Let's grab our Bibles and let's go to Ephesians chapter 6 this morning. When you've pastored in one place a long time, as I have, you struggle with how often to revisit foundational issues, and we're doing that this morning. It's been quite a while since we've looked at anything pertaining to the family. Now, Brother Matt's done a great job for us recently exhorting parents. You need to get some of that.
If you missed out on it, we'll try to make as many of them as available as we have recorded, of course, but those would be good to get a hold of. But this morning, I want us to look at Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1 through 3. All right, Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1 through 3. Paul, in the flow of speaking to Christian families, says this, 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. I've entitled this, The Children's Assignment Obedience and Blessing.
I use the word assignment because that's true for all of us. God has structured and ordered society, including the family, to function in a certain meaningful organization. And so we come to the area of God's assignment, if you will, for children. Of course, this certainly includes moms and dads here, but the address is to children. Children, obey your parents. Now let's unpack it this way, Roman numeral one, the old, old precept. In other words, there's nothing new at all about this. It's been around forever.
It literally has. That children should obey your parents. Obey their parents. Ephesians 6, 1 simply says, Children, obey your parents. Ephesians 6, 2, honor your father and mother. And then thousands of years ago, in Exodus chapter 20, verse 12, in the Old Testament law, Moses writes, Honor your father and your mother.
It's an old, old precept. Now, when God tells children to obey their parents, that's different than what he said to their wives back in Ephesians 5, 22. Back there, he told wives to submit to your husbands.
But these are not the same thing. Obedience here is a much stronger word. Obedience here is explicit. Obedience has more of the idea of cold, rigid fact. A child must obey whether they understand it yet or not. A child must obey even though they can't reason it out at this point that it's best or wisest to do so.
A child is just to obey. Where a wife, when she's submissive, she can understand. She knows the Word of God.
She can analyze it and reason and understand. This is what pleases my Lord. This is how I honor him, so I will choose to submit to my husband. But that's not what children are to do.
They don't reason it out. It's required. They must obey their parents.
There's just a clear command to do so. But the joy of raising children, and I've done that, and trust me, I needed a lot of grace to get through it and a lot of your help to get through it. But it's wonderful when your children go from rote, cold requirement, though there's a time for that, especially when they're real young. They can't understand why. They just have to be made to do it. And then as they grow, they learn the Word of God.
They begin to grasp some things. The Spirit of God helps them. And they start choosing to obey Mom and Dad, choosing to honor Mom and Dad, because they begin to see the wisdom of it. Now, that's joy when our children on their own are choosing to honor the Lord. And that's why I said it takes a church.
We need all the help we can from each other to keep our babies, our sons and daughters on this path. But that's not the way it is in our world at all, is it? We have such a dishonorable and disrespectful attitude among the culture concerning the children as they view their parents. It's somewhat dated, but it's still very true. John MacArthur said this in his commentary on this text, All human relationships obviously grow out of those of the children with the parent. Children who respect and obey their parents will build a society that is honored, that is productive.
That's a good word. Note the association that the Bible makes with God's mercy. Who told you that it's changed?
It hasn't changed. Here, these men also, by dreaming, defile the flesh, here it is, and reject authority. So here the writer, the Jude, says growths in moralities is as offensive in the heart and mind of God as rejecting the authority of your parents.
They're an equal thing in God's eyes. It shows you the seriousness of it. It's not a little thing.
It's not an old-timey thing. It's an old, old, still-established preaching. Children, obey your parents. And then, right quick, we'll not read all of it, but 2 Peter 2, 9, and 10 speaks about those who indulge, in verse 10 now, those who indulge in the flesh in its corrupt, that means undefiled and unclean, desires and despise authority. So once again, on a horizontal plane, he takes the most rebellious and vile evils and equalizes it, if you will, with the sin of disobedience to parents, i.e., rejection to authority, as it's worded in our verses. We live in a culture that is so anti-truth, anti-biblical, and anti-God that it revolts at the very notion of subservience to another, our submission to authority. I mean, in today's world, if you hold that certain persons are to be responsible and to obey or submit to someone else, well, they say you are abusive.
