So I want you to imagine the scene for just a moment.
You're at the Target checkout, arms full of groceries in the
long line, when all of a sudden your 3 year old spots the toy
aisle. They want a toy, You say no.
The drama begins. OK, all of a sudden you're
watching this Hollywood worthy performance unfold by the bluey
display, right? Full hysterics, tears, all of
that. And in that moment, every
parenting philosophy begins to whisper in your ear, one by one.
Anyone ever been there? Gentle parenting whispers?
Get down on their level and name the feeling, right?
Traditional parenting says absolutely not.
You said no mean it. TikTok says tantrums are just
nervous systems dysregulation. Time to see a professional or
try some tips and tricks, right? You've got your grandma's voice
in your ear that says that child needs a consequence.
The Utah mom on Instagram says this is a beautiful opportunity
for emotional coaching. Meanwhile, the guy who's just
walking by who doesn't have kids gives you a look that says
you're the worst parent in the world.
Anyone ever been there? Anyone relate?
OK, a few of us here today. Look, what started off as a
routine trip to the store is now a full on existential crisis for
parents, right? Are you being too soft, too
harsh, too controlling, too permissive?
Are you shaping their character or are you causing some material
for therapy later on? Right.
How do we give the correct, appropriate response to moments
like these with people under our care?
All you wanted was milk, and all of a sudden you're having this
moment right? And that's the tension, isn't
it? Whether you're parenting
children or leading people in general.
Maybe it's teaching students or managing your employees,
coaching A-Team, or caring for anyone under your influence
there. There are 1000 voices telling us
how to use authority, how to give correction, how to care and
set boundaries, and how to lead. It seems like everyone is an
expert. And so there's a tension that
naturally exists, right? So today we're in our Ephesians
series and we're continuing on. We've been looking at chapters 4
through 6 in Ephesians. And today we're going to be in
Ephesians chapter 6. If you'd like to turn there in
your in your Bibles, we have, we have always encouraged physical
Bibles and so, but it'll be on the screens as well.
So Ephesians chapter 6. We're going to start though, by
talking a little bit about what we talked about last week and
that was found with Ephesians 5. This is kind of a Part 2 to to
last week as well. But what we talked about was in
Ephesians 521 we see this sort of banner verse that acts as
instruction for all of us. In verse 521 where the apostle
Paul writes this to the church in Ephesus, he says submit to
one another out of reverence for Christ.
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
This is the umbrella instruction for everything that follows.
And So what we see is that Paul goes into a series of different
relationships in which we are called to submit to one another,
including wives and husbands, children and parents, and then
even slaves and masters. Last week we talked about wives
and husbands. If you want to go back.
And what he's doing is he is he's presenting household codes
for the Christian Church. Now, household codes were very
common during this day and age, but they were very harsh in the
fact that they were calling men to rule over their wives, to
rule over their children and their slaves.
At the time. It was very hierarchical in
nature, and it was very patriarchal society as well.
And So what Paul is doing is he's not sort of throwing the
household codes out, but rather he's working within them.
Why? It's because at this time there
was there was a lot of suspicion around these new religions and
cults that were popping up, especially if the Colts were
drawing women and slaves away from their roles.
So Paul's working within the established cultural framework
of his his time, but he's subverting it and he then is
submitting it to Christ. So in each of these instructions
to follow, he's connecting the household, the family codes to
his broader teaching of the spiritual family.
In chapters 4 and five, it's almost echoing the 2.
So chapter 6, verse one, Paul begins by addressing the
children. Chapter 6 Paul writes, Children,
obey your parents and the Lord for this is right.
Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment
with a promise so that it may go well with you and that you may
enjoy long life on the earth. So what Paul's going to do is
he's going to give a series of instructions followed by the
motivation instruction. Motivation.
So the instruction here is to obey, but the motivation is
because it's right and there's a promise.
So the question is, what is the promise?
If children obey and they honor, what is the promise that Paul's
referring to? So what he's doing here in
Ephesians one through 3 is he's he's sort of slamming together a
couple different Old Testament passages. 1 is found in the 10
commandments, which is found in Exodus chapter 20, verse 12.
Honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the
land the Lord your God is giving you.
So it's connected to the land. Then again, in Deuteronomy 12,
this is Moses addressing the Israelites before they cross
into that land, that promised land.
