Your relationship with God changes all your other relationships. The gospel shapes all of life. There is not one square inch of your life that Jesus does not intend to saturate, to permeate, to consecrate. He wants access to every part of who you are. Welcome to Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller.
I'm Pastor Larry McCarthy, and you're joining us as we're coming to the end, really, of our series in the book of Ephesians.
Now, Pastor Philip, over the last several programs, we've been talking about how our relationships with our spouses, how our work relationships, how all of that is impacted by the gospel. But today, we're talking about family relationships in the home. What's on your heart and mind today? Yeah. You know, family relationships between parents and children are some of the most precious, beautiful relationships we have.
They can also be some of the most pain-filled. Relationships that we have as well. And so, this is an area that just hits right at home, literally, for all of us. And the wisdom of God is what we need. And Paul's going to outline for us today how the gospel starts to inform our parenting, how we treat our parents, both as little kids and grown adults, how we relate to our parents.
And so, this is wisdom we need, and I'm excited to lean into it today.
Well, let's go now to the pulpit of the Moody Church as we examine the power of the Gospel in the life of the family. This is part three of the sermon, The Gospel at Work. And home. The text is Ephesians, chapter six, verses one through nine. We can go to work and just do work.
Instead of, we can master our work, instead of being mastered by our work. It means we don't have to neglect our health. Or our families, or our morality, for the sake of our work. Do you know how freeing this is? When the boss tells you to do something that would go against the way of Jesus, We know our boss isn't our boss.
And so we can do the right thing. And we can live with integrity and moral clarity. It's brilliant. Because friends For employees, work is a place where we live out our discipleship of Jesus.
So that we become more and more like Him. For employees' work is a place where we live out our discipleship of Jesus.
so that we become more and more. Like him. And not only does the gospel shape our relationships at work, the gospel shapes our relationships at home. Let's talk about the gospel at home, parents and children. Chapter 6, verse 1.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, for this is the first command 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.
So what does this mean for parents? For parents.
Well, we know that both parents are actually in view here because back up in verse 1, children are told to obey their Parents in the Lord, but Paul's command here in verse 4 is specifically directed at fathers. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, right?
Now why would he single out fathers? Probably because fathers are more in danger of doing the wrong thing here, right? I mean we know We know dads.
So here, and the idea here is one of perpetual anger. perpetual anger. Do not provoke your children to wrath, to anger, to perpetual Anger that doesn't go away, the kind of harshness that results in embitteredment and resentment and hostility and anger that just doesn't go away. He's saying, Don't crush your kids. Don't crush your kids.
Instead, bring them up. in the discipline and instruction Of the Lord. As the Lord disciplines and instructs you with patience and long-suffering and gentleness and grace.
so you are to bring up your own. Children.
Now the words here are difficult to translate. Discipline and instruction you have here in the ESV. The old KJV had nurture and admonition. Right? One of these words, the first one, leans toward tenderness and care.
The other one leans toward training and discipline.
Okay? And it helps me to think of the old shepherd imagery with the rod and the staff. The rod was for tough love and the staff was for nurture. and care. And so you have this pairing of nurture and training here.
And the point is, and here's the principle, your children need nurture. Your children need Nurture. Your children are real people. With real desires and real hopes and real dreams and real needs and real emotions. And to nurture them, you must know them.
must adapt to their individual needs and temperament. must care for them. This is the soft side of parenting. One of the most helpful things to Krista and I. uh in raising our kids was was the lens of Um Gary Chapman's Five Love Languages, a Moody Publishers piece, by the way.
But the five love languages, you probably remember what they are: words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, acts of service, receiving gifts.
Okay. And Chapman's insight is that you basically tend to give love in the way that you want to receive it. We all have a way that we prefer to give and receive love, but other people have different ways. And the best thing we can do in selfless love is to actually learn their their preferred love language, and love them in the way that will be meaningful. to them.
And so Krista and I have endeavored to try to learn our kids' love languages. And to figure out, okay, if that's how they're wired, how can we love them strategically, specifically, in a way that will connect with their hearts? It's nurture.
Sometimes we ask the question, this is from Chapman as well: how's your love tank? Like if you had a love tank, right, and it drains throughout the day and you could fill it back.
Well, how's your love tank? One to ten. Oh, it's a seven.
Okay. What could I do to help fill it? See? And then loving them in their own way. See, friends, your Heavenly Father nurtures and cares for you.
As a beloved child, yes? And now he's calling you to care for your beloved children, as he has cared. For you. The sixth principle is that your children need training. Your children need training, not just nurture, they need training.
If you're going to bring them up, if you're going to raise them to mature adulthood, to be disciples of Jesus Christ, it's not enough to nurture and love on your children. They've got to be trained. They've got to be instructed and admonished. You know, they're not great out of the box. They need development.
They need training. They need to be taught right from wrong. They need to be corrected and disciplined when they need it. But how do you do that in a way that doesn't provoke them to anger? Right?
Because that's the command. Don't make them constantly angry.