What sophisticated and pseudo-intellectual and high-sounding arguments are used to cover up just sinful, rebellious hearts? Feminism tells us to teach a wife to submit to her husband is abusive. The union leader will tell the employee, to work for your employer like working unto the Lord as the Bible commands, is abusive. The church members are told, if you are told that you have to obey your church leaders as the Bible commands, then you're abusive. The citizen who loves himself and just wants to do his own thing, if you tell him, no, you're to honor and obey the civil authorities as the Bible requires, they'll say, oh, that's tyrannical, that's abusive. But that's just the spirit of the age.
Matter of fact, the psychologists tell you, if you just tell your child, no, you're abusive. I'll tell you whatever one of those is, it's wickedness. It's unbiblical. It violates the statutes of God. But that's the spirit of our age. Today's society resists authority, and it champions and it applauds and it celebrates rebellion.
The Bible says in Proverbs 12, 15, the way of a fool is right in his own eyes. All these things seem so high sounding and intellectual and up to date, as if we've passed an age. I'll tell you what we've passed.
I can't say the verbiage from the pulpit that I perhaps would say. But the time out crowd, I don't think has come along as good as the bottom spanked crowd. We still did that. We still do it if a grandchild gets out of line.
Just as 2125 says, in those days, there was no king in Israel because everyone did what was right in his own eyes. That's the spirit of our day. Where does this excusing, indulgent, and sinful rebellious spirit come from? It comes straight from Satan. He's the arch rebel of the universe. He is one who is full of pride and despises authority.
I mean, today, if an employer or a government leader or the church or the parents establish rules or laws or standards and hold those under them accountable for them and expect those under them to be obedient, my friend, they're not being abusive. They're being biblical. Look, if you'll honor God's place and authority over you and cast yourself on God, God will crush that authority before he lets that authority hurt you. You see, so many of you think you're smarter than God and you're more powerful than God. You can figure it out better than God's got it figured out. By the way, God doesn't figure anything out. He knows it all from the beginning. He knows everything from the beginning. He's all wise and he's all good.
We'll talk about that in just a moment. Those who resist, those who undermine, those who disobey God-ordained authority, including parents, are not wise and they certainly should not be esteemed or followed. They are foolish rebels.
They're not rebelling against any individual or any group primarily. They rebel against the Lord God who established these structures of authority in our society. Psalm 31 23 says, Oh, love the Lord, all you his godly ones. The Lord preserves the faithful, but he fully recompenses the proud doer, like Satan, the one who rebels against authority. Proverb 16 5, everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord.
Assuredly, he will not be unpunished. Psalm 40 verse 4, How blessed is the man who has made the Lord his trust and has not turned to the proud, nor to those who lapse into falsehood. The evil spirit that resists authority is promoted by the devil, it's promoted by the world, it's promoted by our fallen flesh, and it infiltrates every quarter of our nation, the workplace, the citizenry, the home, and far too often it drifts into the church. Brothers and sisters, let us be resolved to trust God and obey his word concerning God-ordained authority. I mean, let the rebels scoff, let the God-rejecter rage, let the seductive and deceptive ones spread lies and innuendo, let the liberal and the man-centered leftists laugh and mock and ridicule, but let God be found true and every man be found a liar. God's truths stand and on this rock we must stand.
These things are just right. Children obey your parents. It's clear, it's undeniable, it's unavoidable. Children in past cultures should obey their parents. Children today should obey their parents. Children in the future should obey their parents, period, for all time.
We are the people of God, let's start acting like it. Children should be taught to obey their parents and should be required to obey their parents. All right, not only that, not only is it an old, old precept, but Romans 2, this obedience is natural and it's expected. It's natural. The next phrase is, children obey your parents. I'll skip one, actually, because this is right. Well, that's simple, isn't it?
It's just right. God our creator has every right to design his creation to function in the way he ordained it to function. He's not calling a committee meeting anywhere to find out what to do next. God doesn't put his wet finger in there to find out what's going to work best next time. Romans 9 20 reminds us, on the contrary, who are you, old man, who answers back to God? Who are you to say to God, well, that's outdated, that didn't work, I don't like that, I don't agree with that, I know somebody that's abused that. People abuse all of God's ordained structures, but that does not mean that we throw them away.
