A Brave New World: Gospel Fueled Families

Intro

One of our commitments as a church is to the authority of the Bible

That is, we believe the Bible is God’s word preserved throughout the years for people throughout all of history, including us

Our practice is to study the Bible in major sections so that we constantly let God lead us through the Bible

That’s relevant tonight because we come to a passage on parenting and children as we continue our study in the book of Ephesians

Many of you know that our family has had a rough time over last bunch of months

Standing up here to preach on tonight’s passage is tough on a personal level

But sometimes that’s when we need God’s word the most

Knowing we were having a rough go, my good friend Mike, who happens to be here with us tonight, sent me this book, There are Dads Way Worse Than You

Read first couple of pages to set the story

Thanos - pushed his daughter off a cliff

Darth Vader - cut off Luke’s hand with a light saber

Wayne Szalinski - shrunk the kids

Oh, and in case you are wondering, yes, there is a There are Moms Way Worse Than You as well

Transition

Hopefully the bar is a little higher than “yeah, I didn’t cut off any of my kids appendages” or use them as the guinea pigs in a science experiment that resulted in shrinking them enough to allow them to live comfortably in a lego model

But the kind of family life to which we are all called can’t be based solely on good examples

Because I know many of you came from pretty tough families of origin and didn’t have good examples

And even if you did (for which I hope you praise God), but doing it on your own strength will never quite work

As we turn to Ephesians 6 tonight and look at the relationships between parents and children and then masters and slaves, my prayer is that we will be becoming gospel fueled families

That is, we would seek family relationships built not on trying harder or doing better, but on the kindness and mercy of God to empower what we could never do on our own

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 6:1-9

Ephesians 6:1–9 ESV

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. Bondservants, 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 bondservants 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 bondservant 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.

Pray

Main Point

Our passage here tonight talks about 4 groups of people

Children

Parents

Slaves

Masters

2 groups with authority - parents and masters

2 groups under authority - children and slaves

I mentioned a couple minutes ago the idea of being gospel-fueled families

A fuel is an energy supply, the power that makes it possible

In each of our relationships, it is the gospel of God that is the fuel, the energy supply, the power for us to pursue those relationships in a way that will be honoring to God and to a gift both to us and those to whom we are in relationship

For each of these - children, parents, slaves, masters - we are going to look at what is commanded and some guidance on how to do it, and then close out with a look at how the gospel fuels these family relationships

Children

First Paul addresses children - let’s look back at the first 3 verses

Ephesians 6:1–3 “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.””

What commanded?

Obey your parents

Honor your father and mother

Obey, honor - are they and how are they connected?

To honor is more than just to obey

Attitude matters - the reluctant emptying of the dishwasher or taking out the trash may be obedience in the strictest sense, but it is not honoring

So let me define honoring your parents as this: joyful, eager obedience

How to do it?

First time obedience: It is honoring to your parents when you jump up and do what you are asked

Ask: Sometimes you may not understand the why behind a request

Go ahead and ask, but do so out of curiosity to learn and understand, not with whining or complaining

Adults with your parents: Even though not in your home with your parents anymore, still a responsibility to seek to honor them, guard their dignity, love them well

This can be especially important and challenging as they age and face medical challenges

Why?

“In the Lord, for this is right”

Not only is obedience right, but this type of obedience - out of reverence for the Lord - is the right type of obedience

When we obey and honor our parents, we are honoring God himself

Parents

Having spoken directly to children, our passage now turns to parents

Ephesians 6:4 “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

What commanded?

Paul gives both a negative command and a positive command

Negative: Do not provoke your children to anger

Positive: Do bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord

How to do it?

Follow Jesus

The quest for faithful parenting, whether of young kids or adults, starts with your own following of the Lord

Love your spouse well

We often tell our kids, the best thing we can do for them is to love each other well

Not provoke your children

Yes, your children are called to obey, but you are to be on guard against provoking

This is so easy to fall into

Just as a child can do what they were told, but do it begrudgingly

So also parents are to be careful that their demanding of obedience does not provoke their children to anger and resentment

Your attitude as a parent will shape the type of obedience you are inviting: joyful, eager obedience or resentful compliance

Discipline & instruction

If that is the negative, how are parents to pursue the positive: discipline and instruction

Discipline and instruction are deeply inter-connected ideas

Discipline is about correcting mistakes and disobedience in children

And instruction is about teaching your children what you expect and modeling it for them

That is, share with them what you want them to do, model for them how to do it, and then gently (so as not to provoke), correct them when they miss the mark

Aside: Slaves

The next two relationships are between slaves, or the ESV “bondservants” and masters

And for many of us, this does… and should… cause us to be a little uncomfortable

Our own history in this country with slavery makes us wonder why Paul does not expressly and definitively just say “Masters, set your slaves free. Jesus died to free you from the slavery of sin and yet you would think to own another person? Just stop. That’s evil and it’s wrong.”