So, how do you parent? How do you discipline so that that doesn't take take place. One of the greatest insights, I can't share everything about parenting, and I'm not even that great of a parent, okay? That should be apparent. Anyway, uh, yeah.
Now one of the greatest insights though for Krista and I was realizing that the love language paradigm actually helps you with discipline too. Because if you discipline in your kids' primary love language, They're going to receive it harshly. Right? So a slap on the wrist is Super harsh to a physical touch kid. A verbal scolding will shatter a words of affirmation person.
Time out will devastate a quality time person. Taking away a toy will disproportionately impact Someone who feels love through gifts. Letting someone face the consequence of their choices alone and without help. We'll we'll Devastate. Gut.
an acts of service kit.
So, once you know their love language, you can learn to discipline in the offsuit of their. Does that make sense? This is why you say the same thing to one kid and they break down and cry, and you say the same thing to another, and they just go, whatever. Right? Right?
That's real life.
So, what we've decided is that for everyday discipline, we want to discipline off suit. not in their primary love language, but in their secondary love languages. and save the primary love language discipline. for really big stuff. Right?
when we really need to get their attention. As Hebrews 12 says, the writer says, our heavenly Father. disciplines us for our good. that we may share in His holiness. And though the moment in the moment it might not Same Pleasant, it's more painful.
In the end, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. And friends, as the Heavenly Father disciplines and trains you that you might share in His own godliness.
Now he calls you to train up. your children. to the same end. Because friends, for parents, home is a place to live out our discipleship of Jesus as we become more and more like him. For parents, home is a place to live out our discipleship of Jesus.
so that we become more and more like Ham.
Now let's turn the page to children now. Children.
There's some of you here, right? I see you. Thanks for waiting all the way through my sermon here. This part's for you. There's actually two commands here.
The first is, children obey your parents. And Paul has in mind here children who are living at home as dependents.
Okay. And the second command is honor your father and mother. and is a quotation from the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament. And the command here to honor is intended for all children, regardless of age. Even when you grow up and are your own adult, you're still commanded to honor your father.
And mother.
So let's look at these two principles. Principle number seven is learn obedience at home. Learn obedience. At home. Students, I know it's maddening to always have your adults, your parents, your guardian, your grown-ups telling you what to do.
I know it drives you nuts, and you can't wait to grow up and be your own human being and call your own shots, but let me just give you a hint. that obedience is a part of life. Obedience is a part of life. Grown-ups are not nearly as free as you think they are. We're all obeying someone.
We obey the law. We obey our bosses, we obey our elected officials, we obey the laws of gravity. Yeah? We obey God's word. And you've got to learn obedience somewhere.
You've got to learn obedience somewhere, and home is the best place to begin.
Now Paul does say to obey your parents in the Lord. Which means that Paul is being very clear. He does not intend for you to obey your parents if they ask you to do something that is against God's will. But apart from that Paul is saying that your obedience to your parents is a part of your discipleship of Jesus. Obedience to your parents is a part of your discipleship.
To Jesus. As you learn to obey your parents, God is actually softening and tenderizing your heart so that you will learn to obey Him more. And as that obedience muscle grows, it will help you thrive as you walk with Jesus for the rest of your life. The eighth principle here is choose to give honor. Choose to give.
Honor. We grow out of the command to obey our parents as we become adults, but we never grow out of the command to honor them.
Now, if you had good parents, this is fairly easy because you respect your parents. But if you had bad parents, this can be pretty hard to imagine. How do I honor someone who was Who hurt me? And it's important to remember, I think, that respect is earned. but honor is given.
Respect is earned. Honor is given. It's a gift. And we can choose to give the gift of honor. to even the most undeserving people.
Honoring does not mean pretending they were perfect. Honoring does not mean you gloss over the pain and abuse. Honoring does not mean you agree to be their best friend. Honoring does not mean you're allowing them to mess with you all over again. What honouring does mean is that you choose to interact in a respectful way.
Honoring means that you learn to thank them for the good, however small that might have been. Honoring means you forgive them. for the things they did that were bad. Honoring means you choose to esteem them. whenever you can.
Because, friends, in love, Christ honored us when we did not deserve it. Right? And now he calls us to outdoor. one another. in honor.
Because friends, for children, home is a place. to live out our discipleship of Jesus. as we become more like him. Home is a place to live out our discipleship of Jesus as we become more like Him. Him.
Bottom line. Bottom line. Your relationship with God changes all your other relationships. You see that? That's what Paul's trying to show you.
Your relationship with God changes all your other relationships. The gospel shapes all of life. There is not one square inch of your life that Jesus does not intend to saturate, to permeate, to consecrate. He wants access to every part of who you are at home, in marriage, at work, every domain, every relationship, every responsibility. Because for believers in Jesus Christ, work and home, the oikos, the household, are the places where we live out our discipleship of Jesus as we become more and more like Him.
Because our relationship with God changes all. Of our other relationships. Amen? Amen. This is Living Hope with Pastor Philip Miller.
I'm Pastor Larry McCarthy. We're glad you're with us today as we discover how the gospel changes. Relationships in the home.
