Colossians: Christ Alone, Week 5

The Blueprint for the Home

Good morning, Harmony!

Happy Veteran’s Day weekend and thank you to those who have served and those who continue to serve in the world’s finest military to keep us safe and allow us to gather freely and worship our Lord.

Last week we looked at the first 17 verses of chapter three, and what we saw was Paul encouraging the believers how to live their lives, and most of those verses were talking about how to live in public, that is how to live outside the privacy of one’s own home.

We talked about putting to death some things in our lives, putting away some things that are ungodly, and then we talked about how to put on the things of love, that compassion and humility and patience, all of those things that point towards putting others before ourselves, that putting to death of my kingdom so that I can be pursuing His kingdom.

This week as our title suggests, we are going to be looking at what it takes and what it looks like to have a Christ-honoring home. We’re going to be in Colossians chapter 3, beginning in verse 18 and we’re going to see God’s blueprint or His design for the home.

Our main point for today is that:

Main Point: After outlining basic Christian character traits, Paul provides the foundational elements of the home as God designed it.

Paul gave us those basic characteristics of what it looks like to be a believer in Christ and how being in Christ changes who we are and what we do in our day-to-day lives, and now he turns to the believer’s home - how their home should emulate the home of a believer.

In these verses Paul addresses wives, husbands, fathers, children, employee-employer relations, and how to navigate and build a home that honors and glorifies the Lord.

And today we’re going to address some of the words that are going to be here, because there are a few words that have a very different meaning to our thoughts on the words today.

Beginning in verse 18, we read:

Colossians 3:18–4:1 CSB

18 Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives and don’t be bitter toward them. 20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they won’t become discouraged. 22 Slaves, obey your human masters in everything. Don’t work only while being watched, as people-pleasers, but work wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people, 24 knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord. You serve the Lord Christ. 25 For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong he has done, and there is no favoritism. 1 Masters, deal with your slaves justly and fairly, since you know that you too have a Master in heaven.

Prayer.

It’s interesting the shift that Paul makes here from speaking about how we should live in verses 1 through 17 to speaking of what our home lives and our relational lives should look like beginning in verse 18.

Last week Paul was referring to how we demonstrate our Christian faith to a world that should see in the believer a changed life that loves others and demonstrates a life filled with the Holy Spirit. This week Paul goes from how we share this faith with the world to how we should be sharing our faith within our families.

Paul shifts here because how we respond to our world as individuals is important, but when we take a deeper look at the impact of the gospel, how we work together as a family is even more so important, because that is the real us.

Family is hard. It’s hard to represent Christ as an individual some days, and even then when we do that successfully it’s because of the power of the Holy Spirit, but you throw family in there and it becomes a different beast.

So, Paul makes sure to draw that attention to the family, because he knows it can be a point of contention. He knows the challenge that families face. He writes of families frequently, from one of my favorite passages on marriage in Ephesians 5 to talking about how difficult it is to do ministry in marriage in 1 Corinthians 7.

So Paul says here’s some good and necessary practices when it comes to how to build a home.

Now, when we’re talking about building a home today, we aren’t talking about building a house, we’re talking about building a family and building healthy God honoring relationships.

That being said we are going to use some similarities to building a house, because like a house can be built well, and sturdy, able to withstand time and storm, a family can be firmly established to weather the storms of life.

Likewise a house can be built quickly and with sub quality materials that cut corners or have poor footing so that when the storms come or as time passes by the house fails in some way.

And so Paul says here’s some things that are important to building a home that is able to survive the storms and the trials that come. Here’s God’s plan for how the home or the family should work as a cohesive unit that glorifies God the most and that will allow for His joy to be evident in your lives and in your families life.

Now like last week I am going to place an important disclaimer here.

First, we all have a past. There’s going to be some here today that have been through the storms of life without Christ, and now your kids are not walking with the Lord. There’s going to be some here who have been through a divorce. There’s going to be some here where you’ve had some of those ugly relationships and you’re very familiar with the house that did not have these pieces that we are talking about today.

And if that’s you, there is abundant grace that He provides. If you’ve repented of your wrongs and you’ve sought reconciliation in those relationships, there’s grace. If your kids are far from the Lord right now because of your actions in their early lives and you’ve repented and sought reconciliation, today’s message is not a guilt trip to bring all of that back to your memories or anything like that.