And sometimes we look at these texts and try and equate them simply as discussing employer/employee relations

But that does a disservice to try and ignore the realities of slavery

While Paul’s words here may have implications for employer/employee relations, that is not a fair way to depict it

While we wish he would just argue to wipe away the whole concept, he is framing an internal revolution where masters are kind to the slaves and slaves are eager to obey their masters

If this were to happen, the institution of slavery would fall apart from the inside

Just as parents and children are part of the household, so also in Paul’s time, slaves and masters were part of the household

In that sense, this is still dealing with family relationships and family dynamics

Households that operated as Paul is calling them to in this passage will look and operate very differently from the households in the world around them

With that said, we can turn to the other two household relationships in our passage, slaves and masters

Slaves/Bondservants

Ephesians 6:5–8 “Bondservants, 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 bondservants 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 bondservant or is free.”

What commanded?

Obey your masters

What type of obedience?

Not as people pleasers just trying to keep your master from getting angry at you

But in recognition that this service is really service to the Lord

It’s a joyful, eager obedience

The same type of obedience to which he called children

How to do it?

With a sincere heart

Your heart posture matters!

Do what is asked as you would unto Christ himself

Colossians 3:23–24 “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.”

When you are working for the Lord, you can do anything asked - as long as it is right and in accord with the Bible - in joyful, eager obedience

Not half hearted

“not by the way of eye-service”

There is a superficial way to pass the eye test of the master

This the equivalent of a parent asking the kid to clean his room and he shoves everything in the closet or under the bed and says, “I’m done”

Sure, by way of eye-service, the room looks cleaner, but is not actually been cleaned

But not for the slave who is first of all a slave to Christ

Masters

Ephesians 6:9 “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.”

What commanded?

As when addressing parents - and really, he specifically mentions fathers as head of the house - he gives a negative command and a positive command

I mention that the portion to parents specifically names fathers now because if you will accept my statement from a minute ago that this is about household, family relationships, the “fathers” and “masters” are likely the same person!

So again, he is going to give these masters a negative and a positive

Negative: Stop threatening!

Sounds similar to the statement to fathers to not provoke their children

Stop threatening - but then he continues

“Knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him”

That is, that slave belongs to Jesus, as do you

Treat them with the dignity as both those made in the image of God and beloved of God

Positive: Do the same!

This is where Paul gets really wild

That same joyful, eager obedience to which he called slaves, Paul also calls Masters to!

How to do it

Well if the command is to do the same, then the how is the same

With a sincere heart

Heart posture matters!

Imagine how counter-cultural and unexpected it would be to see a master lead his household with this heart posture!

The Fuel

So within these family relationships - children, parents, slaves, masters - we have seen the command and some of how to follow the command

But I want to come back to where I said I would

Where is the fuel to live this way?

Where is the power for this kind of radical obedience and honoring of one another?

The fuel for these family relationships are the promises of God and the power of God

Promise of God

When Paul states to children that this is the first commandment with a promise, he is taking his listeners - and us - back to the 10 Commandments

Exodus 20:12 ““Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

Deuteronomy 5:16 ““ ‘Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”

Promise of long days and the land

Ephesians 6:8 “knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.”

Promise of reward for obedience

God’s Word gives us promises for us to hold on us, be motivated by, and desire to receive

Power of God

Again, notice in both of those accounts of the 10 Commandments

“The land the Lord your God is giving you”

The Lord is the one who does it, it is his power at work in us that enables that obedience

Ephesians 6:6 “not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart,”

Who is the one who has fully done the will of God from the heart?

Jesus himself

Our call to obey is rooted in the power of Christ whose joyful, eager obedience to the will of the Father led him to the cross

A Brave New World

In this passage, Paul addresses four groups of people - children, parents, slaves, masters

But they are a group within a single household

This is family relationships he is talking about

But lived out, the result is a brave new world

It is relationships that don’t work the way that other families operate

It is children seeking to imitate Jesus who joyfully, eagerly obeyed his parents even as a teenager

It is a dad taking a deep breath before disciplining his child, to remind himself of the patient, loving discipling he has received from God the Father

It is an employee who finds even the mundane, everyday work as his worship to God knowing that the Lord sees and is honored by his faithful work

It is a boss leading with humility by taking a genuine interest in the well-being of his employees and honoring them as made in the image of God

Sure, it is easy to call children and slaves to obey, but a joyful, eager obeying is something else altogether

It’s much less common for parents and masters to be called to the type of sacrificial leadership to which Paul calls them in this passage

But it is a brave new world where gospel-fueled families joyfully, eagerly obey one another that is honoring to Christ and a testimony to the world around us

And final thought, circling back to where I started

A message like this is challenging for me where our family has experienced sorrow and sadness and brokenness so deeply

It is easy for me to think about families who operate this way and become disillusioned or distraught

As long as we live in a sinful world, families will be messy and there will be pain and shortcomings

It would only take a quick walk through of the genealogy of Jesus to see that our good Messiah comes from broken, messy family roots

Our hope is not that we will get this all right, but that the God who brought from broken, messy family roots the one who would save us from our sins and we have the fuel - the promises and power of God - to form our families

And as he does, it will be for our good and for his glory

Pray