, we mean do what I'm telling you to do. That's the same word here. It says, children, listen. to your parents. Now by listening to them, you're going to obey them. You're going to do what they say. Children, listen to your parents. Now this idea of obeying your parents, listening to parents. Is it new? Paul didn't come up with this on his own, like out of the blue. No one had been thinking of this. This would have been standard cultural teaching. Paul would have absorbed this from his studies of the Old Testament. If you look in Proverbs chapter one. Proverbs is a book in the Old Testament that just gives wisdom, kind of one liners of wisdom over and over, but it frames itself as a father who is teaching his son how to live, how to have wisdom. Proverbs one, verses one to 9 says this. The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel, to know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity, to give prudence to the simple knowledge and discretion to the youth, let the wise hear and increase in learning. And the one who understands obtain guidance to understand a proverb and a saying. The words of the wise and the riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Hear my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. This is beautiful line. Now, I'm sure if you if you're out on social media, all you may have seen the meme. It goes around regularly about how kids see their parents as they grow up, right? Like a five-year-old just thinks, my parents know everything. They have it all figured out. They get a little older. 10, 11. like, I think my parents know most everything. Somewhere around the teenage years, if you have teenagers, you're experiencing this, you don't know anything as a parent. You just become an idiot. Like, you don't know anything. Like, I don't think you know what you're talking about, Mom. Somewhere in the 20s, kids start kind of realizing they don't know everything, but they still think you don't know anything. And they'll call you if the tire goes flat on the car. There's certain things you're useful for, and you need to lean into that. Somewhere around the mid 20s, though, I was in student ministry a long time in my life, somewhere around the mid 20s, kids start saying, you know, I think my parents do know some things. I think they do have wisdom. And I've known in my own life, the older I've got, the more I thought, man, my parents actually know a lot more than I thought. And now I'm in my mid 50s, and I'm thinking, my parents, I don't see how they did this. How do they make it through, and they've done so well. There's this sense where Solomon is writing to his son saying, hey, look, the gray hairs among us have figured some things out. You should listen to them when you're young, and let that be a garland of wisdom. Now the typical young person is going to go, I don't want to hear that. But listen, young people. Your parents have wisdom. They've lived through these things. They know more than you think they know. They've been around. They know what's happening. This isn't new, what Paul's saying. Children, listen to your parents. Here's what he says, though, in the Lord. This is critical to understand what Paul saying. He says, children, listen to your parents in the Lord. He frames these the children's obedience in the Lord, both in their relationship to Christ. So he's saying, if you're a follower of Christ as a young person, then you need to listen to your parents. That's your responsibility. That's your part of that relationship. And he says, in the Lord, so that we're going to see in a 2nd that parents need to be teaching in such a way that they are instructing their children how to be in the Lord. Now, we know this when Paul writes this. Paul was aware, 100%, that there were moms and dads in Ephesus, who were probably in the church, who weren't doing a good job. He knows for sure there were young people in the church in Ephesus, Ephesus, whose moms and dad were not worthy of being listened to. The instruction they were giving, the lifestyle they were living. What Paul is saying, though, is that the relationship of a child to a parent isn't just to that parent, but to that, oh, concept of what a parent is. God, when he created the world, he creates Adam and Eve, creates marriage. And so husbands and wives is a sacred office that we hold. And then husbands and wives have children. And that relationship of parent to child and child to parent is a sacred relationship, in a sacred office. The office has to be honored. We live in a culture and a time where we are really on the verge of saying things like, well, if the person in the office isn't honorable, then the office isn't honorable. So if I don't like who's president of the United States, then the office of president isn't honorable. If I don't like the boss at my work, if he's a dishonorable person, then the office of boss is dishonorable. If my parents aren't honorable, a child could say, then the office of parent is dishonorable. And I don't have to honor that role, but the role of mother and father is sacred in God's creation. And if we have parents that aren't worthy of honor, we still honor the office. We still listen to