It's right, it's exactly as it should be. You could say it's righteous. The idea of righteousness, there's various meanings, but the idea of righteousness is the idea that you function justly in all your relations. And when it comes to children and parents, the divine just way to order yourself to function is to obey. It's right, it's righteous. God has woven this truth into the fabric of creation, that is, that children should obey their parents. Even natural law teaches us this. It's just understood, you can go to any culture, all religions and cultures that I know of practice the general principle of children obeying their parents.
Now, they'll often pervert the doctrine, they'll warp it. For example, I was in India, and there was a man leading over a bridge, and he was just pouring money out over the bridge into the water below. And I asked the missionary there, I said, what is that guy doing? He said he's paying tribute to his ancestors. He's honoring his forebears who are now dead. Now, that's a perversion, but the reason why it's there is because God put it there.
It's a part of natural law that you should honor and obey the one who gave you life. You know, I'm an outdoorsman, I like wildlife stuff, and you never see a bear cub telling mama bear what he's gonna do. No, mama bear smacks that boy around, grabs him by the nap of the next, and we're going over the next hill.
You've never seen a lion cub, boss daddy lion around. No, you smack that little cub around and put him in this place. Now, this is not a metaphor or parallel of how you're to treat your children, but the principle is there. It's a part of nature and natural law. The offspring should be taught. The children should be taught to respect their parents.
It's exactly as it should be. We must lovingly and courageously teach God's Word, and that teaches that our children should be taught to obey their parents. Talking about how it's right, just a few cross-references. Psalm 19-8, the precepts of the Lord are right. Psalm 119-128, I esteem right, I should say, all thy precepts.
Hosea 4 19, for the ways of the Lord are right. Brothers and sisters, there needs to be no explanation, no argument, no defending, just it's right. If somebody challenges you on this, just don't even respond. It's so stupid.
The Bible uses the word, I'll use it, it's so stupid. There's no place for debate and reasoning on this. The idiocy, the warped idiocy of saying a child can begin to decide for themselves whether they're a male or a female, it's our job to tell a child what they are. It's certainly not the state's job.
Well, I could get off chasing some rabbits this morning, but I will try not to do that. Really, we need to ask ourselves, moms and dads, sometimes, are we loving? Are we loving? Now, what I mean is, are we functioning in self-love or true love as parents? Are you parenting according to self-love or true love? You see, true love will honor God's Word. You are not loving if you are not biblical. Now, don't misunderstand me, the heart attitude and the heart spirit is foundational, but nevertheless, you are not loving if you violate Scripture. Parents must teach their children to obey, and they must teach an obedience guided by love, but listen to me, they must teach an obedience guided by love, but never abolished by love.
See, that's been the notion that's been around for decades now. Oh, I would, but I just love them. No, you don't.
No, you don't. You don't love them if you let them have their own way. You don't love them if you allow rebellion.
You don't love them if you allow them to disobey authority and dishonor disrespect authority. That's not love. That's self-love.
You're esteeming yourself wiser than God, but it's not true love. You know, the Bible says there's foolishness that's bound up in the heart of a child. Now, that's not just my child. That's your child. That's all of our children. Until they can have enough wisdom by the imparting of the Word of God, that's why you've got to raise your children in a strong, firm, thorough Bible preaching and teaching so that the Holy Spirit has something to work with, to move your child's heart to begin to embrace and enjoy and cling to the things of God.
But until that time, there's just foolishness bound up in their heart. That's why it's astonishing to me the number of dads, men who are supposed to be men, who will follow their children and join a church that's built around the foolish things of children, instead of mature and manly things of sound doctrine in Christ honoring biblical fidelity in general. Allowing children to disobey is only self-love. It's a disregard for God's Word.
Proverbs 13 24 reminds us, he who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently. We're talking about it's just right. It's obvious, it's natural, it's evident that this is right. It's inherently right. It's inherently right. It's divinely right. And it being right goes beyond the fact that it's good for the child, though it is, or good for the family, and good for the parents, though it is, and good for society, and good for the nation, though it is. No, it's right simply because it's right. God said it.
That settles it. It will remain right if everybody opposes it. The world, the flesh, and the devil will always come up with exception clauses. Yeah, but every one of your children are going to feel that they are these radically rare, unique exception clause.
