Fathers & their children, Eph, 6:1-4
Ephesians 6:1-4 · Vern Peterman · Aug 28, 2005
Ephesians & Colossians, No. 79
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262331481357

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Now, we've been covering for six weeks here what Scripture says about marriage. Scripture says other things as well, but we've covered as much as we can here. Nancy and I, I should just comment, do premarital and marriage counseling together, but there's a very good reason why I wouldn't recommend that every Christian counselor do that. Nancy just doesn't have enough time, okay?

So, anyway, what we are going to be doing is we're going to be covering today and next week today in this passage in Ephesians and then taking another purposeful detour 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 14 verses there so anyway this week and next week be looking at that so here in the Ephesians 6 passage just to kind of keep our perspective this started off when we were in Ephesians 5 18 where Paul said, and he used an imperative there, you must be filled with Christ by means of the Spirit, is the full sense of what he spelled out.

And then he said in verse 21, be subject, and it was from kind of rolling off of that statement, that he started off with, wives, be subject to your own husbands. And then he comes with what we're looking at today, children, obey your parents. Next, following, will be slaves, be obedient to your masters. So he's continuing on with this theme of being subject from verse 21 all the way into chapter 6, verse 9. To kind of pull it together, it looks like this. Be subject to one another in the fear of Christ, and these are the instances. And he spells out those three instances.

And what he does is he gives the instructions, wives be subject to your husbands, children to your parents, and slaves to masters. And then he gives also a complementary instruction to the husbands and to the parents and to the masters. So he isn't just saying be subject, he's also giving direction to those who are in a position of having those subject to them. So he spells that out. Hupotasso is the word he uses in the first case.

And he shifts to another word here for this instance of children obey your parents. And we'll take a closer look at that in a minute. One of the other things we pointed out previously is in each one of those instances, wives be subject to children obey your parents and the slaves.

It's as to the Lord, in the Lord, and as to Christ. So each one of those has a similar kind of instruction there. It's in relationship to the Lord. Wise, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. Children, obey your parents as you would the Lord. All right. Now, so as he gets into this passage here, he's got kind of the second area where he's given the instruction and what this being subject to means.

We're going to, as you might expect, divide it up a little bit for the sake of our handout. And for those of you who are just joining us here, we're going to have a number over in the corner like this, where it shows the page number on your handout, okay? The word that Paul uses for children here is techna.

And we want to pause here for a minute. We just wonder, are we getting too technical here? And are we getting so technical, maybe we ought to stop? I'm wondering. Even more technical than we did before with men and women. Now, I'm sure you understand that children can get pretty complicated inside, okay? but I'm sure they'd be totally tickled to tenaciously tackle and take on the term technotoday. True? Okay. So with that, we'll go ahead and take on the word. The Greek text actually has a definite article here.

So it has the idea, the children, that is, the children among you, the children that are in your flock. You that are the children, he's saying. He's speaking to those, obviously, who are old enough to understand. not speaking to those who wouldn't understand the instruction, but he's also speaking to those who are old, you know, who are not so old that they're out of the house. So there's a kind of an age group that he's looking at here. We, when we're going through Ephesians chapter four, use this chart to kind of lay out some of the ages. and essentially he's using tecna in this sense, kind of between the ages, you're not out of the house, but you're old enough to understand. So those are the ones that he's addressing. The word tecna by itself is kind of broad, and so this kind of zeroes it in for us.

And what does he say to the children? He says that they should, and the English translation is obey, the word that's translated obey has a little bit more behind it than that, and that is there is a listen under. Obey is not just go mechanically obeying, but you're to listen, one, and two, place yourself under your parents based on that listening. What do they say?

Listen. So it's something where you take it in, not just mechanically do it. Or have you ever heard of kind of vengeful obedience? regretting and chewing on your teeth the whole time? No. He's saying this is something that's a pattern of mind. Take it, listen, take it to heart, and then, while placing yourself under what they have said and their authority, carry it out.

It's a present active imperative. He's talking about right now continuing. Do it now, but continue to do this. It's a continual action addressed to the children. It's a logical conclusion. Now, so we need to get some illustration here, this logical imperative. What does he mean by a logical imperative?

We're going to do it with the tic-tac-toe challenge. I want you to take the tic-tac-toe challenge with me. Look at this. Study carefully. Here's the position. Your X and it is your turn. If you make the right move, you'll win the tournament. So I want you to consider this and choose your next move very carefully. Are you ready? Fully prepared? Here we go. What do you pick?