what he says, but in the Lord, he says, obey, listen to them in the Lord. He's not saying that whatever they say you have to do, that if it's a contrary to what God would have us do, then a child doesn't have to obey any more than a employee has to obey a boss who says, do something that's contrary to God's word. He says, in the Lord. For this is right. In Colossians chapter 3, verse 20. Paul says the same thing to the Colossians, but he says it this way. children, obey your parents in everything. for this pleases the Lord. In Ephesians, he says, for this is right. That word right means just. It's the way the world should be. When we talk about, we want justice in the world. We want the world to be the way it should be. He says when children obey their parents, in the Lord, that's right. It pleases God. Here's an easy way to test if something is the way it should be if you're doing the right thing. Just ask, does this please God? And if the answer is no, don't do that thing. That's not complicated. And if the answer is yes, this would be pleasing to God, then you have freedom to do that thing. He says, this is what pleases God for children to obey parents, but he doesn't leave it there. Keep looking what he says. He says, honor your father and mother. This is the 1st commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. Paul goes back to the 10 commandments. You can find these in Exodus chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5. The 10 commandments. Moses goes up on the mountain. God says, here are my laws for my people, and he comes down, and the 1st of these are what we call the Ten Commandments. The 10 commandments are divided in the 2 kind of relationships. Our relationship with God. That's the 1st set of commandments. Have no other God before me. Don't blaspheme God. Don't make idols. And then it switches to our relationship with each other. Don't covet, don't murder, don't lie, don't steal. But the 1st one of those commands is honor your father and mother. And this word honor is more than just an inward disposition. It's an inward position that relates itself, shows itself up in our action. The Hebrew word in the Old Testament for honor that is used here, it says, honor your father and mother, is used in other places to just say something is heavy. Like, what is that about? something that's heavy. We use language the same way. If you have to have a really serious conversation with someone, you may say, hey, I got to have a heavy talk with you. Or this is a really weighty matter that we need to discuss. If you're just having an evening where it's no big deal, You go, ah, that's lighthearted. Maybe you want to go watch a lighthearted movie today. That means it doesn't have a lot of consequence, but if you watched a heavy movie, they're dealing with significant, meaningful, important things. And when it says, honor your father and mother in the original language, it says, make them heavy, significant in your life. This idea of honor is deeper than obedience. We can be obedient without honor. But if you're honoring your parents, as children, you will be obedient. Because if you're not obedient, there's no honor. You're dishonoring them in that act. But you can be obedient for a time. I think we can fool people for a while. If the inward disposition is wrong, we can make the outward look okay for a while, but it's gonna seep out. Jesus told us this. He said, you'll know a tree by its fruit. So I can be obedient for a while, but if I don't honor, then it's going to start seeping out in my life. So Paul anchors the children's obedience, listening to their parents, and this idea of honoring their parents that he picks up from the Old Testament, he says, give weight to this relationship. So young people in the room, as you think your parents don't know anything. Because you think they're out of touch. Give weight to their role in your life. If you're a follower of Christ as a child, You need to give weight to your parents. But it doesn't end there because everyone in this room. Every single person in this room is a child of someone. So it's not just young people, although that's who Paul's writing to specifically in Ephesus, but we know as we get older. We move out of the house, right? And we start our own home. But we're still our parents' child. And how we honor them changes. When I was in my parents' house, Honor looked like doing what I was told and listening to them. Did I do it well? Not all the time. I don't know of any of us that did, by the way. But it was just, I'm obedient. As I grew up, I moved out, I got my own place, I had my own family. I didn't quit honoring them though. My dad isn't telling me what to do every day. He's not texting me and telling me, hey, come over and do these things. He does ask me to come over and do things. But he asked, he doesn't tell. It's different now. He says, could you please come over and fix this thing? And I said, I sure will. Because as our parents grow up and we grow up, the obedience may change, but the honor shouldn't change. The honor should still be there. And so Paul says, children, obey your parents. listen to them. Honor them. And then he switches. to the