Households | Ephesians 6:1-9 | 03/15/26

All right. Well, welcome everyone again.

It's great to see you. If you missed the

welcome, I'm Josh. I'm one of the elders

and pastors here. And this morning,

we're going to pick up where we left off

in the book of Ephesians. I just want to

say before we start, thank you so much,

Tom, for covering the pulpit last week.

Did an awesome job. Um, I won't ask you

to stand up so that we can all clap for

you because I know that that would make

you feel terrible. But just know in my

heart that's what I'm doing.

Um, this morning we're going to pick up

where we left off and continue talking

about the various relationships, earthly

relationships that Paul's concerned

about at this point in the letter to the

Ephesians.

And one of the things that's so

interesting about studying scripture,

which is a series of very, very ancient

documents, is it eventually will dawn on

you that people really haven't changed

that much over the last couple thousand

years.

Paul in this passage is concerned about

children who don't obey their parents,

about parents who aren't willing to

patiently teach and instruct their kids,

employees who resent their bosses, and

bosses who misuse their authority.

Those are the kinds of problems that

were typical in Paul's day. Thank God

we've grown up and out of those, right?

But I said that kind of as a joke, but

we sort of tell ourselves this story of

like 2,000 years have gone by. Haven't

we gotten so much better at things like

this? Don't we understand ourselves so

much better? Aren't we so much better at

helping children obey and helping

parents to be patient and attentive?

Aren't we way more effective at helping

workers have good attitudes and bosses

be more just and altruistic in their use

of authority?

or are we just as bad as we've always

been at this?

Our culture insists that the problems

that we are encountering here are issues

of bad communication. They're issues of

power imbalances in the workplace,

gender things. The problem is that you

need to be more assertive, that you need

to have better boundaries, that you need

to be more willing to walk away, things

of that nature. It all sounds really

modern. And it all sounds really helpful

and useful

all while failing to address what is the

fundamental underlying problem at work

here at the deepest level.

Why is it

that in every culture, in every strata

of society, at every level of education

and employment, human beings resist

being under the authority of others?

Why is it that in every strat of

society, in every kind of culture, we're

tempted to abuse authority when it's

been delegated to us?

Maybe the problem isn't something

outside of us after all. Maybe it's

something that's inside of us.

Maybe the problem this whole time has

been the fundamental human instinct to

resist God's authority over our lives in

exchange for the belief that we

ourselves know better that we have a

better idea of how to run things on

ourselves.

We believe that we're wiser that our

ways will lead to more flourishing and

success. And it's worth just stopping

and asking yourself and reflecting on

2,000 years of history, is that true?

How's it going?

How's that experiment going for us?

How is doing the way that we think is

best going? Maybe for some of us it's

going okay. Maybe for some of it's some

of us it's bad. Probably for some of us

it's terrible.

Maybe for some of you it's on the verge

of ruining your whole life.

But brothers and sisters, I have great

great great news. Great news. One of the

things that Christ has come to do in his

gospel is to reorient our relationships

to authority.

Both to those under our authority and as

possessors of authority and those sorry

both as those who have authority and

those who are under authority.

This is one of the amazing ways that the

gospel is meant to transform the world.

He's not just trying to change what we

think, but our everyday relationships in

life.

This morning, we're going to continue

engaging with these eminently practical

claims that the lordship of Jesus

extends over every area of our life,

including our homes and our workplaces.

How does the expression of his lordship

over our lives at home and at work lead

us into a way that glorifies God and

results in human flourishing?

That's the question today. Which brings

me to my main point. What I think is

Paul's main point from this passage.

The gospel makes Christ Lord of all our

relationships.

The gospel makes Christ Lord of all of

our relationships. So, so obey him in

everything. Please open your Bibles to

Ephesians chapter 6.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

We're going to pick up where we left

off. Let me quickly just reframe our

thinking here.

In chapters 1 through three, Paul has

laid out the full comprehensive scope of

the glory of the gospel of God to us.