That's what a logical imperative is. It's your one logical conclusion. It's the sole logical conclusion. And so that's why he's laying out to the children, he's saying, look, obeying your parents is the sole logical conclusion. Anything else makes no sense at all. So that's what he's spelled out to them.

Alright. Obey your parents. Notice there's no distinction between mother and father here. Listen to them both. Be listening under to them both. Now, the other thing, of course, it extends to any that the father and the mother put in authority. It might include extended family who's watching over them, teachers, babysitters, coaches. We have various things like that where the parents place them under the authority of someone else. And it is the proper thing to do in those instances to be obeying the people that the parents have put in authority as well.

So children are to take that to heart. Now, here's the qualification, in the Lord. And this is similar to the phrases we saw before that have been used for submitting to one another, as to the Lord. In the Lord there is, of course, one's position in Christ. It also has to do with the relationship that that believing child has to the Lord as well. This believing child should listen under to their parents just as he would listen under the Lord.

He would listen to what does the Lord say and live that out, okay, in daily life. It isn't just outward listening. Okay, I'm obeying on the outside. You ever heard that? I'm obeying on the outside, but inside I don't agree. This is instead taking it to heart, taking it to heart, just as we would anything from the Lord.

He says, for this is right. Now, of course, you need to understand, he's not trying to give the kids a certain political orientation, okay? He is not trying to get them to tell the right hand from the left. This is right or rightness. It comes from the character of Christ. It comes from who Christ is. It's not just the right thing to do on the outside, okay? But it comes from the life of Christ, who is the righteous one. Christ the righteous.

As we studied Philippians a couple of years back, and can you imagine it was a couple of years back? It says, "...not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith." Now, we're going to step into the next couple of verses. Now we have an adventure here. Is Paul now laying down the law? As a matter of fact, is he just laying down one of 613. That's how many were in the Jewish law, right? 613 laws.

If you want to remember it easily, how many days in a year? 365. That's how many no's there were. Don't do this. Don't do that. Okay? That's how many things that they had that they were not supposed to do. Now, I put a little red rectangle there because you can't read all 613 laws, even though they're on the screen. Or at least if you do, let me know. That'd be real interesting.

But here was one of them, not even a worm found in a fruit. You can't even eat it, okay? If you find a worm in a fruit, and as we said before, not even a little baby worm, not even allowed to eat a baby worm, can't do that. Okay. Maybe, you know, maybe just the first 10, we'll let those pass and then the rest of them you chuck, right? Because you're not supposed to worry about worms. But let's take a look, is that what he is saying?

The Jews followed the Mosaic law and one of the points that Paul made in Ephesians 2.15 is that it had divided the Gentiles and the Jews. It was a dividing wall between them. And one of the things we discovered when we were looking at that in Ephesians 2 is that I, the believer, died to the law. I died in relationship to the law. Did the law die? No. But I died in relationship to the law.

Having been identified with Christ in His death, I died in relationship to the law, and I inserted an additional one not in your handout, Galatians 2.20 is another. The law was put out of commission with respect to the church.

That is what we discovered in studying through Ephesians 2.15.

This Greek word entole, commandments, is the same word in both Ephesians 2.15 and Ephesians 6.2. So here's Paul, he started off earlier in this letter spelling out that Those in the church have no relationship to that law. He actually put the law out of commission in order to form the church. It is the putting out of commission of the law that was the thing that allowed the church to come together because the law was an obstruction dividing Jew and Gentile.

It even said in Colossians 2.14 and Ephesians 2.15 uses the same word that the law was nailed to the cross and blotted out. So now, we get to this passage here. What's he doing? Has he put us under law? I would propose to you, no. So, the question is, what is he doing? I think one thing, have you ever talked to somebody and you say, well, we're not under law, and then people start to get confused? Ever had that happen to you?

And I think one of the things to look at, it does not mean that all of a sudden the whole Old Testament and the Gospels becomes irrelevant. Because there are some things that we need to gain from that perspective, and then one of those being God's character is always the same.

We see that message in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. God does not change. God isn't morphing into something else. God doesn't lie or change His mind. That is both an Old Testament and a New Testament message. God is always the creator of everything. God is the creator and everything else has a creation or creature relationship to Him. The Old Testament and the New Testament both testify to that. Once having fallen, all those in Adam have the same nature that gets spelled out in historical detail in the Old Testament and in detail as the character in the New. It's something that extends throughout the time since the Fall. Salvation for all those who are in Adam is always by faith in God's provision. Always. So it's consistent. So there are things that extend throughout Scripture that we can count upon.

