This passage presents a simple topic with complex baggage. I have my own personal story. And every one of us in our own distinct way needs to hear something from this text. And I assure you that the Lord wants to speak to you. And my prayer is simply that God would reveal more of his heart as a loving Daddy to his children and that as we encounter more of his heart, we would be enabled to love him more obediently.
Ephesians 6:1 – 4…
1 Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Introduction…
Children and parents. These two words can have a variety of different effects on a room full of people. When we hear the word “children” some people are affected positively and others are affected negatively. On the positive side there is the joy that some people feel when they’ve found out they’re pregnant or have just completed an adoption process. And on the negative side there’s the frustration and the pain of folks who have yet to experience what it’s like to have children either naturally or through the process of adoption. We have people in the room now on both sides of that fence.
There’s also the individual experiences of every person who either is or was a child at one time and then there’s the other side of the coin where all of us have at least had parents. Our experiences with our parents may bring about a sense of joy and happiness for some of us while for others there is a constant sense of disappointment and fear or shame attached to the memories of our parents. I draw our attention to these different things on the front end of this sermon for a couple of different reasons.
#1: I want to draw our attention to the fact that while the topics of children and parents are relatively simple, the emotional baggage in this room can be super complex.
#2: I just need to confess that I arrive at this text with a certain set of life’s experiences and emotional baggage just like everyone else does.
#3: Regardless of the experiences and the presence of or the lack of any emotional baggage, there is still a word from the Lord for each of us in the explanation of this text if we will listen for it.
So, simple topic, complex baggage. I have my own personal story. And every one of us in our own distinct way needs to hear something from the Lord today. And I assure you that the Lord wants to speak to you. And my prayer is simply that God would reveal more of his heart as a loving Daddy to his children and that as we encounter more of his heart, we would be enabled to love him obediently. So with that said, let’s dig around in the text a little.
The Text…
We have to remember that in Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church he has spent considerable time in the early chapters driving home the truths of our identity in Christ. And then for the last couple of chapters he has been hammering home the truths of how we are called to walk in obedience to Christ.
And as we get into the last chapter of the book we are nearing the end of Paul’s second theme, which is commonly referred to as the “walk” section. Sit, walk, stand. Sit securely in who and whose you are. Walk rightly in accordance to God’s commands. And stand firmly rooted in Christ.
So we are nearing the end of the “walk rightly” section of this letter. This section of the letter has been super practical and super punchy. Paul has chosen his words carefully as he’s addressed everything from being actively involved in the local church with your gifts and abilities to greed to impurity to sexual sin to malicious slander and gossip to deception and lying to drunkenness to marriage. Paul has addressed a ton of super practical how-to-walk topics.
And now he hones in on the family, specifically the relationship between children and parents. He lays this all out in a fairly simple form and it’s fairly easy to comprehend. It’s fairly straightforward. It’s not very complex. But, don’t forget, every one of us brings a super complex bag full of experiences into these topics that we need the instructions of the Word of God to speak into and to shed light on. So what do children need to hear today and what do parents need to hear today?
#1: Paul gives instructions for children… (1 – 3)
Paul says, “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 you may live long in the land. The picture I have in my head when it comes to Paul’s instruction for children to obey and honor their parents is the picture of a child who joyfully obeys and joyfully honors his parents’ instructions.
Why would a child joyfully obey? The reason that a child would joyfully obey and joyfully honor his or her parents is because that child understands that it is the right thing to do and that child also understands that obedience and honor will make his or her life better in the long run.
Fairly simple instructions. But let’s not forget the complexities of the human experience. Children do not always obey with joy and they do not always honor their parents. We often spend our time sulking and pouting because we didn’t get what we wanted. We think it’s obedience because we are doing what’s asked of us but obedience that sulks and pouts isn’t obedience at all. The culture we live in celebrates rebellion instead of obedience and disrespectful mockery instead of honor.
I’ve often said that when the consequences of obedience taste better than the consequences of rebellion then all of us will begin to obey joyfully rather than begrudgingly. The consequences of disobedience and disrespect are mistrust and further rebellion, which leads to more mistrust and more rebellion and a whole host of untold amounts of other painful consequences.
We must remember that the promise of sin is always pleasure but that pleasure is always short lived and deceptive. The promise of obedience and the promise of honor is the good life. Now this isn’t an exact formula for having the good life now and forever but it is a generally wise proverb. If you live a life of obedience things will go better for you.
My last thought on this is that there is a caveat to the kind of obedience and the kind of honor we are called to as children. We are called to obey and honor “in the Lord”. This means that we aren’t called to obey our parents when our parents instruct us to do something that is ungodly, unbiblical or sinful. We are not called to gloss over sin and we are not called to honor something that God has called dishonorable.
