Colossians 3:20-21 - Biblical Family
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Introduction:
It takes a village to raise a child…or does it? This is an oftentimes cited statement (thought to be an old African proverb) by our culture that seeks to try to force its own ideas into the minds of our children. Who has the responsibility for raising children? The government? The public school system? The church? Or is it the parents?
Today we are going to spend some time in the Word of God talking about family. We are going to start by addressing the children of our church and then move on to parents. So I pray that we are all ready for an incredibly relevant and difficult study on the Biblical family.
Join me as we read God’s Word:
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Let us pray.
Prayer
Today we are going to discuss two ways Christ is glorified by the family.
I. Christ is Glorified by Godly Children (Colossians 3:20)
I. Christ is Glorified by Godly Children (Colossians 3:20)
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
We see this paralleled by Ephesians 6:1 as well:
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
I’m pretty sure many of the parents in this room may have either audibly or under their breath said amen after this verse. When my kids were younger this is one of my favorite go to verses! Yet, I think this sermon may feel a little like the last sermon in which husbands felt pretty good until the second half - when they became the called out ones in the Scriptures! So don’t get too excited yet parents!
So we start off with the word children. This is one of the more general terms for children in the Greek which is tekna (tech-na). This refers to any child still living in the home and under parental authority and guidance.
Before delving into the rest of this verse - it is important to remember that the parent-child relationship changes drastically once a child is married and grown. We are to leave and cleave.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Once we are married we no longer are under our parents authority. We need to honor and respect them. But we are not commanded to obey them any longer.
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Getting back to our verse, however, I love that children are addressed here directly. Paul doesn’t tell the parents to tell their children what he says. He addresses them directly.
This is another reason that we feel strongly about having our children in the service with us instead of being in a separate space. If Paul addressed children in letters read among the congregations of the churches - then I think it is clear that he wanted children to hear other parts of the Word taught as well!
Moving forward he tells children to obey their parents. This word obey is stronger than the word submit that we saw in the charge to wives. And it is even more strongly presented because it is followed by the phrase ‘in everything.’
This is a tough commandment. Obey your parents in everything. Can I get a show of hands from all of the sons and daughters here that have obeyed their parents in every single thing since they were born? No one other than Jesus can raise their hand on that one!
We should all understand that we are sinners and that we are need of a Savior. The command to obey your parents is a command directly from God. He even included this command in the Ten Commandments.
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
As children under your parents authority, you honor your parents by obeying them and respecting them.
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
Looking back at our verse, Paul ends the verse with - for this pleases the Lord.
This command is not a dependent clause. It is not dependent on how great your parents are and if your parent always gives the commands that you agree with. God commands children to obey their parents and to honor them even if their parents aren’t the most perfect parents. None are perfect I’m afraid!
Children, you obey your parents because God said so. You don’t obey them because of who they are or aren’t. You obey them because of who God is. You obey them because it pleases the Lord.
But what are some practical ways that you can grow in holiness as children? How can you improve at obeying and honoring both your parents and the Lord? I think that the book of Proverbs is one of the best places to start. It is filled with wisdom. If you want to grow in wisdom, then read Proverbs through multiple times. Read it slowly and digest the wisdom there.
You will come to verses like these:
A wise son hears his father’s instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke.
A fool despises his father’s instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent.
Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life, but he who rejects reproof leads others astray.
Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.
The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is a sorrow to his mother.
The Bible is clear that children are to obey their parents in everything. Those who are disobedient to their parents are termed foolish. Spend a little time in Proverbs and you will see what God thinks about those who are foolish! I’ll just let you know ahead of time that it is not good! Wisdom comes from obeying and accepting instruction. Obviously, we need to obey Christ first and if our parents ever give a command that is sinful, we should resist it. But in all other things - in everything else - children should obey their parents in order to glorify Christ.
As we come to the end regarding this first point, I want to address the children humbly for a minute. Being a parent is hard work. You are going to hear some of the challenges in a moment as I address parents next. Please spend much time in prayer for your parents. We as parents don’t know all of the answers and we don’t always have it all together. We need wisdom from the Lord as well. Lift us up in prayer regularly and ask for the Lord to keep us strong.