God has been from the beginning

intending to express his redemptive,

redeeming, saving love from the

foundation of the world all the way into

eternity towards his people through

Christ by the power of the spirit.

Then in chapters 4-6, Paul shifts from

what God has done and is doing to how

that ought to affect our lives. How we

ought to live in response to these

truths, these facts. Because we now

belong to Christ, we're called to live

differently. We're called to walk in

unity. We've seen holiness, love, and

wisdom. And just before this passage,

Paul gives this key command in Ephesians

Ephesians 5:18

5:18 that we ought to be filled with the

spirit. And it turns out being filled

with the spirit has a direct impact on

how we treat each other in church, how

we treat our husbands and how or sorry,

how wives treat their husbands and

husbands treat their wives. And now here

we see what this looks like fleshed out

in how children and parents treat each

other and servants and masters treat

each other.

So with that being said, we are in

Ephesians chapter 6 beginning in verse 1

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

through verse 9. Please open your hearts

and prepare to hear the reading of the

word of the Lord.

Children,

obey your parents in the Lord, for this

is right. Honor your father and mother.

This is the first commandment with a

promise that it may go well with you and

that you may live long in the land.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to

anger, but bring them up in the

discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Bonder servants, obey your earthly

masters with fear and trembling, with a

sincere heart, as you would Christ,

not by the way of eye service as people

pleasers, but as bondervants of Christ,

doing the will of God from the heart,

rendering service with a good will as to

the Lord and not to man, knowing that

whatever good anyone does, this he will

receive back from the Lord, whether he

is a bondervant or is free. masters, do

the same to them and stop your

threatening, knowing that he who is both

their master and yours is in heaven and

that there is no partiality with him.

This is God's word. Lord, I pray that

you would imprint these truths forever

on our heart in Christ's name. Amen.

All right. So, I have a sermon

manuscript this morning. Let's see if I

can say what's on it and not just

continually digress. Obviously, this is

an a very very very very practical

series of verses. Um, I'm not going to

be able to say everything that I think

is worth saying, but we're going to do

our best to keep me from doing that this

morning. Anyway, so we're going to look

at three things here. We're going to

look at what it means that Christ is

Lord of our homes. Second, what it means

that he's Lord of our workplaces. And

third, what it means that he is lord of

our future.

So let's begin chapter 6 verse one.

We've already said in chapter 5 of this

letter, everyone everyone is called to

submit. He says submit to one another

out of reverence for Christ. And I

suggested when we got there that he

means submit in the appropriate

God-given contexts in which you're

called to submit. So we saw that at home

wives are to submit to their husbands.

Husbands are called to submit to Christ

by laying down their lives for their

wives. Now here at verse one, children

are commanded to obey their parents.

Now the word obey here is stronger than

the word submit. It implies you're going

to do exactly what they say as opposed

to adopt an attitude of willingness to

yield to someone else's will.

This implies a unilateral flow of

authority that is he calls it right or

appropriate to the parent child

relationship.

I'm exactly one paragraph in and now

we're walking off to the side of the

pulpit. Sorry. Here we go.

It's a it's

we're in a weird cultural moment and I

saw this a lot as my kids were really

little and I was keeping up with the

literature. I assume we're still there

where people can't decide if parents

having authority in relationship to

their children is a good thing or a bad

thing. There's versions of parenting

which are really aimed at trying to

minimize the role of the use of

authority in a child's life.

Now, I have no interest in scoring

cultural points with anyone. I am

interested in you reading the words

inside of your Bible and seeing what

they say.

Children, obey.

That is offering you the introduction to

a framework of the nature of this

relationship.

Sorry. My only point in saying that is

it's it's really important to hear it

and to try to honestly reckon with it

and realize that that's not my idea.

