Ephesians 6:1-9
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise),
so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
How has parenting changed over the past 50 years? How was the way your parents raised you different from how you raised your kids?
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Notes:
Fundamental biblical assumptions that we potentially take for granted.
Parents ought to be an authority in the home.
Children have parents (plural)
Children have a view of God as an absolute authority.
4. There is a rightness to the instruction of the parents.
5. There is a rightness to the order of parental authority and child submission.
6. Disobedience is wrong
7. There is a sin nature
8. If a sin nature is not taught, it reaps destruction.
Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise),
so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.
Notes:
‘Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which the Lord your God gives you.
“You shall walk in all the way which the Lord your God has commanded you, that you may live and that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days in the land which you will possess.
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
“These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.
“You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.
“You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead.
“You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
“You shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with you and that you may go in and possess the good land which the Lord swore to give your fathers,
“When your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What do the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments mean which the Lord our God commanded you?’
then you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord brought us from Egypt with a mighty hand.
‘Moreover, the Lord showed great and distressing signs and wonders before our eyes against Egypt, Pharaoh and all his household;
He brought us out from there in order to bring us in, to give us the land which He had sworn to our fathers.’
“So the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always and for our survival, as it is today.
“It will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the Lord our God, just as He commanded us.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Notes:
What’s the difference between a child who simply doesn’t like what they’ve been asked to do and a child who has been provoked to anger.
What is the danger of the latter?
One fundamental purpose of godly parenting is to teach our children to respect God’s authority by teaching them to to respect our authority that is in itself like God. (Not overbearing or provoking to anger)
Parents are a picture of the authority of God that delivers real expectations and consequences the same way God does.
Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child;
The rod of discipline will remove it far from him.
and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
Nor faint when you are reproved by Him;
For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines,
And He scourges every son whom He receives.”
It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
In short, discipline is loving act of God to us His children. It helps us know when we’ve strayed.
Similarly, discipline of children is a loving act of parents that keeps our kids from straying.
How does discipline and godly authority in the home help our presentation of the gospel to our children?
As a child what did your parents do well? Did you come to faith as a child or after? If after, was that more difficult for you?
What are some of the practical ways you have instructed your kids? What was effective? What would you have done differently?