The earth that we walk on here, although there are some beautiful scenes, today is a lovely day, There are beautiful scenes, and truth is, even the loveliest day, the most spectacular, breathtaking scenery, is still in a fallen world. There will be a time when those things are restored, but until then, everything on earth is under the curse.

One of the other things established before the Fall was marriage and children. God intended them from the very beginning. The very first chapter, He said He made them male and female, and said, Be fruitful and multiply. God designed for marriage and having children from the very beginning, and yet one of the things that we find and we see in this passage here is that there are truths that are revealed at a later time. We didn't know until what Paul revealed in chapter 5 there, that the relationship between husband and wife is to be as that between Christ and the Church.

So there are things that are spelled out as different, even so. One of the things you'll notice, Paul quoted the Old Testament commandment. He didn't quote the other part, and that is the law's penalty for failure to obey. You know what it was? Stone the child. It took agreement by both the mother and father to do so. Did Paul quote that? Recommend it? No. Okay? Not. Deuteronomy, they were all to recite, all of them together, cursed as he who dishonors his father and mother.

Galatians 3.10 and 2 Corinthians 3.7 and 9 spell out, the law is a curse and is called a ministry of death and condemnation. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. The other thing is that Paul isn't transferring the blessings of Israel to the church. He didn't say, so that you'll live long in the land of Israel. So he didn't spell that out here.

But honoring one's parents is an across-the-ages principle. It has a spiritual dimension. God is the one who says so and instituted it. And as a generalization, does have a positive feedback for all who will listen to it. And honoring your parents, by the way, is not just while you're under their roof.

There is also in scripture a sense, and I've added Acts 28.10, which gives some indication, a sense of also helping and assisting throughout the life of the parents. So it goes beyond just obeying while you're under the roof.

Paul spells out to Timothy as he's writing to this apostolic delegate who is in Ephesus, they must first learn to practice piety in regard to their own family and make some return for their parents, for that is acceptable in the sight of God. All right, now let's get into verse 4 here. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Now, this instruction is interesting. Previously we said, children obey your parents. Now he's specifically aiming in on the fathers.

And it's not that he's leaving the mother out of the picture. That's not his point here. The mother's part is certainly valuable and important, but the primary responsibility for spiritual leadership in the home is the father's to do. And it doesn't matter what your family tree looks like.

That's what scripture calls for, okay? One of the things that is really wonderful here is we've got a Sunday school available, and we don't insist that people take advantage of it, certainly. But it is available, and it's great, but that does not set aside the responsibility of parents and specifically, as scripture lays out, of the fathers for taking the spiritual leadership in the home. Just taking the kids to Sunday school is not sufficient. We want to offer a very good Sunday school program, but we don't want that to cause anyone to think that they've done their task, because ultimately scripture continues to lay it upon the fathers as being number one. in that area. They have the responsibility to take that on. Now, having said so, there are instances where the mother took it on inappropriately so.

One good example we have is Timothy. Timothy's father was a Greek, not a believer from any indication we have there. Timothy, however, had a Jewish grandmother and mother, and those two taught him the Old Testament scriptures from childhood. So by the time Paul came and was explaining how, see, here's the Old Testament Scriptures and they speak of Christ and now this Messiah that you've been waiting for has come, then Timothy could see it because he had been taught by his mother and his grandmother. Why? They had taken over in a place where the father was either not in the picture, or at the very least was certainly not in the picture spiritually. There's a word here, and I'm kind of jumping ahead, but for good reason. This word in the English is but, in the Greek it's allah.

We've seen it previously in chapters 4 and 5. And it's a sharp contrast. So the contrast here is provoke your children to anger is in sharp contrast with bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Notice that what he's doing is putting those poles apart. Don't do this. this provoking them to this anger, but in sharp contrast, do this, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. This is consistent with the pattern that he has laid out as he's begun to go into application in chapter 4, continued it in chapter 5, and is now doing it in chapter 6. because he's wanting to lay out, here's the negative thing, don't do that, but I don't want to just leave you with negatives, here's the positive statement, and you need to understand that they're poles apart.

Alright, he says, what to the fathers? Do not provoke your children to anger. Now, one thing to make clear, when the fathers read this, they were stunned. In the culture of the day, you did not consider whatever your kids felt or thought. Yeah, you didn't consider it.