That's not your parents idea. It's not

whatever the bad example you had growing

up. The nature of that relationship is

God's idea. It's God's plan for the

family in the world. And you might have

seen it abused in your life and that was

wrong in so far as it was abusive. But

that doesn't make possessing authority

in the child thing, child parent

orientation wrong. It just means you

shouldn't abuse it anyway. We'll

probably come back to that. Paul tells

children to obey their parents and he

justifies this command in two ways.

First, he tells children to do this

because it's right.

It is right.

Paul has used a bunch of different

phrases in the last couple chapters to

talk about things being like fitting or

appropriate.

He said, "We should do things because

it's proper." In verse 5, because it's

fitting, because it's good. Here in

chapter 6, verse one, children should

obey their parents because it's right,

because it is consistent with what makes

for flourishing and blessing in the

world. It is appropriate given the

redemption of God which has come through

Christ and the community that this

redemption has created the family

dynamics that the gospel has created. It

is right that that it's ordered this

way. Second, the second justification he

gives is he reminds the churches in

Ephesus that this command is at the

center of God's covenant commands for

his people in the Old Testament.

Honor your father and mother, he says.

And this is the first command with a

promise. If you do this, you will live

long in the land. There's two way, well,

there's a couple of different ways, but

there's two primary ways that Old

Testament authors would emphasize

something. We do one of them, we don't

do the other. The first is if you put

something at the beginning of a list or

of a that's because it's most important

and something at the end of a list is

least important. That's we kind of do

that in our culture. The other way they

do it is they put something in the

middle.

The thing that they're trying to say is

most important is in the middle.

And so in the decalogue in the ten

commandments

is the command to honor your father and

mother.

It's at the center because it's very

important.

The command to honor your father and

mother was given pride of place because

quote the injunction to do so arises out

of one's relationship to Yahweh. End

quote.

You learn to obey God by learning to

obey your parents. You learn to

structure your view of authority as a

child.

You learn to understand your view of

authority and submission in the world by

first humbling yourself under the

authority of God through your parents.

This is what brings order and blessing

to the whole world. When children learn

to do this at a young age, it leads when

or when they don't learn to do it at a

young age, it produces disorder.

It's really important to understand that

we shouldn't be here trying to reinvent

what parenting should look like. I don't

think

we are to teach our children to obey us

because that is the beginning of

learning to obey God. Whatever you think

about um parenting, it's just it's just

fundamental to understand that the way

that you expect your childrens to

respond to your word is how they're

going to grow up assuming you ought to

respond to God's word. Whether you like

that or not, that's just the case.

Children obeying their parents was God's

idea.

And parents are not to abuse that

authority, as we're going to see in a

second. But that's also God's idea.

Now that we've said this, it's probably

important to think through how exactly

this text applies.

So the word for child, the word for

child there stresses relationship more

than age. It's talking about a

relationship between you and your parent

or your parent and you. However, Paul

adds some clarification to what he means

by the word child in verse four. and he

seems to have in mind people who are

younger growing up needing training and

instruction.

He doesn't, at least in this specific

text, he doesn't seem to have adult

children in mind. Though that may be an

implication, I don't think it's a

necessary one.

Paul is thinking of an untrained child

in need of instruction when he utters

these words. Second consideration, Paul

says, "Children, obey your parents." And

he could have just stopped there, but he

didn't. He said, "Children, obey your

parents in the Lord.

Do it under the sphere of God's

authority and reign."

This means a number of really, really

important things.

Um, this means you cannot disobey Christ

in order to disobey your parents.

You cannot violate God's law to do what

your parents said because Christ is your

king, not your parents.

This means for you children that your

relationship to Jesus,

listen kids,

this means that your relationship with

Jesus shouldn't be primarily through

your parents.

It's primarily directly to him.

He's your Lord.

Christ is your Lord, not me.

And in so far as I am leading in a way

that's consistent with God's word, my

kids are to submit to my authority. But

if I'm ever calling them or leading them

into sin or into anything unrighteous,

they're not to follow me there.

If Christ is Lord of our homes, parents,

you should want your children to obey

you out of their reverence for Christ.