Yeah, but you understand, my child's in the gifted class. Yeah, and their little devil. Hitler was brilliant.
Mussolini was brilliant. Wickedness and intelligence often run hand in hand. Your little precious one is not the exception. They need to be disciplined and corrected, certainly with love, certainly with a motive for the glory of God.
Now listen, moms and dads, we'll get into this a little bit more in a moment. Certainly with the motive for their good. You don't correct your child for your good, primarily, though it is helpful, amen. It is a blessing, but not, you go to God and say, God, my motive must be for their good and for your glory.
Not that our home will be more peaceful, though it will be, but those are secondary to the motive of their good and God's glory. But we have these little, I call it the cycle of rebellion, when young people want to do their own thing. First they begin with contemplation. They're thinking about, I think I'm going to rebel and do my own thing. Then they actually do it.
That's activation. They put some shoe leather to their rebellious, insubordinate thoughts. And then there's always, number three, justification.
I mean, they will always come. Well, professor so-and-so said, well, Johnny's dad lets him. Just doesn't matter. Some of you think this was a little course.
Maybe it was a tad course. One of my daughters asked me one day about a certain activity. Actually, a lot of you wouldn't thought it was that big a deal, but for us, we thought it wasn't allowable as a pattern of life. And they said, could I just do this? And I said, yeah, but you'll have to go to church Sunday and stand before the church and reject Christ publicly, because following Christ you don't need to do that. There's a consequence to what we say we are. There's a responsibility to who we say we represent. So there's a contemplation, and then we start rebelling.
That's activation. Then always a justification. Then fourthly, always congregation. Rebels like company. They want to get other young people involved in the rebellion they're in, because that way it helps appease their conscience. Somehow, if we can get a bunch of us rebelling together, that will help shield us from God, because, see, their conscience is bothering them, and that helps appease the conscience to have others sitting out there. You know, the old Baptist way, I'll scratch your sin, you scratch mine. And then they get someone else to come along with them, and they go through the same stages.
They consider contemplation, then they get active in it, then they start justifying, and then they try to find some more. We have these what we call teenage gangs, and we think about kids standing on the street corners with piercings and colored hair and all the different things, the outward expressions of what we might, didn't have to be, but might associate with rebellion. But I'm going to tell you, you go in a lot of Baptist and Evangelical churches, and there's a rebellious gang in there, and they look good on the outside, but they're not honoring mom and dad when they go home. It's just a little teenage gang of rebellion. Listen to me. The home that largely neglects to teach and require children to obey is a home of sin and a home of shame. It's a perversion of the God-ordained pattern for the family.
Now, let me be balanced here. Some of you are just too obsessive on things like this. Nobody's a perfect parent. Nobody catches everything, but you know how your pattern is. Matter of fact, there's some good in missing some things every now and then.
There's some good and a little grace every now and then. All you kids just say, amen. But as a pattern, our children should be taught to obey. It's just right. It's what God ordained. Remember Proverbs 29 15, the rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother. So first, we said it's an old, old precept. It's been around forever. It's natural.
It's expected. Number three, let's talk about the secret key. And this principle of honoring authority, God-ordained authority, and particularly children honoring their parents.
Let's talk about the secret key. Because you said in our text, children obey your parents. That's the old, old precepts.
This is right. That means it's natural and expected, but these three words are foundational. In the Lord. In the Lord. You see, Paul's writing this to believers who were saved out of an old Greco-Roman culture. It was one of the Greek city-states, and the Greeks and the Romans had the harshest of rules in their homes.
In an old Roman household, the father had the power of life and death over his children. Again, they understood children should obey their parents. They perverted it. They went too far. They were too harsh. But that's the way it was. So as Paul writes to the church at Ephesus, and he addresses the children, those who are old enough to understand, and he says to them, children obey your parents, all those Roman children would have sit there and slumped back in their seat and said, well, so much for becoming a Christian.
We already know all about that. We are forced with harsh penalty to obey our parents. But Paul didn't just say, children obey your parents. He didn't just say, children honor your parents. He said, do it in the Lord. Brothers and sisters, oh, I've said this to you a lot, and it's such a glorious truth.
I hope you grasp it. The Old Testament moral law never passed away. The ceremonial law is no longer what we practice.
