13. Bringing It Home in Family and Work

Introduction

Video: Children and Fathers

A little different way to engage with our text for today. As a side note, if you are interested in other videos like this that put Bible verses directly to music you can find them on our RightNow Media app.

It is a fitting introduction because these videos were created to give families a fun, meaningful way to share family devotions together. So you can watch a video, memorize a scripture and talk about what it means. If you have never done family devotions together, this is an easy first step in that direction.

And whether you are visiting with us this morning or you are here every week we want you to take advantage of there is no cost to use it and we love that so many of you are already engaging with the platform. The instructions to connect are in your bulletin.

Tension

So we are nearing the end of our study from the book of Ephesians which is a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Ephesus. A church that was in some ways much like our own, even though the letter was written to them almost 2000 years ago.

And my hope is that from here on out whenever you encounter a verse from the book of Ephesians, from a daily devotional book, Bible study or teaching of some kind…that you mind will instantly remember the title of this series and how everything in Ephesians is about God’s Plan and finding Our Place in it.

Because as we have said week after week, this book of 6 chapters is divided evenly into two parts that outline it under these two ideas. In the first 3 chapters we read of God’s plan in how we have been chosen for adoption by God the Father, redeemed by the Son and sealed for that inheritance by the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:10 gives us a great summary of this when it says..

Ephesians 1:10 (NLT)

10 And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth.

And we have our place in that plan. We are to follow Jesus’ example and live lives that show the world what living under the rule and reign of King Jesus looks like. What living under His authority as our “Lord” looks like.

And most recently as we have been walking through chapters 4 and 5 we saw how as a Church we are to gathered together under this rule and reign. To be a public display of what the body of Christ, the hands and feet of Christ looks like.

But then last week we read about how we are supposed to bring that same idea of submission to our Lord Jesus into our daily life at home.

The first relationship that it affects is the Marriage relationship. Paul explains that wives are to now submit to their husbands for a whole new reason than they did before. Now they are to submit to them “as to the Lord.” (Eph 5:22)

But Paul doesn’t stop with the wives, he spends a much greater amount of time describing how a husband is to submit to Christ in his role to “love his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her”. (Eph 5:25)

So in case we somehow weren’t clear or you somehow missed it...what these verses teach is that there is no room for either chauvinism or feminism in a “spirit-filled” Christian marriage because it is aimed at honoring Jesus as Lord and not our own selfishness.

And today we will continue to see how to “spirit-filled” submission to Jesus works in other areas of home life. Particularly in the child / parent relationship and worker / boss relationship.

So if you haven’t already, open up your Bibles to the beginning of Ephesians chapter 6, it’s on page 979 in the Bibles in the chairs. I will pray and we will get after this important teaching to gether.

Truth

So Paul is teaching the Church about how to bring this “spirit-filled” submission of the Christian life back home with us. He first talked about marriage, but then we hear him do something that few respected teachers ever did in his day. He directly addresses the kids in the room.

Remember this letter wasn’t some kind of mass mailing where Paul made copies and then put stamps on a bunch of envelopes and put them on a box out in front of his house. This was hand written and hand delivered to the Church and then was publically read to every family that gathered together with that church family.

So with the same directness address that Paul said, “Wives, submit to your husbands... and Husbands love your wives… he says...

Ephesians 6:1 (ESV)

1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

So kids, this is for you right from God’s Word. Paul is addressing you directly. This isn’t him saying - “Parents make sure your kids understand this...” He is talking to all the kids in the room because they were there and they were listening.

And I know that many of you are listening because I get to ask you each week in Sunday School what you heard in the message and you show that you are listening.

And so in the same way that your Moms and Dads are called to submit to their calling as if it were aimed at Jesus - you are too.

So just like I said the last two week, every form of submission for a Christian is TO Jesus but it goes through whoever Jesus has placed in front of you as an earthly authority.

So for you kids that person is you mom and dad. And every time you obey your mom or your dad then you can know that it is something that puts a smile on Jesus face. And if you were to use your imagination, I bet you could even peak around your parent and see him…probably with a thumbs up and a look of loving approval.

Because that is the kind of creative response that kids should be able to see in so many moments of their young lives. We keep forcing them to grow up so fast, burdening them with more than any child was every meant to carry...but that is not how God designed childhood to work.

Their innocence was supposed to be protected and celebrated, but so many in our culture are more interested in destroying that innocence in order to validate their own twisted ideas instead of allowing boys and girls to be what God designed them to be…and that is not ok.

Jesus loved, valued and celebrated children. Jesus protected them from adults who wanted to shove them aside as if they didn’t have a place in God’s plan.

The Bible records this one time in the height of Jesus’ ministry when he was wildly sought after and was crazy busy so even his own disciples didn’t think that Jesus had time for children. But in Mark 10 we read...

Mark 10:13–15 (ESV)

13 And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. 14 But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant (kids, if you don’t know what that means it means that He was serious angry)

and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 15 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

So kids, Jesus is talking about you here. That you play an important role in the Kingdom of God in how you obey Jesus as King over your life.