Not because you say so.

Your voice and your authority in their

lives is temporary, but Christ's

authority and Christ's voice never goes

away.

No. Let's keep going.

Paul turns to fathers.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to

anger, but instead bring them up in the

discipline and instruction of the Lord.

I love this text so much. It's helped me

so much in my life to rethink what being

a father is. Um, this text is easy to

understand,

easy, easy to misunderstand, excuse me,

is Paul saying, "Don't ever do anything

to make your kid mad."

Come on now.

That's ridiculous, right?

How can we have a unilateral authority

relationship where the person called to

submit is never ever ever bothered by

any of the commands? I'm going to tell

you the truth in my house when I say

clean your room. No one is happy to do

it. Nobody. Everyone's like

because that's what actual authority

fleshed out in real life looks like.

Okay. So then what what does this mean?

It's way more helpful to look at how

this phrase, don't provoke to anger, is

set in contrast to the positive

instruction.

Don't provoke to the anger, but instead

bring them up in the discipline and

instruction of the Lord.

That is contrasting a willingness to

teach and instruct, a willingness to

nurture and instruct

with the opposite. What is the opposite

of a willingness to teach and help and

and bless and instruct?

It's frustration. It's anger that you're

not doing it right. And it's an

unwillingness to show you how to do it

correctly.

It's the meeting out of consequences

without the goal of instructing and

teaching.

It is unjust, unwise, unhelpful

applications of punishment with no view

of getting the kid from where they are

to where they're supposed to be.

Um, this is like a a dumb subtle thing,

but we agreed very early on that

spanking and stuff like that is not

we're not going to refer to that as

punishment. I don't want to think about

it like punishment. I'm not punishing

them. I am disciplining them. I am

instructing them. The goal of this is to

teach. And if it's ever about me getting

my anger out, I am in sin.

I am sinning against my king. and there

will be no partiality for me if I walk

in deliberate unrepentant sin.

One commentary put it like this. This

commandment forbids quote excessively

severe discipline, unreasonably harsh

demands, abuses of authority,

arbitrariness, which I thought was

interesting, unfairness, constant

nagging, condemnation, or subjecting

your child to humiliation, and all forms

of gross insensitivity to your child's

needs." End quote.

Woof.

There should be a discernable and

understandable logic to your

corrections. Dads,

your child should be able to predict

what's going to upset you or what's

going to be

an act of stepping outside of the rule

of law in your house. It shouldn't be

this reactive thing that they're not

able to anticipate. That's ungodly.

If your kids are walking on eggshells

around the house because they don't know

what's going to set you off, that is

provoking frustration. That is prov

that's creating an environment where

it's like, I don't know what to do to

please you.

This command is directed at fathers,

but it's for both parents.

I kind of see this as like God telling

Adam in the garden, don't touch the

fruit. It's it's yes, he's the one being

told to do it. Yes, he's the one who's

ultimately responsible, but neither of

them are supposed to touch the fruit.

I think it's a similar thing here. The

way that we parent our kids. Look at the

look at the positive side of this.

Instead of being unreasonable and

unjust, we're commanded to train our

children in the discipline and

instruction of the war. Lord. Uh the

word instruction there is the same word

that's translated in Ephesians 5 as

nourish your wife as you nourish your

body.

Comes from the Greek word trophic. If

you're a healthc care person here, you

know autorophic. It's it's you nurture,

you give health to, you feed, you bless.

Where am I?

The two words that the father is

supposed to do are difficult to

translate because they have a wide

application, a wide set of ideas that

they encapsulate.

But the idea is to nourish and able to

give them what they need to grow as

people and to shape them into what

they're called to be as citizens of the

kingdom of God. Etreffo and pideon

create health in them, teach them all

they need to be flourishing young men

and flourishing young women in the

world.

It encapsulates a lot of things.