It all pointed to Jesus anyway, basically, and he's come. But the old moral law still stands, because God is a moral God. He said the law is an extension of the very character and nature of God. God says, don't steal, because he's a God who would never steal. God says, don't lie, because he's a God that would never lie.
It's an extension of him. God says, don't commit adultery, because God would never be unfaithful to his covenant promises. So the old law still stands, but listen to me, we're under grace now. So we don't use keeping the law to obtain salvation, our right standing before God, but to function in our lives pleasing to God, we still keep the old moral law. Listen to me, in Christianity, the old law is not abandoned.
It's not made obsolete. It's perfected. It's completed, because now a child can grow in grace, and now a child can begin to see from the Word of God and the Spirit of God's power and wisdom working within them, they can begin to see that this is the right thing to do, this is the wise thing to do, this honors God, this pleases my parents, it's good for me, I will embrace it. That's in the Lord.
That makes a huge difference. Just as a husband leads his wife as her head in the Lord with love, the wife is to submit to her husband. The cold old law said that, but now the wife says, aha, but now in Jesus I see the wisdom of that, and so children begin to grasp in the Lord the wisdom of God in doing this. So that is the Spirit, the key element. That's why before you get to 6, 1, 2, and 3, you get Ephesians 5 18. Do not be drunk with wine, that's what the world would do, but be filled with the Spirit. Then you can be the wife God's called you to be, then you can be the husband God's called you to be, then you can be the parent God's called you to be, then you can be the child in the home God has called you to be.
This isn't by might. I mean, the last thing we want is a bunch of little blank, dead, emotionless, robotic, obedient children. Amen? We don't want to crush their spirit. We want them to be energized with joy, with the pleasure of God, with the goodness of God, so that they by the Spirit's enabling begin to honor God and his precepts, including submitting to their parents. This is a blessed and foundational key. Just as a balancing note here, there are times when a child cannot obey.
I get that. I'll be honest, I don't think it's nearly as often that is claimed by our culture. If a parent wants a child to do something that's clearly sinful, that's clearly wicked, that's clearly unbiblical, the child should always have an honorable respect, but they should appeal to their parents and certainly escape from them if it's one of these horrible situations. But that's the exception, and that is not the pattern. A child should maintain an honorable spirit, even if the parents are dishonorable. Well, we've talked about it's an old, old precept.
It's natural and it's expected. There's a secret key. That's the empowering work of the Spirit of God. Then number four, the blessed consequence. That it may be well with you, that you may live long on the earth. Now, this is like a proverb.
It's not an absolute guarantee. Some good and godly children die young, but that's the exception. Generally speaking, those children who are taught to obey, and as they get older, learn to honor and obey their parents, they just live better and live longer, because God's not a liar.
It just goes better for you if you'll do that. There's an Old Testament parallel that kind of speaks to the negative side of this equation. Proverbs 30 verse 17. The eye that mocks a father and scorns a mother, the ravens of the valley will pick it out and the young eagles will eat it. The writer of Proverbs says, as a general rule, a young person who does their own thing and does not honor and obey their parents will find themselves in an early and lonely death. You know it says the ravens of the valley will pluck out the eye, because that's what a raven does to a corpse when it finds it on the side of the road somewhere.
It plucks the eye first to see if there's any life there. So God says, as a pattern, if you dishonor your parents, the likelihood of you dying young and dying lonely goes way up. I was looking some time ago at some pictures of some guys that I hung out with in high school, and I just started counting. And I counted five guys that I used to run with, and I should have had their fate for the grace of God.
And they all died in their early 20s, or by their early, some earlier than that, but by their early 20s. God is not mocked. God's truth holds true. Dr. R.G. Lee was the pastor of the Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis for many, many years, and he did well in his old age and was just prospering even in his old age. And a young man asked Dr. R.G. Lee, he said, how are you doing so well as an older man? He said, son, I'm living on the dividends of a well-spent youth.
A lot of truth to that. Young people, I want you to remember these four foundational, these four foundational attributes of God. When you think about what God is asking you to do, remember these four things. Number one, God is good. He's all good.
Listen, he can only be good. Number two, God is all wise. His plan for you is the product of infinite wisdom. He's got a great plan for you. And by the way, though you can't understand it all, he chose your parents.
