Sermon Tone Analysis

Ephesians 6

Good morning church!

It is great to be back with our church family, we love you guys, and were gone lone enough to miss you.

I want to say thank you to the ladies that have been participating in praying for your husbands, and for each others husbands.

Prayer is a such critical tool, a weapon actually... against our enemy who desires to kill, destroy, and steal, all that is good, all that God desires for you.

So it is both a tool of warfare, and prayer brings us personally closer to God.

Psalm 145:18

So, for the men, rather than get you a book on praying for your wives, that you might not read…I didn’t want our wives and the mothers of our children to be ripped off, so I bought you a Cliff-notes version of praying the Scriptures for your wives and they are on the back table for you to keep inside you Bibles or attach to the outside of your refrigerator, whichever you personally might be reminded of it more.

Also on the back information table is your Growth Group homework.

Please remember to grab one of those and complete it prior to attending your group as it will greatly assist in the depth of your conversation and participation during group.

If you happen to forget to pick one up since we do announcements at the beginning of church rather than the end.

Contact your group leader, not the pastor, and they will send you an electronic copy.

Now, lets pray.

Join me in Ephesians 6 and we will see how far we get.

This should be pretty familiar ground for most of us, Paul is taking us back to one of the 10 commandments, but because we’ve not been in this letter for a couple of weeks, I want to remind you that this is not just an arbitrary throw back.

In chapter 5 Paul writes, Eph 5:18

Don’t be drunk with wine which is wasteful, purposeless living, but be filled with the Spirit.

Then he gives us these examples of walking in the Spirit, or living out a Spirit filled life.

That began with God’s blueprint for marriage found in the end of chapter 5, giving instructions to both husbands and wives.

Then here in chapter 6 he begins with parenting, again with instructions to both child and parent, specifically to the Dad’s, and some of this is repeated in his next letter to the Colossians.

But it starts with an instruction to kids to obey Eph 6:1

obey your parents…and adds... in the Lord.

Meaning as part of walking in the Spirit, being a Christian Child, as part of your obedience to God and leading by the Holy Spirit, children you are to obey your Mom and Dad, and then he just says, beyond an expression of your faith, it’s just the right thing to do.

So parents, if children are to obey you, what do you need to do? Teach them to obey.

We don’t need to be taught to disobey…right?

We’re born with a sinful nature, it is natural for us to be rebels, Mom’s and Dad’s it is our responsibility to teach our children to obey us.

This proves to be a helpful pattern for them to begin in their lives as they grow and then have to obey other’s in authority over them, that they may disagree with, or not fully understand the reasons behind the instruction, we are the authority and the teacher in their young lives, that are charged with the responsibility of teaching them the importance of obedience.

This also sets the foundation for them to obey God, even when they may not fully understand.

There does come a transition time when our kids grow up from having a place of authority in their lives to one of honor.

In verse 2 Paul writes, Eph 6:2-3

Even though we no longer have to obey, husbands and wives are to leave mother and father and cleave to their spouse, the principle of honoring our parents never goes away.

Paul reminds us though that even though it is a command, something that we have to do as Christians, and should be confirmation of our walking in the Spirit, there is a promise, or a benefit that comes with our obedience to it.

He says that it may be well with us, and that we may live long on the earth.

Now as part of our responsibility in this relationship as parents, Paul gives instructions here on the how to the Dads.

Eph 6:4

Now if you grew up when I grew up, or in the generation before me, it seemed like the dad’s were responsible for duty and discipline and mom’s were the ones that babied you through your whiny little feelings.

Correct?

It’s almost like this verse was written later, or added in sometime after the 1970’s.

Well that is not the case.

I truly believe it is more of an indication, of pastor’s not teaching the full counsel of God in an expository way, verse by verse with explanation.

Or as Pastor Chuck used to say simply teaching the Word of God, simply, and Christian men not reading the Bible on their own.

A proper understanding of this verse for a Christian Dad, walking in the Spirit, means as we are training up our kids in the Lord and teaching them how to obey, it’s not to be done harshly, its not to be done ignorantly or rudely, but in doing so, we must be constantly considering, evaluating, measuring the feelings and understanding of our children, so we don’t cross that line of exasperating them.

That means as we train and teach, we also encourage, as we correct we then redirect demonstrating and modeling the correct way to do things, otherwise in provoking them to wrath, we are reinforcing and encouraging the rebellious spirit they received from our seed, rather than showing them how to honor God and walk in the Spirit.

Paul now transitions to a different relationship, under this idea of being filled with the Spirit.

And all of this instruction is given, because it is not natural for us, it is not the norm that we seen in others, but it is what our lives should look like as followers of Jesus Christ.

Before I begin the passage, our Bibles use the terms slaves and masters here.

Often times that language is softened or explained away as indentured servants.

You owe me money, so work for me at a certain wage to pay it off.