Moving forward we see that....
Scripture References: Ephesians 6:1, Genesis 2:24; Exodus 20:12; Proverbs 13:1, 15:5, 10:17, 23:22,10:1
II. Christ is Glorified by Godly Parents (Colossians 3:21)
II. Christ is Glorified by Godly Parents (Colossians 3:21)
Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.
I want us to also look at the parallel verse for this in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
As you can see there is great overlap here. I want us to systematically study these two verses so that we get an idea of what it means to glorify Christ through our parenting.
We see both verses start off with the word fathers. You may note that I have included the word parents in the point. I have done this for two reasons. First, because we live in a world that has a lot of families that have missing fathers. Some are missing because the Lord has taken them home. Some are missing because they ran from responsibility. Some are missing for other reasons. And second, because fathers and mothers are a team. Mothers are an incredibly active part of raising children. They are frankly the primary caregiver for the children. But I want us to understand the actual charge here starts with fathers who are the leaders of the home.
So moving forward we see that fathers are not to provoke their children lest they become discouraged. And as the verse in Ephesians states - not to provoke your children to anger. The word provoke in Colossians is erethizō (err-a-thez-o) in the Greek which means to rouse to anger, to stir up, to irritate, or to be quarrelsome. The verse in Ephesians has a slightly different Greek word but has a similar definition. By provoking our children we cause them to become discouraged which also means to lose heart. Have you ever seen a child who has lost heart and become discouraged? It is such a sad sight. We as parents have a lot of power over our children. We can build them up or we can tear them down. How we discipline matters. How we instruct matters. We are going to spend some time discussing the next two important words that we come to in Paul’s parallel verse in Ephesians 6:4.
Paul commands fathers to:
1. Instruct Their Children (Or Train)
2. Discipline Their Children (Or Admonish)
Note that I will mention fathers throughout this because fathers are to be the leaders in their homes in all of these areas. Yet, mothers are to be on board with this as well and in situations where there is no father present, they must lead their children as a married wife would and must look to their heavenly Father even moreso for strength and support.
This first word is discipline in the ESV. The Greek word here is paideia (pa-thee-a) and is really much more deep than we can give it credit in English here. Frankly, as we study these two words - we will see that the actual Greek definitions switch the two definitions around. We will really start by talking about instruction and then move on to discipline. I think the NKJV actually gets the verse the closest:
And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.
Here we see the word training given which is closer to the original Greek as we will see in moment followed by the word admonition which is closer to discipline.
Israel Wayne, in his book, Education: Does God Have an Opinion?, brings up the definition of this word in the Encyclopedia Britannica. And he quotes directly the encyclopedia which defines paideia as,
“A system of education and training in classical Greek and Hellenistic (Greco-Roman) cultures that includes such subjects as gymnastics, grammar, rhetoric, music, mathematics, geography, natural history, and philosophy.”
- Encyclopedia Britannica (definition of paideia - Greek word for discipline in Ephesians 6:4)
Note that this definition is from a non-Christian encyclopedia and even they understand that this Greek word was meant to encompass all forms of education and training.
So how do we apply and understand this command to fathers? We need to start by understanding that the education and upbringing of your children is squarely placed upon your shoulders. It is not the public school system that is commanded to educate and train your children. It is not the church that is to educate or train your children. It is not the village that is expected to educate or train your children. It is you, fathers. Note that the pressure for this isn’t directly placed on mothers as well. It is placed on fathers. Yes, mothers should take an active part in education and in raising the children. There is no denying that a mother has a pivotal and frankly central role in the upbringing of the children. Yet, God holds the husband responsible for how the children are educated.
As I charged the men last week, so I charge us again. May we step up to the charge in 1 Corinthians 16:13
Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
Stand firm in the faith. Act like men. Be strong. Reject passivity. For far too long fathers have passively sat back as their children are taught postmodernism, atheism, evolution, feminism, and other anti-Biblical values in our nations public school system and in our culture. They have handed their children over to a system that seeks to indoctrinate them with secular humanism.