Now, Pastor Philip. We're talking about children and the Responsibility that parents have to nurture and train children. You want to tell us a little more about that? Yeah, these are related, aren't they? Nurture is the soft side of parenting, right?
It's the love and the cuddles and ensuring that our kids know that we're for them and with them. And that's the fun part, right? And then training is the hard part. That's the, okay, they're off track. They're in a rut.
They have a pattern. How do I help them address it? How do I help them see it? And lean into their life. How do I correct this?
That's challenging, right? But they belong together because if all you do is train, They're going to hate you, right? And if all you do is nurture, They're never going to grow because all they're going to get is just, oh, you're good, you're perfect, you're the sweetest thing. It's the combination of nurture and training together that actually create health.
So, nurture without training is just soft, and training without nurture is harsh, but training and nurture together. Lead to growth and transformation. And that's what parenting is ultimately about. And so, for like with my own kids, one of the things I always want to do is, I want to love them enough. That they know that I'm for them, that I'm not against them, and that I would do anything for them.
I want them to know no matter what happens in their life, I'm always going to be their dad. I'm always going to love them. There's nothing they could do that would step out of the umbrella of my loving care for them in life. I want them to have that security and that deep sense of bond and connection that my dad loves me. And if I've got to have that so strong that as I train and correct and lean in in ways that they're going to receive as hard, correcting me, you're telling me what to do, you're telling me, right?
That's going to stress test the loving bond that we have. But if the loving bond is strong enough, then it can endure that correction. And then I want to reinforce that bond immediately after, right?
So.
So with my kids, I tr I try to what Krista and I try to do is we try to say, you know, your mom and I, we love you, right? Yeah. And the Lord has called us to help you walk in a way that will follow him. And so It is right for us to not only affirm our love for you. But also to stop you when you're going down a path that's going to lead To hard things.
Hard things for you, hard things for your siblings, hard things for us, hard things for your friends, hard things for your future self. And so our love is causing us to lean in here. And so we need to talk about this behavior. And the way it's are you know, are you aware that When you're stressed, And when you're angry, you lash out in this way, or you do this thing. Are you aware of how it's affecting other people?
Um Now that you are aware. Are you happy with how that's playing out? Um Would you like to do something different. What can you think of that might be a different way to handle this situation? That is so important.
And then, if they don't come up with ideas, Would you like some suggestions? Because what you're trying to do is lean in in such a way. That you're not Yeah. Paul's language, you don't want to exasperate them, you don't want them to be permanently angry at you, and that's so hard when you're trying to correct behavior because they can, they could get. Really mad at you, right?
And so. You don't want that steady, permanent Exasperation. And so, but this is how to honor them, right? That's the relationship you're talking about, though, because rules without a relationship equals rebellion.
So, having that relationship allows you to be able to train, and you've underscored it for our listeners that. It's the parents' primary responsibility to train, not the school or anyone else, but this training occurs in the home. That's right. I got a pivot here. I need to ask you a question because we've been talking about little children, so now the children are grown.
and you have adult children with parents. As you know, The geriatric imperative now in America, there are more people over the age of 65 than any other time in our country. Taking care of mom or dad or granddad or grandma is now falling on a lot of these adult children. You want to. Help our listeners with that perspective?
Yeah. Well, that's where Paul's injunction to honor your parents. That's one of the Ten Commandments, honor your parents. That's a lifelong command that doesn't go away when you're 18 and leave the house. You honor your parents to the very end.
And so it does have huge entailments for. What does it mean to love and care for those who gave their love and care for me? Like, there's a reciprocity. It's only fair that we've been nurtured and cared for by our parents and we return that. That's our moral obligation, really, to honor our parents in that way.
And that's going to look different in different scenarios.
Sometimes. Honoring parents, and you wish you could provide everything for them, but it's very expensive. But I think the point is, you do the best you can. And you try to honor your parents as long as possible, your grandparents, the people that gave you life, checking in, making phone calls, not just. Putting them in a facility and abandoning them, but really loving them through to the very end.
I think that's what honor looks like. And even if your parents weren't perfect, and none of them are. Right, you honor them for the best and for what they did that was good, and you also honor them by extending forgiveness where they failed. And I think that's what the gospel calls us to. And amen.
I hope you'll join us next time as we continue in Ephesians, and we're going to be talking about. Putting on the armor of God, and how we need to do that every day in these day-to-day battles that we have. That's why we prepared a resource for you that we know will be a great encouragement. You know, even in our homes and churches, unanswered prayer can turn into disappointment and breed cynicism. When your faith is stretched to the breaking point, how do you manage that anger and bitterness towards God?
Pastor Lutzer's brand new book, Why Doesn't God Answer My Prayers? encourages you to pursue your relationship with God, and there we find that the God who allowed the trial is the same God who delivers us through it.
Now this is the last week we're offering why doesn't God answer my prayers for a donation of any amount? To request your copy, simply go to livinghopeoffer.com or call us at 1-800-08-100. 215-5001. That's livinghopeoffer.com. one eight hundred two one five five zero zero one.
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