So, if I can just briefly paraphrase

Paul, Paul is saying, "Dads, do not be

an impossible to please, selfish,

self-centered jerk that only worries

about whether your kids are doing what

you want. Instead,

be a godly, loveoriented father who

tries to imitate Christ by helping your

children grow up into Christlike image

bearsers who will make the world a

better place. I may have added some

words in there for context.

When I was younger,

I made I thought this verse meant make

sure you do family devotionals every

night.

And family devotionals are good. They're

helpful and they're useful.

But they are one inch deep into a 100

foot ocean of actually doing what that

verse says.

That verse is about helping a young

woman become a godly a young child

become a godly woman, a young boy become

a godly man and doing it with patience

and love and care and attentiveness.

This kind of discipline and instruction

of the Lord is carried out at the dinner

table and at the sports field, in the

classroom, at grandma's house, and how

you treat the other kids at church, and

how you talk to the neighbors.

Grab whatever context you want. That's

where it's fleshed out.

The discipline instruction is the

nurturing and shaping into godly

citizens of the kingdom of God. So, the

question of the day is the question that

you should be asking is, how do I do

this?

Paul, you know, I think we have a pretty

good idea of how to avoid the negative.

And if you don't, please talk to me. I'd

love to help you. I had I when I became

a Christian had massive anger issues

that I've had to work through. So, if

that's a thing for you, talk to me. I'd

be happy to process it with you. But

that's we like we have a pretty good

concept for what we shouldn't do, I

think. But how do we do this positive

thing? this positive. How do we nurture

and teach children how to honor God with

their lives? And the answer, I think, is

this. The answer is in community

with help.

Do this by pursuing holiness and

humility along other people who are

doing the same thing and who have done

the same thing.

There are people here in this church who

have already raised their kids and now

have some pretty helpful perspective on

the implications of doing certain

things.

There's people that are ahead of you in

your stage of parenting who remember the

stage you're in really vividly and have

learned things that they can share with

you.

Believe it or not, there's also people

in this room who don't have kids yet,

who have gotten a solid eight hours of

sleep every day for the last seven,

eight weeks, and are thinking clearly

and rationally in a way that's just hard

when you have a bunch of kids

and something seems really right in the

moment. And you know, I've had people in

our community group that are just kind

of like just really gently asking me

like, "Why did you do that?" out and

it's like because I

you know

because it's this is Christianity in

real life. You say dumb things, you do

dumb things that you shouldn't do. You

you even do things that you know were

wrong.

And as a parent running from thing to

thing, you can like almost forget to

stop and repent of that. And it's

helpful when someone who's your friend

and who loves you, whether they have

kids or not, goes like, "Man, that was

kind of like loud and harsh.

I appreciate that when people do that

for me

because I don't want to get to the end

of my life and my kids don't want to

talk to me because I've been a harsh,

difficult to please father.

The best way to gain a better

understanding of how to carry out this

task, this task that God has given us,

is by seeking to be holy, to honor God

in humility, and by recognizing that you

don't know everything, that you got to

open yourself up to input and

suggestions.

Um,

look, I'm not trying to be harsh about

like I know I'm being very very direct.

I I'm being very direct because I wish

people would have been more direct with

me about this. I think I thought to

myself, "Oh, I'm just going to figure it

out." Well, raising four boys is a lot

to figure out.

And you kind of the beginning

of wisdom is humility and the fear of

the Lord. Um, that's where we're called

to start with anything and everything.

And for the person that wants to give

advice, that's also a really great place

to start. humility and fear of the Lord.

No two kids are the same.

You know, it's been so funny over the

course of our church's life because I I

watch, you know, I live in my house with

four boys, and I promise I'm going to

stop telling so many side stories and

side digressions here in a minute, but

you know, when you're at a house with

four boys, you can't go like if you try

to go like, "Hey, maybe let's think

about doing something different."

They're not going to hear a word you

say. And I've heard I've heard wonderful

lovely moms who have mostly girls or

only a girl and they'll try to talk to

my boys that way. My boys are like, "I

don't even know what you're saying to

me. Like, see you later."