As Pastor Voddie Baucham has so poignantly put it:
“We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.”
Pastor Voddie Baucham
Depending on the estimate that you use, the average student spends around 10,800-16,000 hours in school and away from parents. Think about all that can happen in those hours. Think about the indoctrination that can occur in that amount of time spent in a system that is not neutral but instead anti-God. Many will balk at my statement about the system being anti-God. Yet, as I have stated before, there is no such thing as religiously neutral education. If something is taught without a Biblical worldview then another worldview must be present. And that worldview is secular humanism. 1+1 is 2 because God made it that way. If God is removed, man fills the vacuum with another possibility. It is that way because either man made it that way (the humanistic worldview) or it became that way through evolution and chance (the atheistic worldview).
Jesus said:
A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.
Teachers are a disciplers of our children. We must make take Jesus seriously at His Word here in Luke 6:40. They will become like their teacher. This is straight from Jesus’ mouth. I think many of us would agree that even in the best of situations, there are often some strong worldview differences between parents and teachers.
To further understand this need for Christian education we can go back to Deuteronomy 6 which lays out the importance of raising up our children in the fear and instruction of the Lord.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord 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. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.
You shall teach them diligently to your children, 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
How can we be doing this if we are not with our children regularly?
Because of these as well as other Scriptures in the Word of God, home Christian education is the ideal in order to obey these mandates. Although private Christian education can still be a good option (as long as it is a conservative Bible believing school), I support home education first for multiple reasons. Time would fail me to give a thorough discussion on the value of home education, but the main reason is that we can be sure that our children are getting an education with an entirely pervasive Biblical worldview. Christ is present in every subject that we teach and go through. He is the topic of math, science, history, and every other subject. We are able to pick and choose what books that go into the minds of our children. We are able to introduce difficult issues such as abortion, postmodernism, LGBTQ+ issues and introduce them from a distinctly Biblical worldview. We have time to develop a relationship with our children which in turn allows us to gain their trust and openness. Our children aren’t just boarding in our home waiting for the next place for us to drop them off at - we are a family.
Too many families are too busy to even be able to teach their children. They are running from event to event so much that they don’t have the time to actually engage and teach their children. In order to teach them diligently, you must have the time to do so. Parents, look at your calendar and figure out a way to gain margin so that you can have more time together as a family. You won’t regret it.
I understand that everyone is in a different situation and not all things work out as easily as we would like. We all have different convictions as well. And I would be wrong to become legalistic regarding home education and add it as an 11th commandment. However, Biblically speaking, it has become abundantly clear that we must reject public education for our children and embrace Christian education. Because, as we have already learned, there is no religiously neutral education.
I am going to go out on a limb and agree with Dr. David Jeremiah when he says this:
"It's time to rethink Christian education... I'm now at the conclusion that the schools that are taking the state's programs are no longer a fitting place for Christian young people to be because they will be so brainwashed by this.
We used to worry about our kids being brainwashed in college. Then we thought, well, if we're not careful they'll get brainwashed when they're in high school. Today public schools start the brainwashing in the first grade."
Dr. David Jeremiah
In all fairness I do want to state an aside. Yes, there are some wonderful teachers and administrators in the public school system and they are doing the best they can - but it is clear that the system is winning. The system is silencing our godly brothers and sisters from sharing their faith and values with these children. I commend and applaud those teachers who are standing firm in a system that is marked by humanism and anti-God sentiments and make whatever impact that they can on children. We pray for you as you fight on the front lines of these culture wars. If you are a Christian public school teacher - please know that we have your back and pray for your influence on children. If you are on the board of education or an administrator in public schools - keep fighting for Christian values and stand firm. We are thankful for you all! We pray that more Christians assume positions of leadership in our government schools and even in our local, state, and federal governments.
But it is our job and responsibility as parents is to make the right decision for our own children. Fathers - the education of your children is your responsibility. Step up and lead.