You say, yeah, but you don't know what I've grown up with. You want to compare notes sometime? God knows what he's doing. I would not know God nor need God like I have known him and like I do need him if I didn't have the home I had.
Good, bad, and ugly. God knows what he's doing. And you know what?
Today I wouldn't trade anything for it. He's all wise. He's good. He's all wise. And God is loving everything he's doing in your life.
Even giving you your present home situation is the product of his infinite, all wise love for you. And he's all powerful. How long are you going to kick against the gold? The gold was a stick, a pointed stick they would put into the oxen's hind quarter to make him go.
If he pushed back, he just pushed the gold deeper into the flesh. You can't outbox God. You can't outfox him. You can't out debate him.
You sure cannot overpower him. Since he's good and he's wise and he's loving, submit to him. Obeying and honoring your parents, young people, is your assignment. It's your duty. And it's the right way to have a relationship with your parents.
Do not try to figure out, what can I get by with? That's the attitude of a fool. You go get on your knees and say, God, I'm going to honor these parents. Now, God, you keep them right and watch what God will do. Do you remember? I told you to do that about your pastor. Do you remember that?
Decades and decades ago. I said, get on your knees, say, God, I'm going to follow Jeff Knoblet. You keep him right.
You can let up on that now, by the way. You don't know what God's had to put me through to keep me halfway right. But many of you took me up on that and you prayed that. Young people, I charge you, prove God. Prove God! Prove God! God, I'm going to honor these parents.
Now, you keep them right. Dads, you better get right with God if they start praying that. You better get right with God. One of the beautiful things in Scripture is, don't have time to develop this, but the most powerful person in a relationship is not the one at the head, it's the one under the head. It's Daniel in Babylon. It's Joseph in Egypt.
He learns the ways of God. God's opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. When that one under authority is humble and honors what God says it is, it's Sarah with Abraham.
She didn't have much of a man, but she honored God and God made her one. I said, okay, well I'm just going to work on Abraham and make him the man that you deserve to have, because you honored him when he was not the man that was easy to honor. But we're going all over the place this morning, aren't we?
Covering everything. A couple of quick words and I'm done. Let's strive to promote responsibility and not so much rights. A culture that gets real hung up on pushing rights all the time promotes rebellion, but when you promote your responsibility before God, you promote revival. I'm not saying there's no place for emphasizing our rights, there is. Today we have the right to do everything in America, but very little discussion about our responsibilities to a holy God. Promoting rights encourages rebellion. Promoting responsibility encourages revival. One last quick word to our young people. Your moms and dads are not perfect. Some of them maybe not very good at all, but I charge you focus on what they have done right. You might even say, well, my mom didn't even care enough to keep me, she gave me up for adoption, but she gave you life.
That's something, that's not nothing. You'd be surprised what God will do if you'll focus on what mom and dad did right and get off of this stuff of what they've done wrong. This is a testimony a young man wrote. He said, my father was not all that bad of a father. The difficulty was twofold. First, he was a busy doctor, seldom at home. Second, it was difficult to talk to him.
My father doesn't communicate easily on a personal level. I can't ever remember having a meaningful construction conversation with my father, but then I determined I would examine his life for areas which I could purposefully and particularly honor him and admire him for, and I began to discover there's many areas. I learned my father was extremely hard working and conscientious. Indeed, that was why he was away from home so much. So although his being away created problems, there are also advantages too.
He could pay for a thorough and extended education for me. And secondly, it allowed him to be very generous as he gave to the church and Christian causes, and he never talked about it and never flaunted it. So he says, when I learned what he did right and good, some of the resentments dissipated. I had that experience. I believe my mother was converted late, I don't think my father was, and I got converted and just kind of washed away everything that they had taught me, thinking it had to be all wrong. Boy, what was I wrong? Some of you helped me, because I got into church, and I found out there's some faithful churchgoing folks that didn't do as well in some areas as my mom and dad did, even though they weren't churchgoers. Responsibility, honesty, hard work for sure, discipline, sacrifice for others, they modeled that. And so I begin to go back and realize there's so many positives and begin to praise the Lord for those, along with the so-called negatives, because God has a purpose for them all. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