And and it can be shock it can be

shocking to come to our house and hear

me be like, "Hey, stop that." They're

like, "Whoa." And I'm like, "They

literally unless you talk like that,

they won't hear what you're saying." And

it's this mutually shared thing that we

all talk to each other like that. And it

would be it would be a mistake for me to

walk into the house of a guy raising a

bunch of daughters and go like, "How

come you're not speaking all sharply and

directly to them?"

That's just a failure to appreciate how

different of a home environment mine

than than mine is. And so we we have to

start from a place of humility trying to

understand before we even give advice

and input.

Okay.

If all of us in our houses embrace God's

authority in this area, if you as

parents strive to embrace a godly

attitude of genuinely wanting to nurture

and teach your kids how to be

Christthonoring people, and if these

kids strive to embrace godly attitudes

of genuinely wanting to listen and obey,

that sounds like Eden on earth.

That's a home full of righteousness and

blessing and peace.

That sounds like the kind of home that

brings blessing into the world.

This is the way God created homes to

flourish with people orienting

themselves towards God's authority and

submitting to his instruction in how

they treat each other. If you tell

yourself, "I'm only going to do this if

they treat me right," you will never do

it.

Children won't do it to their parents.

Parents won't do it to their children.

If you tell yourself, "I'm going to do

this because Christ is my Lord and I've

been given specific orders, commands,

um, admonishments for how to treat

everyone in my life." You will find

power to do this where you didn't even

know power could exist.

The gospel makes Christ Lord of your

family relationships. So, obey him in

everything. All right, I'm going to go

much faster with this last part. Sorry,

I knew this was going to happen. Christ

is also Lord of our workplaces.

Paul here speaks to bond servants and

their earthly masters.

Now look, today is not the day for me to

go in and do a detailed unpacking of how

differently 17th 18th century American

slavery is from first century Roman

practices. They're very different. Let

me just gently suggest it's improper and

unhelpful to read in American history

into a New Testament document that was

written 1800 years earlier. Okay, just

leave it at that.

To say this in modern parliament

employees, obey your managers.

Obey the CEO with fear and trembling and

with a sincere heart as you would

Christ.

You might think to yourself, "Wow, is

Paul telling me to do that at my job?"

How is he teaching us to think about our

bosses?

Verse six says, "Obey as you would obey

Christ from a sincere heart as a bond

servant of Jesus." So, what you get here

in this second set of commands is

another admonition to reorient how you

think about authority at work.

Paul here upholds the standard Roman

authority structure. Servants obey your

masters. But then he presents a

radically different motivation for doing

so. You don't do this because you're

paid. You don't do this because you owe

them money. You're not doing this

because you agreed to work off your

cousin's debt, which is a very common

thing for why people did this in the

Roman world. You do it well because you

love Christ.

You're doing it out of love for him as

if you're doing it for him.

Verse seven, do this. do this with a

good will as though you're doing it for

God himself and not man. Why? Because

any good anyone does, he receives back

from the Lord.

That strange accounting Sam was talking

about earlier. How does that work? If I

do a really good job at my job, God's

going to reward me. What does that mean?

God's a strange accountant.

God has ways of paying us back

of of blessing us and bringing blessing

into our lives that you don't even

really

appreciate until years and years have

gone by. All right, last story and then

promise I'll stop telling stories. So,

when I was in college, before I was a

Christian, I was a terrible employee. I

worked for the school. I worked in the

computer lab. I had one job. Write down

everyone's name who comes in and make a

note if they check out a set of

headphones. Do you know how often I did

that during my 4-hour shift? Zero times.

Every time I went in, I was a terrible

employee. I was reading other things. I

was thinking about what I wanted to

think about. I wasn't really paying

attention. And I was collecting a

paycheck.

At a certain point in the life of that

job, a girl who started with me, who was

a couple years older, took over as my

manager. My old manager left and she

took her place. And she was constantly

kind of getting on me about not doing my

job. And you know, we started together.