Very similar to the situation that we have today.

We owe other people money, for food, clothing, electricity, etc., so we work for a certain wage, so that we can pay our debts.

Now there was certainly some of that and this slave/master relationship differed from region to region and circumstance to circumstance.

But I can’t say that there were not the stereotypical slave relationships at the time that this was written thousands of years ago, when we had it in our own country up until about a hundred and 50 or 60 years ago, and in some senses still do, no longer based on race, but sexuality.

For our purposes,... because we are looking for application to our lives today,... we’ll consider these passages as most relating to workers and bosses.

So as employees, as Christians in the workforce, apparently, we aren’t supposed to act like everyone else, work like everyone else, or look like everyone else especially when the boss isn’t around....verse 5

As to Christ, man that is a perspective changer!

If my boss was Jesus would I be quicker to obey?

Would I mock Him in the break-room, give him attitude, undermine His authority?

No way!

So as a Christian, who isn’t drunk with wine living a wasteful, purposeless life, but as a Christian seeking to be filled with the Spirit, and obeying the leading of the Spirit, when I go to work, I’m to obey the instructions of my boss with sincerity.

I’m to do the best job that I can, and give a full day of work, like I agreed to when they hired me for the wages I agreed to work for....and not just when their looking, or watching on their security camera from their nice office....check it out verse 6

Notice, in case we missed it, Paul says it again, as to the Lord…Just like we were working for Jesus because as Christians we really are, and it is part of our testimony for Him.

As human beings we are designed to work, we are made to work, but ...How we work when we are at work, tells everyone around you more about Jesus, than the bumper stickers you have on your car.

Or your posts on social media.

Now, Both in the relationship of children to parents, and employees to bosses, Paul gives the command, or the instruction to obey them.

When is obedience the most difficult?

When it goes against our will…when we don’t want to, and when it offends our pride, what do you know....Paul says this is what walking after the Spirit, not our flesh looks like....

Verse 9 is for you bosses.

Eph 6:9

Their Master in Heaven is the same as yours and He doesn’t look at you as above them in anyway.

This statement though of masters, or bosses do the same things to them…that means to deal with them in sincerity as to Christ, with goodwill doing service as to the Lord…what if that employee of yours was the Son of God, how would you treat them then?

It means you’re not just supposed to sit behind your desk demanding your bang for the buck threatening to fire them or to withhold pay or time off…it might mean discipling them into being a good worker, developing them as better workers.

Have you guys ever seen that show, I don’t even know if it’s on anymore, Undercover Boss?

I really think that is the idea here.

In that show the boss would disguise their appearance and go undercover as a brand new rookie employee.

Maybe in a burger shop, or on a garbage truck.

It might be a cleaning company, a hotel chain, the context doesn’t matter as much as the principle.

It would give the boss the opportunity to enter into the workplace as a newbie and see what it was like to work for him or her and the people that represented them.

What was the training like, what were the managers and working conditions really like?

What was interesting, is typically the boss would discover a really big jerk in management somewhere that had to be fired, and they would also discover a star employee, or at least someone with tremendous potential that they never knew existed.

But in order to do these things they needed to know their people.

To care for them, to serve them as they performed their duties for the company.

So bosses walking in the Spirit are to do this as to the Lord.

In verse 10 Pastor Paul says finally, which means 15 more minutes....Eph 6:10

We can interpret this finally in the same way we might a “Therefore” when we are reading through the Scriptures, Finally, my brothers and sisters, in light of all that I written here about walking the walk as a Christian, here are the final steps to applying it in your lives and what that should look like.

Be strong, not in your own wisdom or strength, but be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

His force, His strength.

Verse 11 reads

There are a number of things I want you to see in this final section, it’s actually a passage of scripture that I love and have taught through many times, most often to men, and several times to law enforcement.

It has the sense of a battle, of warfare, it speaks of armor, and taking a stand.

Several times I’ve gone through and compared the offensive and defensive weapons and related them to the tools used in modern law enforcement, because in the context it was written that is what this was.

Paul is in prison for his faith, guarded by Roman soldiers as he writes this letter.

As he watched them watching him he would have seen sword and shield, helmets, breastplates, the most advanced tools in modern warfare.

And I would compare them to the tools available to us as Christians.

Our Bibles, the double edged Sword, the truth of the Word, the power of prayer.

Knowing when to use what tool in the continuum of force.

The right tool for the job at hand, all that is important.

But for us, in the place that we live, in the time that we live, I don’t know if I’ve read it differently, or because of the lateness of the hour, I’m seeing the application as different.

But please notice with me, that the verse is instructive.

It is not an invitation to use Dad’s tool bag, or to shoot his 22.

It is an instruction, a command for us Christians to put on the armor, not so we can avoid a conflict, we’re already in a conflict, not a conflict, we are at war, a spiritual war. 1 Peter 5:8 instructs us...