But today’s message is also one where these are things that you can implement early on in your family or later in life. If you’ve been married for a long time and you’ve just stayed in that relationship because you’re stubborn and solidly believe in till death do you part, but you’re miserable, today’s message is for you.

If you’ve been married for a short time, and you’re still in the honeymoon phase, this message is for you.

If you aren’t married yet, but you plan to possibly be one day, today’s message is still for you, because what we are going to talk about today is something every believer in Christ needs to live out in their marriages and their families and their relationships.

And so Paul provides us with three important pieces to building a home.

The first and probably the most important factor in preparing to build a home is the same as in building a house, and that is the foundation. A house’s foundation is the part of the house that if it isn’t footed on solid ground, the whole house is in jeopardy of failing. A bad foundation can result in massive structural compromise, endangering the whole family living in the house.

Likewise, the most important factor for us today when it comes to building our homes is:

1. Our FOUNDATION for our home must be built upon loving the Lord, vv. 18-19.

In verses 18 and 19 Paul talks about the foundational relationships to the family. He says wives, submit to your husbands and husbands love your wives.

And so the first word that we have to talk about is that word submit. We tend to make that word an ugly word. Our culture has made this word to mean slavery or to somehow be subordinate or inferior to another. In our American way of thinking, we do not submit or surrender to anyone or anything.

So is Paul suggesting that wives become slaves or are inferior to their husbands?

No, Paul is not suggesting or even instructing that kind of submission. Even in their time that would not have been the context.

Let’s notice two things.

First, how many noticed that Paul started with the wife. The normal hellenistic culture would have started off with the husbands, because they were men, but Paut starts with wives, and he says submit to your husbands, then he gives the how - as is fitting or proper in the Lord.

Ladies, if you are or intend to get married, Paul is saying that in doing so you enter a relationship and you are to voluntarily submit to your husband’s authority, because that is what is proper in the Lord.

That does not mean that you are to become his slave, that does not mean that you are inferior or subordinate. It means that your role in the marriage is vitally important to the foundation of the family. You are his helper Genesis 2:18 says. Your husbands have an immense amount of responsibility placed upon them, and they need you there by their side to share in that responsibility of raising your homes well.

In Ephesians 5:22 Paul writes:

Ephesians 5:22 CSB

22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord,

This is that same idea, you voluntarily submitted your whole life to the Lord, now, if you have entered into a marriage relationship Paul is saying you should voluntarily submit to your husbands in order to have harmony in the home.

Paul is placing this in front of anything he says about the husband in both instances.

Ladies, you have probably got the most important job in the family, because without you there would be no family. Paul puts the submission in front of everything else in the family because it is important.

He then moves on to the husbands and he says husbands, love your wives and don’t be bitter toward them.

Husbands your wives are to submit, and you are to love them. They are your helper to carry out the family duties. They do things you wouldn’t imagine doing, they endure things that you couldn’t fathom, and they gave up a life full of dreams to be your wife. Back to Ephesians for the husbands Paul says:

Ephesians 5:25 CSB

25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her

Your wife has submitted to you as you submitted to Christ, and Paul says for you to love your wife as Christ loved the church, as He loved you unconditionally.

The second thing that we need to notice in these two verses is the importance of Christ in the relationship.

Wives submit as is fitting to the Lord, husbands love your wives agape love, unconditionally love your wives - you can’t do that without Jesus Christ.

The foundation is built upon submitting to the love of Christ by both the wife and the husband.

Wives think they have a hard job in submitting, husbands think they have a hard job in unconditionally loving - and both do, that’s why the foundational point of this relationship is Christ.

Having a God-fearing and God-honoring marriage means that we take our roles seriously in our marriage relationship. When we have a God-honoring marriage we no longer grumble about submission and unconditional love because we are submitting to Him first, then our spouses.

The very foundation of the home, the cornerstone of the family, is built upon loving the Lord and submitting to His plan for marriage.

The second important factor to building a home is:

2. Our FUTURE for our home must be built upon pleasing the Lord, vv. 20-21.

In verses 20 and 21 Paul shifts to the relationships that we have with our children.

Paul says children, obey your parents because this pleases the Lord.

And he doesn’t say obey your parents in the things that you want to do, he says in everything, and then adds that the reason to do that is not to please your parents, but to please the Lord.