It's like I didn't listen to anything

she was saying. Well, one day Jesus

saved me

and I was reading through the New

Testament and came across that text

and I don't want to get into all the

details, but I started trying to do my

job well.

And when I went in to do my like

endofear

uh interview, I sat down. I was like,

"Hey, how's it going?" She's like,

"Good." and she was looking at a paper

and she started to shake and I was like,

"What's going on here?" And she started

to cry

and she was like, "The hardest part of

my job since I started here has been

you."

And like, I don't think you realize what

it's done to me to see you change like

this. What happened?

And I got to share the gospel with her.

And she came and visited church.

Isn't that amazing?

You don't. Yeah. Thanks, Larry.

Yeah. Jesus is the hero of that story.

Yeah.

I initially was concerned about how do

you apply this? So, I was talking with

Bryce about it on Thursday. How should a

self-employed person or like a

stay-at-home mom or someone who doesn't

really have a master quote unquote, how

should they think about this? Is this

useful to them? Is it not? It really

helped me that when you get to the end

of verse 8, Paul clarifies, I'm talking

to you whether you are a bondervant or

if you're free.

Bondervant or free is for all of you,

whether you have a boss or not.

And the way that that works is he is

talking about our attitude.

He's talking about the attitude you

ought to have when you work. He of

course situates it here in the first

seven verses in a very specific context,

the master servant context. But he then

he says you ought to always have this

attitude whether you're in that kind of

relationship or not. You ought to engage

every business transaction, every deal,

every relationship, every agreement with

a sincere heart with fear and trembling

before your Lord and King Jesus and

doing it in a way that reflects his

values and priorities and how you deal

with people, whatever your work is.

Don't try to do your do a good job to be

a people pleaser. Don't do it for eye

service. Do it for God. Don't work hard

with a bad attitude. Do it with a good

will.

Do the things you do, not primarily

because of what you think you'll get in

this life, but because of how you know

it glorifies God and blesses him and

results in blessing in the next.

This is how you're called to treat good

bosses and bad bosses. This is how you

treat good clients and bad clients. It's

how you treat good co-workers and bad

co-workers, not because of the authority

you do or don't have at work, but

because of the authority of Christ over

your life as you work.

You are free to engage the people you

work with or for or beside with a

humble, holy, and sincere attitude

because Christ is your Lord and not

ultimately any of them.

Oh, and by the way, the same is true for

bosses in verse 9.

Masters, Paul says, do the same thing

and stop your threatening.

do all the positive stuff I just told

them to do and don't abuse your power.

Don't use your authority to try and

control. What is what is threatening

other than using your authority to try

to coers people to do what you want them

to do.

Threatening in this case wouldn't be the

just and righteous use of law to enforce

an agreement. It's a threatening

violence or punishment in an unjust way.

The point is whether you are in

authority or under authority, there is

an authority over you in the gospel. And

that is the Lord Jesus who has

instructed us, commanded us to love each

other and to try to help each other and

do right by each other. Which of course

brings us to the big elephant of a

question. What if my authority over me

is terrible? What if my authority over

me is cruel? What if I'm the kind of

person who's abused authority?

What do I do then? Let's close by

looking at the Lord of our futures.

Verse N. Do these things, Paul says,

knowing that he who is both their master

and yours is in heaven and there is no

partiality with him.

That's Paul's way of saying you you may

not see God right now. You might see

your manager up on the top floor in the

corner office with the big desk. That's

what you can see. But do you want to

know who's actually in charge?

Not him.

Look up.

Look up above him.

God is coming. And it says there is no

partiality with him. There's no

favoritism with him. There's no

preference. There's no special pleading.

There are no exceptions.

That phrase no partiality is about

judgment.

He is not partial in judgment.

If you abuse your authority, you will

give an account to someone who is not

partial in any way.

If you abuse your employees,

you might get away with it for a decade

or two, but your fate is in eternity and

the judgment is impartial.