parents. He says, children, you're obeying. Your honoring, but parents, what should you do? Here's what he says. Shorthand nourished without nagging. Nourish without nagging. Look at verse four. Parents would get all of one verse here. It's really simple. It's just hard to live out. You think it's hard. If you're a young person, you think it's hard being a young person, kind of growing up with your parents, it's hard being a parent with these young people. Not that the young people are the problem. It's just hard being a parent to nourish children to raise them. Paul says this, Fathers do not provoke your children to anger. But bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Paul does this contrasted pair. He says, here's something not to do, and here's something to do. So what is it that we shouldn't do? He says, fathers. And by saying fathers, he's speaking in their culture and their time to the primary person in the house that probably would have been provoking someone to anger and was primarily responsible for the upbringing of their children. But when he says this, he would include mothers also, because go back to Proverbs one, where Solomon says, don't forsake the teaching of your mom and dad. So he says, Fathers, what are we not to do? Don't provoke your children to anger. This idea of provoke is important because it may be in life where we have to, as parents, say, hey, this is the way it's going to be. Your curfew is at 10 o'clock. And the child gets angry. That's not provoking. Provoking is stirring up is annoying them. When I was younger, The 1st time my parents left my brother and I alone. Um, We were just, you know, like, this is a bad idea, Pam. So the 1st time you leave your kids alone, just accept, it's probably going to go bad. They left us alone. I'm very happy entertaining myself. I'm reading a book. My brother's not very happy entertaining himself. And so he proceeded for the next 45 minutes to just provoke me to anger. And at a certain point, I had been provoked, and we had a big old fight, and my parents came home, they had to deal with the fallout of this big old fight of provoking me to anger. I've done the same thing, probably on a lesser extent, to my kids, my wife who's way better than me at parenting. So I just kind of said, you show me what to do, and I'll follow that. I would annoy my kids. And if they got in trouble, I could get angry, and then the way I'm disciplining isn't great. And she would say this, hey, hey, stop exacerbating your children. And I'd be like, you're right, I need to stop. I wasn't nourishing them at that point. I was just trying to get a rise out of them. I was trying to annoy them. When Paul says, don't provoke your kids to anger. You can look at Colossians chapter 3, verse 21. He says, Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. So here he says, discourage. The idea, when he says, don't provoke your children to anger, is that we so diminish them that we break their spirit, that they no longer even want to listen to what we say. We never encourage them. We never give them compliments. We're always riding them. It's never good enough. We're provoking them to anger, not nourishing them. He says, don't provoke your children to anger. What he says, though, is bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This idea of bringing them up. That language is the same language used in chapter 5, where it says, no person, no man has ever like mistreated themselves, but they nourish their bodies. The word bring them up is to nourish. Imagine someone, maybe some of you have a garden. And you've planted plants and you have to do the work of nourishing that garden. You. Make sure the soil's just right. You put in the fertilizer, you make sure it has the water it needs. You probably put a fence up to keep the animals out, that would nibble on the plants. You've nourished that garden so it would grow. This is what he tells parents to do. He says, parents, don't provoke your kids to anger, but nourish them. And how are we to nourish them? And the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So it's not simply that we go, I need to raise my kid to be a good citizen of the United States. so that they could have a good job and have a good life. That's not what he's saying. He's saying raise them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. As a Christian parent, our goal should be to say, I need to raise my kids so they understand who God is. They understand who Jesus is. They understand how Christians behave. Now, will that lead to someone who in society is probably going to get along pretty well? I think so. The Bible speaks to this, and Romans 13. But that's not the goal if simply to go, how can I succeed in life on an earthly plane? Paul's saying, raise them up, nourish them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. He gives 2 things, discipline and instruction. Let's talk about instruction first. Instruction is just knowledge. It's the information that we need to have. I bet you you've heard someone at sometimes say something like this. We should preach the gospel all the time and use words if necessary. I'm going to tell you, it's necessary to use