Again, our motivation goes back to that foundation, loving the Lord, but understand that in this case kids you are the future.

Then Paul says fathers, do not exasperate your children. Don’t provoke your children - don’t intentionally anger your children or discourage your children.

Children obey your parents. Fathers - you have a very specific role in how your children are raised.

So when we examine everything up to this point, in a perfect family wives are submitting to husbands as they have submitted to the Lord, husbands are unconditionally loving their wives and kids are obeying their parents and fathers are encouraging their children, and it is all built on the foundation of loving the Lord and obeying His design for the family.

But what about when it doesn’t work that way.

And we aren’t talking about the occasional slip up, we’re talking when one or multiple members are not loving the Lord? What about when there’s someone in the relationship that doesn’t know Christ? What about when you’re the only one that loves Christ?

What happens then when the wife doesn’t submit, or the husband doesn’t love, or the kids don’t obey, or the father provokes the kids? Are we free from these responsibilities?

The key to each of these instructions is that we aren’t doing it because they treat us the way God calls them to treat us, the key is that we are submitting, loving, and obeying the Lord, and because we have Him as our source or because we individually have put to death the things of this world and have picked up the things of the Gospel then our desires align with His desires and our lives are now living sacrifices for everyone to see.

This goes double for our families, because through you they are going to see the gospel, but only if you are living for Him and are obedient to him in these things.

If you are a believer in Christ, then as fathers you are going to do the best you can to demonstrate the father’s love to your children. God doesn’t go and provoke His children, He corrects them. God isn’t saying don’t discipline your children, He is saying don’t discourage them in what you say or do.

As children you are going to want to obey your parents.

As husbands you are going to desire to love your wife regardless of how she treats you and as wives you are going to submit to your husbands, not as doormats, but as unto the Lord.

As long as those others in your life are not asking you to violate the gospel, we are to do all of these things as unto the Lord.

To be clear here, this doesn’t say that we should remain or get into abusive relationships. Paul is telling us that just because we don’t like something or just because this member of the family is not acting in line with these instructions does not remove your responsibilities to the relationship.

Paul gives us the plan for the perfect family, but in that he also gives us these instructions as individuals within the home so that regardless of how the others in the family function we are still giving glory and honor to the Lord.

Our homes must be built on a foundation of loving the Lord. The future of our home must be built on pleasing the Lord. Third:

3. Our FUNCTION for our home must be built upon serving the Lord, vv. 3:22-4:1.

Paul gives all of this family instruction to us and really all of it is based upon doing all of these things and unto the Lord. When it comes to the function of the believer in Christ, when it comes to our purpose of life, it all comes down to service to the Lord.

And Paul starts with this mentality sort of in all three of these breaks.

He stats with wives, submit to your husbands - again, their hellenistic culture would have seen this as an abnormality, placing the emphasis on the importance of the family structure hinging upon wives fulfilling their Christ called function. It’s considerably harder to submit than it is to rebel.

Children, obey your parents, again it’s considerably harder to obey than it is to disobey.

Here in verse 22 its slaves, obey your human masters in everything.

Now this term slaves, we aren’t talking our modern-sense view of the term. This is not the same as the atrocities of the slave trade. These slaves were treated more like employees of their day, many of them were paid, and they could buy their freedom.

Let’s remember that there weren’t a lot of factories or big businesses back then. Every shop was a small business and the employees were mostly all family - so when it came to slaves in the first century, they had sold themselves to do particular tasks because they were unable to support themselves with their household business - and there could be a number of factors that caused that, war, poverty, all kinds of things, this wasn’t just a skill thing - and so they siold themselves as slaves to survive.

It still wasn’t right in their time, because they sold themselves to one particular person. There was not two weeks notice. They worked long days and were still a form of property. But when you consider how the world has changed, many of us are someone else’s employee, and it sort of works the same way. If we didn’t work for someone else, we would be living in poverty. And so we submit to our employers and do as the company asks.

And Paul says slaves, or employees, obey your human masters in everything - and again, Paul isn’t saying to place yourself in an abusive construct, because as we read the remainder of verse 22 it says don’t just do these things while you are being watched, do them all the time.