He who judges

judges with a purely just, purely

righteous, unbending, unmerciful,

pitiles judgment. I know it's weird to

think about it like that. We don't often

use those words to describe God.

Unmerciful and pitiles, but that is the

kind of judgment he has. It is 1,000

million billion%

fair.

Right.

Those

who abuse their authority and abuse

their role. Those who hate their bosses

and their hearts, they will be judged by

God.

Christ is your boss and mine.

Christ is a just judge and our futures

are in his hand. And in the future, we

will all give an account for how we

live.

His question to us will be, "How did you

live do living under my authority at

home? How did you do living under my

authority in your marriage? How did you

do living under authority, my authority

in your church and with your kids and in

your workplace? That's what we're going

to give an account about.

How did it go?

Did my saving, life-giving grace

actually change you into someone who

says, "Not my will, but your will be

done."

Or will you be condemned as someone who

spent their whole lives saying, "Not

God's will, but my will be done."

It's really important to understand, and

I hope I've been able to make the point

somewhat clearly, that God is not

commanding us to do these things to make

our lives worse.

He's doing these things to produce

flourishing in our life. Even if it's

really hard to see it in the short term,

even if it's really hard to see how

doing this tomorrow is going to help,

God doesn't deal in days.

God's deals in eternity.

He is showing us how to live in such a

way that we can be confident that we

will meet him at the end and he will say

to us, "Well done, my good and faithful

servant. Enter into the joy of your

master."

This is about these all these

instructions, all these commands, these

are about cultivating a Christlike

character.

It's about parenting in a way that

Christ would parent. It's about working

in the way Christ would work. It's about

running things the way Christ would run

them. When we're attempting to flesh out

in the common places of life the kingdom

of God and how we act, he's our example.

And all of us fall short of this. All of

us have sinned in some of these ways.

And all of us need a lot of help to get

better at doing these things that God's

command. So what do you do if you

failed?

Well, need to ask God who is impartial

and can see clearly how far we've fallen

short. What should I do? What should I

do, Lord? And the answer is we should

own our specific sin, admit that we're

guilty of it, and repent.

Ask him for forgiveness, and ask the

people that we've sinned against for

forgiveness. and to go to the cross and

at the cross

yield to his unrelenting willingness to

forgive us of our sins and to rescue us

from these patterns that would destroy

our lives.

We need to relent to his desire,

his desire to through the death of his

son reconcile us to himself to cover all

of our failures and sins. to forgive us,

to set us free, to stand us up and set

us back out, to go forth and sin no

more. And every time we fail, we're

called to come back again, to be

cleansed, aresh, to be forgiven Aresh,

and filled again with divine mercy, to

keep striving to be more and more like

Jesus.

We do this knowing that in the death of

Christ, we're redeemed.

In the death of Christ, we are set free

from the cycles of authority abuse by

the only one who can set us free.

We don't need to fight our earthly

authorities anymore because they are

subject to the judgment of God. We can

obey God by submitting to them knowing

that God is going to make everything

right. We don't need to abuse our

earthly authority anymore because God is

just and he is for us and he is with us

in the right use of authority and he

will ultimately vindicate us in the end.

If you've sinned in your home, if you've

sinned towards your kids, or if you have

a kid, or if you're a kid and you've

sinned towards your parents, repent.

Ask God to help you obey these

instructions.

Ask God to forgive you your sins. Ask

God to help you better orient yourself

towards authority. And if you've

repented and if you've prayed, ask the

people around you how to relate to

authority in a more godly way.

We who live under the authority of Jesus

in the gospel are called to live free of

the cycles of worldly authority abuse.

We're called to walk in the newness of

life that orients all of our thinking,

all of our ways toward the authority of

Jesus who rules and reigns over our

lives forever. Brothers and sisters,

rejoice in hope. For God's Christ is

becoming the king of the kingdoms of

this world, and he will reign forever

and ever. Let's pray.