words. There is a content to the gospel. It's not simply with nice people. It's that we're all sinners. And God sent his son to die for us. And he died on the cross and he rose again and he loves you and he's calling you home. And that's why we live the way we live. That when we instruct our kids, we do have to say things. We do have to explain what we're doing. We have to talk to them about right and wrong and what the scripture is saying. We want them to know the Bible. We want our kids to be able to pick up a Bible and have understood the story that's in here and what God's saying. That's the instruction part. The other part is the discipline part. And when you hear the word discipline, if you're like me, your 1st reaction is, I did something wrong, and now I'm going to get disciplined. So in high school, I like to talk a lot in class, and I would regularly get sent to the principal's office, who was my dad, and he would discipline me. Because I had already done something wrong, and now it's time for punishment, and we equate punishment with discipline. But the word that Paul uses here could be translated train. Nourish your kids in the training and instruction of the Lord. And by discipline, it's not, you did something wrong, let me punish you, I'm trying to nourish you and train you so you don't do something wrong. We're about to kick off football this year. The Chiefs are going to be playing, and we hope the Chiefs are a disciplined football team. And what we mean by that is not that they commit a lot of penalties. In fact, a disciplined football team doesn't do wrong. They don't get punished because they've trained themselves not to. So when you see the word, bring them up in the discipline, think discipleship. When you hear the word discipleship in church, you don't typically think of, ooh, I'm being punished. I'm being trained in the ways that God wants me to live. I mean, trained in the ways that he would have me live. This is a parent's responsibility. These are the 2 things Paul gives us. Again, the main idea of this message is simple. Honor children honor your parents and parents disciple your children. Children honor your parents, and parents disciple your children. So how do we live this out this week? This is one of those things where, again, it's like saying, go run a marathon. I can tell you what it is, but you're going to have to end your life day in and day out, kind of unpack these things. So here are some suggestions. Children honor your parents. This just means listening to what they say and doing what they say. Now, in the 1st service. I didn't have this in my notes, but I'm going to stick with it because I think I'm right here. As I was thinking about this sermon, my wife had a saying that I think she was wrong about. No one corrected me after the 1st service and Kelly Maltby was in here, Leslie, so take it up with her. My wife used to say to our girls when they were growing up, slow obedience is no obedience. And as I was working on this sermon, I went, I don't think that's right. Jesus gave a story of 2 sons, and the dad said, go do something, and the 1st son said, I will, dad. and didn't go do it. And the 2nd sunset, I'm not going to do it, dad. But he eventually went and did it. And she said, who obeyed? And they would say, well, the 2nd son. So I think slow obedience can be obedience, but it's not honor. As a child, if you're dragging your feet when your parents say, hey, go clean your room. Okay, whatever. But maybe later. That's you may go do it later that day. But there's been no honor in the way you've done it. We honor our parents. Slow obedience is dishonor, even if you go do it later. So, how do you live this out? So, listen to what your parents say. Except correction when they give it to you. Understand that they're giving you that correction from a place of love and training and instruction. Hey, I want to listen to what you have to say. And as you get older in your teenage years, we know this is easy to do. Because if anyone's on a sports team, they often listen a lot to their coach who is going to train them and correct them and they're respectful. You can do the same thing at home. In fact, your parents are more important than your coach. That relationship is more important. Listen to what they're saying. And then as you grow up, this is for all of us in the room who have moved out of our parents' home, and we're going, well, my dad, my mom aren't telling me anymore, like to go clean my room. Or if they are, I don't have to. It's my house. I don't have to clean it. My wife tells me to clean my room and I have to clean it then. That's a different thing. Continue to honor them as you grow up. Paul wrote this in 1st Timothy. He said, honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them 1st learn to show godliness to their own household, and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. If you are fortunate enough to have parents who are living as you get older and older, there's a place where as children, we have to honor them. That's going to look different in each of your households, but it's well worth asking, how can I honor my parents as they, H? Here Paul says the way you