It was legal in the Roman Empire for the fathers to determine that, you know, we want to get rid of this kid, or we want to get rid of that one, and they would sell them. In fact, you could only sell a slave once if it was a regular slave, but you could sell your kids up to three times. And fathers could sell their kids, fathers could have them killed, leave them out to be abandoned, and we would look at all those and just say, that's horrible.

And I'm sure a great many of them did as well. But to say, you know, anything like Paul just did would be stunning news to anybody reading this for the first time. Now, so the question is, when they read that, what did they think Paul meant? What did they think Paul had in mind?

Now, there are three ways, let's get three fingers up here, okay? I took math, really. There are three ways to provoke children to anger. You need to know those, right? So you can make sure you can get all three down right. No. The first is no boundaries, guidance, or direction. Do anything you want, just no supervision, no guidance, no direction. Just let them run amok, okay? That's one.

The other is to go to the other extreme and to set unattainable standards of accomplishment and behavior. Oh, you've got to do this, this, this, constantly driving and pushing to the extreme. The third way, vacillate between the two and let the kid be guessing constantly which one you're going to go with. Am I going to be completely free and with no consequences for what I do, or am I going to be pushed to the hilt all of a sudden without explanation or expectation?

Now, provoke to anger is actually one word in the Greek. It's kind of divided up for the sake of our English. the fathers about not bringing the children to the point of exasperation and resentment. It doesn't mean that there won't be some discipline or instruction that they won't like. They may not.

But, he's talking about a fixed state of, I give up! I can't do what you want. Or, how come you never tell me what you want? I have no idea whether I'm going to be left completely to my own devices or get extreme discipline and I never know when and which is going to come. Any one of those things will drive this exasperation and resentment. I give up, I can't do this, I can't figure it out.

So he isn't going to stop there, but what he's going to do is, instead of just the negative, he's going to give positive direction here. And Christian homes need it. As a matter of fact, our whole culture is in desperate need for some positive direction.

And so he's going to lay out something here. He says, bring them up, et trefo. This is interestingly, the second time it shows up in this book, and the only two times it shows up in the whole New Testament, et trefo, bring them up. is a present active imperative, you have to be consistently and continuing in right now bringing them up. So what does that imply?

A steadiness. Bring them up steadily in this way. So when he does this contrast, but bring them up, he's saying certainly there needs to be a steadiness and steadfastness and consistency in how they are brought up. So that eliminates the third of the three ways to exasperate the kids and bring them to a point of fixed resentment. Now, bring them up in what?

Discipline and instruction. The first one there is paedia, and that's the idea of education that isn't just intellectual up here, but it's training towards real and practical living. This is real life stuff. It's training towards action, not just to have it all hypothetically. Training in the direction of action. Real, practical, lived out. And the other half of that, instruction. Nuthesia, that's putting it in the mind. Placing it in the mind is the idea there. Verbal instruction, it's to guide and give direction so that there is a mental perspective.

So this isn't just, I don't care what he's thinking, he just needs to behave. And it isn't on the other end that just says, I just want him to think right and then it'll be okay. He says, both. It's possible for a child to have the whole structure in his mind, but have no idea how to put that into action. It's also possible for someone to know how to behave, but have no idea why. He says, do both. Do both. They need to have an understanding as to why this is to be and how it's to be, and they need also to put it into action. Both.

And notice this qualification, in the Lord. Now, let's make it clear. We're not saying that believing parents don't need to instruct their kids in other areas. You know that there are things you're going to have to instruct them in that don't necessarily have to do directly with their relationship with the Lord, but are part of the things they're going to have to do. You've got to tell them, don't stuff your face, okay? You've got to tell them that. And you've got to tell them, don't slurp the milk. and don't blow bubbles and things like that. You've got to do that, okay? For heaven's sakes, when you get a phone message, write it down, stuff like that, okay? And you can't be a lazy bum and just lay around constantly. That isn't going to work.

You've got to talk to your kids about who they're hanging out with, all right? And heaven's sakes, they need real direction on how to dress. You know that. Those are all fine things to talk about. And you know those teenage boys, they think they're indestructible. You've got to talk to them about that.

So you're going to go and do those things, all those things we talked about, but the truth is they need to go beyond that and have spiritual instruction, and it's up to the parents to provide that, and for the father to take the lead. See that? So certainly there's all those little fun things we joked about with the squirrels here. but there is spiritual instruction on top of that. And it gives it a support and a direction and a perspective that the children desperately need.