We are called to obey and honor in accordance with what is godly. So, “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 you may live long in the land.
#2: Paul gives instructions for parents… (4)
Paul says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” The picture I get here is of a father who tenderly, gently and patiently disciplines and instructs his children in the ways of the Lord. Sadly, we live in an age of fatherlessness. Our dads are all too often passively present, overbearingly present or not physically present at all. The effects of this are entire generations growing up without the love and the nurture and the care that God designed us to have.
Paul uses an interesting word here that catches my attention when he uses the word “provoke”. It reminds me of the schoolyard bully who won’t quit poking at you until he pushes you over the edge. It’s like the picture of a nagging friend who won’t leave you alone about something until you just literally explode on them to leave you alone.
You don’t have to be a loud and belligerent parent to provoke your kids to anger. Passivity or being physically present while relationally disengaged can oftentimes provoke deeper wounds because you never know where you stand with your parent. And a parent who is constantly physically absent will provoke their child to anger and bitterness too.
So to protect us from becoming the parent who is constantly antagonizing and constantly provoking our kids, Paul argues for a consistent pattern of godly discipline and instruction. The word discipline here has a dual meaning that drives at the same result. Discipline means to form and to correct.
So discipline is formative and corrective. The picture I get here is of a potter patiently and gently forming a clay pot while correcting the direction and the speed of the spinning lump of clay. This is the kind of parenting we are called to. Formative and corrective do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Gospel Application…
Why does this matter? How does the gospel apply here? How does this apply to us in all of our complex circumstances? The single parent, the struggling parent, the not yet parent, the rebellious kid. How do we make application into all of these complex arenas of life? What do we need to believe and what do we need to obey? How does this passage reveal a little more of the Father’s heart for us?
Think about the themes of obedience and honor and discipline and instruction. Think about the contrast to these themes that we see in our own lives and in the culture around us. We see rebellion instead of obedience in our culture. We see mockery instead of honor in our culture. We see chaos instead of discipline in our culture. We see resistance to receiving godly instruction instead of a hunger to learn how to live in God-honoring ways in our culture.
Think about your own human experience of these themes in your own life. Some of us have lived super rebellious lives while resisting what we know to be right. Some of us have lived out a fake obedience with our heads hung low out of fear and shame or pouting. Some of us find it really hard to grasp the concept of honoring our parents because they treated us so poorly that we can’t even stand the sight of them. Some of us weren’t disciplined patiently or gently or lovingly. We were dealt with harshly and abusively or we didn’t receive any loving correction or instruction at all.
Can I just encourage us here for a minute? Don’t let your past sin or someone else’s past sin against you cause you to walk in sin now. Don’t use sin as an excuse for more sin. For those of you who know Jesus, remember that at one time you were a child of disobedience. You were a child that was destined for eternal separation from your loving Father. But God in his rich mercy and never-ending love stretched out his Son’s arms on a cross for you and his Spirit opened your heat and you became an adopted child of a resurrected king.
For those of you who have not yet surrendered to Jesus, I want you to hear that regardless of what you’ve done, regardless of your disobedience, you have a Father in Heaven who is chasing after you through the preaching of this message today. The Spirit of the living God is speaking to you right now and he’s inviting you to come and surrender to a Father who loves you enough to give his Son Jesus on a cross to pay the penalty and the price for your rebellion so that by faith in our resurrected Savior you can become an adopted child of the King of kings.
You may have totally blown it as a parent. Or maybe the thought of your sin last night makes your stomach turn. But can I just remind you that the picture we have of our Heavenly Father is the picture of a Daddy waiting at the end of the driveway for his runaway kid to come home so that he can throw a party for him. When you see this picture of the Father that our Papa God really is… what does that provoke within you?
Conclusion…
In conclusion, as a father of seven children and as a father-like pastor of many, I have often not only struggled with the pain of fatherlessness but I’ve also blown it big as a father. It’s hard for me to comprehend how my Father in Heaven would never leave me or forsake me. It’s especially hard for me to comprehend this when I’m especially afraid or feeling alone or insecure.
I have needed to experience the never-ending love of my heavenly Father more and more the older I’ve grown. One of my recent revelations is that God knows my sin better than I do and yet he loves me completely and unconditionally because of the faith he gives me to trust in Christ. Even his commands and even the consequences I’ve experienced from my own sin are instruments of his loving kindness towards me because his commands are meant to keep me safe and the consequences of my sin are meant to remind me of his loving kindness and provoke me towards joy-filled obedience. Can I leave you with this question? What is the Spirit of the living God provoking within you right now?