honor them is to make sure they're taken care of, to watch out for them. Again, that's going to look different for everybody in all their cultures, but what we can't do is go, well, my parents are older, but they're kind of in the way of my life the way I want to live it. So I'm going to have to ignore them. You can't. As a Christian, you have to honor them. It's right there in scripture. Parents disciple your kids. By nourishing them, not nagging them. Nagging is primarily about me becoming happy as a parent. I want my way, so I'm gonna nag you so I can get it. Nourishing is more about my child flourishing and growing. And that may often come at the expense of me not getting my peace and quiet in that moment, at that time, in that instance. But we ought to nourish him, and that involves instruction and discipline and disciplining. and encouraging and teaching. This is why parents, all of us need to be in discipleship relationships, where others are discipling us. Others are teaching us, the content of God's word, the truth of his word. There's no time in life where I want to go, well, I've learned everything there is to learn. I can put the Bible away. I always want to be around people who can say, let me show you something in scripture that you maybe didn't know. Some you haven't seen. Some aspect of life that I haven't gone through yet that they've gone through and they can open up scripture and explain it more. As parents, we want to be soaking up all the knowledge we can about who God is so we can pass it on to our children. We can train them and raise them in the ways of the Lord. Prioritize worship with your family. When your kids are young, say, we're going to church. We're coming to worship. At home, we're going to celebrate and worship God in our home. Have your kids seeing you reading the Bible and praying and living out the Christian walk. That means at some point, probably as your kids get older, you as a parent, I as a parent, we're going to do something that was wrong. We disciplined and we were provoking to anger. We weren't doing it the way God wanted, and we're going to have to go to our kid and say, hey, will you forgive me? I was wrong in that. I didn't treat you the way I should have. Well, you forgive me, because Jesus has called us to do that, confess our sins one to another. And as a parent, you should never say, well, I'm never wrong. I'm always right. I'm never going to admit that I was wrong to my kid. No. Show them the way a Christian lives, which is, hey, I need to admit the times I've done wrong, seek to restore relationship. Let them see that lived out in real life. Are we going to bat a 1000 and never make a mistake? Absolutely not We're humans. As a parent, you're gonna do things wrong. You're gonna drop the ball on occasion. The goal is to say how do I get back up, acknowledge that, and keep moving forward. Keep seeking to disciple my kids, keep nourishing my kids in the knowledge of Christ. If you're here today and you're like, man, I don't think I've done a great job as a kid. I haven't been following my parents well or maybe you're a parent going, I want to do a better job. I want to lean into this more. I just want to pray with someone. Willie and Kathy Hunter are in the back corner, in this prayer corner, during this next song. You can pray with them. You can go back there. love to talk. We'd love to get you plugged into some resources that we have here at the church that can help you with, how do we parent? How do we, as children, honor our parents and obey them and listen to them? If you're hearing you going, I don't know who Christ is. And I just want to follow me. I want to put my life in his hands and trust him. You can head to that back corner. You can write on your connect card. Hey, I would love to talk with a pastor. We'll reach out to you this week, connect with you about what it means to be a follower of Christ. But my prayer for you as Micah and the worship team comes up during this final song is I think, how can I honor my parents? And his parents, how can we disciple our children well in the coming weeks? Will you pray with me? Father, we love you. We thank you for parents that have raised us. And Father, we thank you for the role of parent we know. I know that not everyone in this room. has parents who are wonderful, who are amazing, that set a great example for them. But Father, help us to recognize the honor, the weight of a parent that you've placed on that. Father, pray that as children, we would be obedient to our parents, and we honor them in the ways you've called us to do. will help us in these relationships to see you, to recognize you, that your son humbled himself, even when he was on this earth, it says that he was submissive to his parents, to Mary and Joseph, and he listened to them. Father, give us the strength to live that way. As your son did, give us the wisdom to pass on to our children so that they would be nourished and the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So in the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention Ephesians 4 · chapter mention Colossians 3:20 Exodus 20 · chapter mention Deuteronomy 5 · chapter mention Colossians 3:21