Don’t just strive to be seen doing the work, actually do the work that has been given to you as wholeheartedly as you can. Do these things as if the Lord Himself is your master - because He is, as we see that in verse 1 of chapter 4.

Slaves obey your masters as unto the Lord, masters deal with your slaves or employees fairly and justly, because you have a Master in Heaven that you both seek to serve rightly.

How does this fall under the family construct? How does this become the function of our home?

Again, these slaves were a part of the overall household of the first century. They were a part of the family construct of the day. But this also plays a large part in how we raise our families today.

The purpose of our entire life is to serve the Lord in everything that we do, there is no escaping His sight, and so all of this passage from wives submitting to husbands to masters treating their slaves fair and just, it all talks about how our lives look when we are not being watched matters as much as it does when we are being watched.

If the purpose of our lives is to glorify and serve Him, then we should be doing that within our own homes - the very foundation of the life of the family must be rooted in the Word of the Lord, it must be following God’s plan for marriage.

As our families grow, and we have children, we begin to pour our lives into the next generation of Christ follower, and we must demonstrate a life that is dedicated to serving the Lord in everything that we do.

Work is a gift from the Lord, and how we view work is equally important to our family life. If all we do is grumble and complain about work, our families are going to be impacted by that. If all we do is talk about how successful we are when the boss is around, seeking to please them and to build ourselves up, our families are going to be impacted by that too.

We put a lot of emphasis on what our kids are going to grow up to be, not realizing that the most important thing that we need to be passing to our families is not a multi-million dollar job, or a recognized job or degree, the most important thing that we need to be passing to our kids is to do whatever it is that God has called them to do to do it wholeheartedly, sincerely as unto the Lord.

And it’s not in the wife-husband or child-father relationships that Paul places the emphasis of the inheritance, it’s here in speaking about our relationship to our purpose for life.

Verses 23 through 24

Colossians 3:23–24 CSB

23 Whatever you do, do it from the heart, as something done for the Lord and not for people, 24 knowing that you will receive the reward of an inheritance from the Lord. You serve the Lord Christ.

Our purpose is to serve Him and in doing so to glorify Him.

Wives, when you are submitting to your husbands, you are serving Christ and glorifying Christ.

husbands, when you love your wives you are serving and glorifying Christ.

Kids, when you are obeying your parents you serve and glorify Christ.

Fathers, in everything you do seek to encourage your families as you serve and glorify Christ.

When you go to work you should be doing so to serve and glorify Christ.

Masters, business owners, in your business your purpose is not to make money, its not to be well known, it is to serve and glorify Christ.

Does that mean that we are going to be perfect at it all the time?

No, but it does mean that these are what we are going to seek as believers in Christ, to serve and glorify Christ.

There’s grace when we make mistakes. Verse 25 doesn’t say that if you mess up then you are a wrongdoer, it says those who actively seek to do wrong are going to face justice. Verse 25 is for those who seek to do evil.

Paul says in everything that you do, you are to do it from the heart and you are to do it for the Lord, knowing that you will receive the reward of the inheritance.

If you are in Christ and He is in you this is going to be the desire that the holy Spirit gives you and you aren’t going to have to worry about verse 25 because the desire that you have is His desire, not yours.

We must be foundationally loving the Lord in our marriages, to prepare our families for a future that pleases the Lord, through our purpose of serving the Lord in everything that we do with a passion for loving and glorifying the Lord.

Prayer.

As the music begins to play, if you’d like to know more about knowing Christ today or if you’ve made a decision to follow Christ today or if you need to talk about something that was said or some other decision that you’ve made today, I’d like to ask you to do one of two things.

On the screen behind be is a number and a QR code, you can simply scan that or text that number and I will receive that text and we can schedule a time to talk.

The other option is there is a connect card attached to the bulletin, you can simply fill that out and when the ushers come by here in a moment you can drop that in the offering plate.

I’m going to give you all just a moment as those decisions are being made, but I want to encourage you as perhaps you are struggling with that.

If there is something going on, and you know, you are struggling with whether or not you should fill out a card or send that text, maybe you don’t know how to word it or you’re worried about some sort of embarrassment, then here’s what I want you to do. I want you to take that card, fill it out, and just write “call me” on it. We’ll set up a time to talk and the details of that, but whatever it is I want you to know that you do not have to face that decision or that situation alone.

Prayer.

Let’s worship the Lord together in song.