Finally, I do not want to negate the call to a Christian and distinctly Biblical education, but I understand that there are some situations that make home education or private Christian education difficult. Whether it be time, financial, or family situational. I would pray that you would approach the church about these issues and see what we can do to help you follow the Lord in this way. Christ equips you with whatever you need in order to be obedient to Him. Take a step of faith and lets move forward together in trying to help families make Christ the center. We will exhaust all options in making Christian education a priority in our homes.
Getting back to Ephesians 6:4
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
We have addressed this first word paideia which is translated discipline here in the ESV but means more of education and training. But then we get to second word here which is instruction. This Greek word is nouthesia (new-tha-see-a). This word refers more to admonition or warning. It is more about advising our children.
Frankly, this word should actually be translated discipline moreso than the previous word as we mentioned already. The Bible speaks of discipline many times. A whole sermon could be written on fathers disciplining their children. But I want us to hit a couple of high points here.
Fathers should discipline their children because they love them.
Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.
We need to follow Christ as He disciplines us because He loves us. We show our children love through discipline.
I think that if we look at most homes, the mother is primary disciplinarian. Oftentimes it is because she is the one who is home more and thus is there for more of the discipline. But I don’t think it is that simple. I’ve seen time after time a mother and father both present but the mother doing all of the disciplining while the father sits back passively. He only seems to step in when it gets out of hand. Show both your wife and children your love by stepping up and leading in the discipline of your children.
And one more nugget of wisdom here. Fathers, if you are present and one of your children disrespects or disobeys your wife in front of you. Step up and handle business there. Let them know that when they disrespect and disobey her that they have done that to you. You are one and whatever they do to their mother they have done to you. This will let the children know that mom and dad are on the same page and it will let your wife know that you are there to love and protect her as well.
2. Fathers should discipline their children for their children’s good.
Discipline your son, for there is hope; do not set your heart on putting him to death.
This is such a tough verse! It shows that discipline is for the good of your child. It implies that one who does not discipline his children is setting his heart on putting them to death!
However, when we think deeply about those who are in our prison system, most of them were once children who were undisciplined. This is excellent advice the writer of Proverbs gives us!
3. Fathers should discipline their children for their children’s righteousness.
For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Disciplining our children aids in their sanctification. Children who are Biblically instructed and disciplined grow in righteousness as they learn to obey the Word of God.
Scripture References: Ephesians 6:4, 1 Corinthians 16:13, Luke 6:40, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, Revelation 3:19, Proverbs 19:18, Hebrews 12:11, Psalm 127:3-5
Conclusion:
As we come to a close, there is so much more that we could discuss. Parenting is a high calling and hard work. We would love to come alongside you and encourage you throughout your journey of parenting and family. We are planning on walking through a curriculum called The Art of Parenting with individual couples this summer and fall. We already have the books and resources. Just approach Lauren or me and we can try to set up a time that we could start meeting once a month or so to get started. We definitely aren’t the perfect parents but we have been blessed to have godly men and women pour into us and speak truth to us over the years and encourage us. We would love to do the same for you.
Also, as we close, may we always remember the Gospel must be center of everything. Children - if you are struggling with obeying - take a moment and make sure you are saved. Make sure you have repented or turned away from your sins. Make sure that you placed your trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. The one who is God and who came to earth as man and died some 2000 years on the cross for your sins. Parents, I charge you to check yourself on this as well. Be sure you are truly saved. We can only do Christ’s work through His power. And we must be born again in order to do that.
Finally, I want us to end on a few powerful verses on parenting and family:
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
Our children are a blessing from the Lord. And we are to sharpen these arrows and prepare them to be shot out into an evil world. May every decision that we make including time management, discipline, education, extra-curricular activities, or anything else - be run through the Word of God and may God grant us the wisdom and perseverance and strength we need to complete this most difficult but blessed task.
Let us pray.
Prayer
If you would like to learn more about salvation through Jesus Christ or want to obey Jesus by obeying the first commandment of a believer in going through the waters of baptism - please let me know.
Have a blessed week.