Because you are naturally more trusting, your road to believing all the fantastic things that the Bible says about our God is much shorter than it is for us adults. We tend to take longer to believe because we want every one of our questions explained to us before we will believe or trust in something or someone.

So this is the role that you play in our Church guys. We have a lot to learn from you kids about what a “child-like” faith looks like, and that is a lot of responsibility for you to show your parents how much you trust in Jesus by how you obey them in the Lord because Jesus says it is right.

Child-like faith but not Childish Behavior

That being said, a call to “child-like faith” is not an excuse for adults to maintain childish behavior in other aspects of life. The Bible does not affirm a “Peter-Pan” like approach to life, God designed us to grow and mature even as we fully trust in Him as child does.

Part of that growing includes how we relate to our parents throughout our lives. As a child living under our parents roof we are called to obedience, but as we grow up we are to become responsible for our own needs.

This means rejecting our cultures growing acceptance of “Delayed adolescence”. Do you know what I am talking about here? This is when a young persons long term plan is to just to live off their parents by playing video games in their basement until they “find themselves” when what they really need to do is find a job.

And there may be seasons of life where it makes sense for a young adult to live in their parents house, but the goal must always be for that young adult to be growing toward self-reliance. Otherwise they will not be able to follow through in this next command in Ephesians to...

2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”

This is the Apostle Paul’s adaptation of the 5th commandment found in Exodus 20:12. At that time God promised them the blessing of the promised land, but the blessing here is more in the sense of things going well for you in general terms.

And we learn from Jesus himself that this command to honor our parents does not “expire” when we reach some level of adulthood. In Matthew 15 Jesus is being questioned about why He allows his disciples to abandon the traditions of the religious leaders. Then starting in verse 3...

Matthew 15:3–9 (ESV)

3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’

5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God.

What Jesus is describing here is a practice that is named in the Gospel of Mark as “Corban”. This was not a Biblical command but a tradition taught by the Pharisees whereby a person could “donate” money to the temple and that would except them from the responsibility of caring for their parents urgent needs.

Jesus condemns this tradition as a violation of the 5th commandment and this is where he calls the Pharisees two faced hypocrites.

And this message of caring for ones family is consistent throughout Scripture. In Paul’s letter to young Timothy he Instructs the Church to care for widows who have no other family to care for them...

1 Timothy 5:4 (ESV)

4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first 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.

And he continues in verse 8 with

1 Timothy 5:8 (ESV)

8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

So as much as we might want this to be just a call to the young children here today, it really goes much broader than that.

For you younger kids in the room, this is a direct command from God for to be an example for the rest of us in how you obey your parents.

But all of us need to consider how we are even now honoring our parents. A good reminder here a week before Mother’s Day.

How will you demonstrate your submission to Jesus by showing

Christian children obey and honor their parents. (Ephesians 6:1-3)

But Paul isn’t finished with the child/parent relationship yet. In verse 4 he aims his instruction at a particular role in the Household. He says that

Christian Fathers discipline and disciple their children (Ephesians 6:4)

He says in verse 4...

4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

This is a pretty straight forward teaching, but it has profound implications in the life of the Christian Father.

You don’t have to be paying very close attention to recognize that the lack of involved and caring Fathers is a key factor in so many of our societies problems. Countless studies and research projects have been aimed at showing how our current rate of “Fatherlessness” is destroying so much of what has made our society strong in the past.

20 million children are growing up without a Father in our country right now, that is almost 25% or 1 in 4 kids without a Father. And it is easy to see the effects.

71% of all high school dropouts come from homes with absent fathers.

85% of all youth in prison come from fatherless homes.

90% of all homeless and runaway children come from fatherless environments.

70% of teen suicides occur in homes where there isn’t a dad.

On the flip side, one study revealed that teens who described their fathers as “involved” or “highly involved” were

98% more likely to graduate from college than those who reported minimal father involvement.

But for the Christian Dad, “involved” isn’t the gold standard, it is just the beginning point.

In his book Faith of the Fatherless, Psychologist Paul Vitz examined the faith or lack there of in the lives of 12 of world’s most influential atheists including names like Fredrich Nietzche, John Paul Sarte, Sigmund Freud, Joseph Stalin and Karl Marx. What he found was that everyone of them had defective relationships with their fathers in one way or another. They were absent, abusive or weak.

What was very clear from all these stories was that our relationship with our earthly Father has a tremendous impact on one’s attitude toward even the idea of their being a God, let alone the acceptance of our heavenly Father.

But Paul gives Christian Fathers a pretty clear path to success here. There is just one “do not do” followed by an instruction of what “to do”.

The Don’t Do

Fathers are to not “provoke” their children to anger. Now of course none of us can control when someone else gets angry at us, but the word for “provoke” means to basically set out to make them angry.