Now, so this of the Lord, in the Greek culture, what would they have done? They would have given them all sorts of training on speculative philosophy, human perspectives on the world and on life. That's what they would have done in the Greek culture. In the Jewish culture, they would have said, law, you've got to give them law. Lots of it. I've memorized all 613 of them.

Besides that, you don't want them eating baby worms anyway. What he's saying is just giving them a humanistic education isn't going to do it. Giving them training in the law isn't going to do it. You need instructions that are centered upon Christ. Christ. that look like an action and what is the understanding that they need to have. It needs to be Christ-centered, not human-centered, not law-centered, Christ-centered.

That's the picture that he's spelling out for them. I want to take a look at just a few other passages I think give us some interesting insights. Here's a passage from Proverbs 22 through 25 of chapter 23. And what's interesting is that the Greek Old Testament has several of the same words that Paul just used. So scripture is consistent in the kind of direction that parents need to be passing along to their kids.

What's interesting too, the get wisdom and understanding, those two words, those are the same two words in the Greek Old Testament that occur in Colossians 1.9 that Paul prays that the believers in Colossae will have. Here's one that we often quote here.

Second Peter 3.18, but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Is that not the same exhortation as discipline and instruction in the Lord?

That's the direction you're wanting the kids to grow. That's where you want them to head. The Greek word there is alzano. It's a present active imperative. You must, as a logical imperative, be right now continuing to grow. Are they growing right now? Notice it's not just are they getting taller that's almost without question, but it's how are they doing spiritually?

Looking at that angle Here's another one. We looked at in Colossians 1 28 and 29 Three times he says every and that one word translated man is Anthropos so it really refers to male and female every every every and Admonishing and teaching with all wisdom so that we present everyone complete. And the word there is teleos, meaning mature. Mature in Christ.

You don't want them just to grow up so they'll be six foot eight, okay? And you don't want them just to grow up and have a college degree or some diploma or get out of high school without getting in trouble. You want them to have spiritual maturity to the extent that they can by that time. You want them to be growing. I've got a question for you. Maybe you're in the boat like I am. Maybe you've raised your kids. Any regrets? The human anatomy doesn't work really good, but we like to kick ourselves in the rear sometimes, right?

The truth is, there's always God's grace. You look at it and say, boy, I sure wish I'd have done that different. In Christ, there's no condemnation. So, if you're looking for that, sorry, I can't help you. The other thing is the important perspective that God can always continue to work, even if you look back at the past and say, hey, that wasn't very good.

Paul wrote to Timothy, his first letter in the first chapter, 12 through 16, he says, Timothy, God put me into service and it's almost like Paul's saying, Timothy, I can't believe it. God is so merciful. He says, I was out there blaspheming, and he says, I persecuted the church in Acts 26, he said, to the death. And I committed hubris, which in the Greek mind was a horrible crime, the worst thing you could do. And he said, God had mercy on me and put me into service. Just the same. Well, you see, Paul had a lot he could sit there and kick himself over, couldn't he? Did he do that? No. He said, hey, what I know about is from this time forward, and there's a whole bunch that the Lord has in mind. And I think that's the perspective that we can have as well. You can always pray for them. Sometimes it may even be a place where apology is called for. I know I've apologized to Randy. Maybe not enough.

But to the extent that there's a listening ear, You can encourage in what is biblical, not only them, but others. In Titus 2, 1 through 5, you see that spelled out, especially for the older women, having a place of encouraging the younger women. And notice it didn't say the older women who have a fine history. Some of them maybe didn't, but they could still know what is biblical and learn what's biblical and encourage the younger ones in that. There's always a place to be used of the Lord. even if the past isn't all that pretty.

Next week we'll be taking a look at this First Thessalonians passage here, and it'll describe, interestingly, as Paul carried out his ministry with him, he says, he says, I was like a mother to you, like this, and I was like a father to you, like this. And so he describes what are the godly characteristics of a mother and father, and in the passage he also describes the desired spiritual response of the children. I think it's very insightful.

Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this, certainly there is much to be learned for each of us. And Lord, we desire that You would bring these things home practically in our minds and in our hearts, in our homes for those who are raising children. We also thank You, Lord, for Your marvelous grace and Your grace allowing us to continue to be used of You in those instances where we look back and we say, boy, I wish I'd done that differently. And how marvelous your grace is. Thank you that you've taken the condemnation on the cross. We thank you for your love for us forever. In Jesus' name, Amen.