The Greek word is παροργίζω (paroleezo) and there is only one other place in Scripture where this form of the Greek word is used and it is in Romans 10:19 where it says that God told the nation of Israel that because of their disobedience, He was going to use a Gentile nation to “make you angry”.

So this isn’t describing a time when your child got angry because you rightly stopped them from doing something wrong, but a time when you intentionally did or said something to make them angry.

The parallel verse in Colossians gives us some more help as Paul says there...

Colossians 3:21 (ESV)

21 Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

The opposite of “discourage” is to “encourage” so the idea is to consider how you correct your children and make sure you are not unnecessarily making them angry but instead encourage them - in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

And contextually this would have been a revolutionary idea in Paul’s day because when it came to the children, especially young children, it was primarily the role of the mother to bring them up until they got to a certain age where they could cognitively understand and physically be involved in their families trade and their families faith. Paul is getting Fathers on board much earlier than their culture would have expected.

And these two things are like two sides of the same coin in that we need to both “Discipline” our children which means correcting them when they are in the wrong but also to “Instruct” them which means teaching them to do what is right…according to what God says is right.

Again men, this is why to be the men that God has called us to be - both as a Father and as a Husband like we looked at last week - we have to be men who know the Word of God. Of vastly greater importance than teaching our children how to throw a ball, change a tire or bait a hook is to teach them how to know the God who has chosen to reveal Himself through this Book.

So as I said as we started today, this part of Ephesians is all about bringing our new lives in Christ into our daily life at Home. So last week we talked about how

Christian Wives submit to their husbands…in the Home and...

Christian husbands sacrificially love their wives…in the Home and today we see that...

Christian children obey and honor their parents... in the Home

Christian Fathers discipline and disciple their children... in the Home

But then the text moves in a direction that seems to us like we have left the home.

Because most of us operate with a separated home and work life. We live at home and we work at work. Now if you live and work on a farm then you are a bit closer to understanding this than the rest of us, but as we move into talking about workers and bosses just know that in their world we are still talking about what happens in the home.

The other thing that I need to mention but don’t have a lot of time to deal with this morning is that some of your Bible translations may translate this first word as “slave” instead of “bondservant” and of course on this side of history that rightly opens up a whole can of emotions and sorrows over how humanity has often treated people called slaves.

But just know for our purposes today that the “bondservant” in particular was not someone who was forcibly removed from their home and then beat into submission. This was a person who contracted with a land owner of their choosing to work for them for a particular wage over a particular period of time. In that way it was the closest thing in their day to the “Employer -employee” relationship we have today.

And if you are wondering why Paul would have to address this particular group of people, it is estimated that there were over 60 million “doulos” or bondservants in the Roman empire. That is about 1/3 of the population so it was a group that was well represented in the community, in almost every household including the household of faith...the local Christian Church.

So Paul wanted these Christian workers to know how they should bring their new found faith in Jesus Christ home to the daily life in their household. And what we hear Paul say is that...

Christian Workers always work for the big boss

Ephesians 6:5–9 (ESV)

5 Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, 6 not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, 7 rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man,

We will unpack more of this in our Table Talk groups, but what I want to point out is that the overarching principle that is found in every one of these relationships is probably most clearly articulated right here.

With Jesus as your true Lord, you can submit yourself to the earthly authority that stands in front of you because you are aiming it through them and to Jesus.

And then Paul uses this opportunity to say to all of us...

8 knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.

When we have adopted this attitude to submission to earthly authority in the name of the Lord Jesus, then anything done in that attitude will bank us reward from the Lord when He returns.

And lastly, Paul addresses this relationship from the other direction, teaching that...

Christian bosses do the same (Ephesians 6:9)

What could this mean? Is Paul asking Christian bosses to obey their workers in the same way that the workers were to obey their bosses? Of course not. There would be no substance in a calling like that it would just bring submission into this circular vortex when no one would really know who is supposed to do what.

Instead, Paul is talking about how they too work for the “big boss”. He says..

9 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.

In other words, both the boss and the worker will one day stand before God to answer for how they treated one another and how they stewarded their position, role and responsibility.

Did they fulfill their respective roles will excellence, perseverance and integrity? That will play a part…

but so will the question of how they treated one another. Did they show the kind of kindness, grace and mercy that rightly reflects their “Lord and Master” in heaven?

Application

This is how we go into every relationship now that we wear the name of Jesus. We represent him as ambassadors. We are no longer doing our own thing.

I like how the parallel passage in Colossians 3 sums up this whole section with these verses...

Colossians 3:23–24 (ESV)

23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

Landing

I hope that this will stir good conversations in the Table Talk groups as we have a room full of people here who have experience as both the boss and the worker…some of you in the same company.

But the ground at the foot of the cross is level. We all submit to the big boss. Husband or wife, child or parent, worker or boss.

Galatians 3:28 (ESV)

28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

And one of the ways that we celebrate that oneness is to come together at the Lord’s Table. For those who are preparing to serve that you can go ahead and get that ready.

We practice what is called Open Communion...