It says be careful to obey all these regulations I'm giving you
so that it may always go well with you and your children after
you. So the context here is that God
is creating a new people and he's giving them a new land by
which they can dwell and they can thrive and they can worship
underneath his rule and his presence.
And so the idea is in this new society he's creating, in this
new promised land, if the children will obey their parents
and they will give them honor, the culture, by and large, the
society will function much more optimally, right?
There will be longer life, there will be less conflict.
So this is a generally true statement about the Israelites
and the people group at the time.
Does that make sense? So Paul is bringing the new
humanity that God was creating through the Israelites, this new
people group, under a new rule, under new law, new culture.
He's bringing that idea into the new church.
Now under Christ, there's a new spiritual family being formed,
not just for the Jewish people, but for the Gentiles as well.
Does that make sense? We have that inheritance in that
promised land as well. So God is creating a new
humanity with the Israelites through the line of Abraham in
the promised land. In a similar way, God is
creating a new humanity for those in Christ, a new kind of
household with equal dignity, value, respect and care.
So whenever you get married, there's this passage in in
Genesis where it talks about leaving the father and mother
and cleaving to the wife. This is the idea of leaving and
cleaving. Basically, when you leave and
you get married, often times there's a new set of principles
and and, and codes that ought to rule your new household.
Does that make sense? You just have a different way of
doing things. This is kind of what's happening
here as well. And so when with God and the
Israelites, God's basically saying, hey, we're not doing it
like we used to do in Egypt. There's a new humanity, there's
a new way. And Paul in a similar, similar
way, is saying, hey, we're not doing it like they do in Rome.
There's a new humanity being formed.
Children obey. There is a new societal function
and ethic here. Verse 4, Paul says fathers, He's
now addressing the parents here. Fathers, do not exasperate your
children. Instead bring them up in the
training and instruction of the Lord.
Now that word exasperate is the word for provoking someone to
anger. So it's connected to being
angry, which again Paul addresses in earlier chapters.
This is the idea of of how as parents we are called to not
treat our children harshly, which couldn't cause embittering
or embitterment inside of them. This is a reminder for us
parents to not set unrealistic expectations upon our kids, to
not put undue pressure upon our children, and instead, rather
than exasperating, rather than pushing our kids so hard to even
to the point of anchor anger, What is Paul's new ethic here?
He says this. He says bring them up in the
training and instruction of the Lord.
I love this, this word. Bring them up in the Greek, it's
the word ectraifo, which literally means to nourish them
up into maturity. Is that a good vision for us
parents when it comes to our kids, to the idea of nourishing
our kids into maturity? We need to be careful with with
how we treat our kids and what we're impressing upon them.
Why? Because they are impressional,
impressionable by nature. Children are like a checkbook.
Not just because they drain our resources and our funds, right?
But you guys know how a checkbook works.
Some of you basically with a check you, you write on the top
layer, but then you flip it up and what's underneath, there's
an impression made on the second layer through the carbonless
paper, I think it's called. There's an impression of what
you wrote on the surface. So in other words, the harder
you impress something on a checkbook, the deeper the layers
go and you're able to see that imprint.
Same is true with children. The more you speak over them,
the more you impress something upon them, the deeper it will
go, for good or for bad. So for us parents, we need to be
mindful then of what we're impressing upon our children.
Being careful, pay careful attention to what is being
imprinted. Are we imprinting value and
worth and importance or are we frustrating them with undue
expectations? Paul encourages all parents to
bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
And so I think this is a healthy like encouragement for all of us
as parents. Like what are we training our
kids into? Have you ever thought about
that? Like what is my training
programme for my kids? There's all sorts of different
organisations that work with kids and they all have different
mission statements for for kids. For instance, Girl Scouts of
America, their mission statement is this Girl Scouting builds
girls of courage or builds builds girls of courage,
confidence and character who make the world a better place.
Not bad, pretty good mission statement, would you agree?
But the question for us is what is your mission?
What is your vision for your kids life?
Are you just training them up to be a good American citizen?
Are you just training them up to be a good employee someday and
have a job to be a quote nice person or training them up in
your family values? What is your what is your
vision? And now for many of your parents
today, you might just be thinking most days I'm just
trying to keep my kids alive. Thank you very much.
OK. And I continually remind my wife
like some days that's good enough.
Amen. Some days just keeping the kids
fed and and warm. You're good.
You know what I mean. But this is an invitation to ask
ourselves, what am I training them into?
In other words, what is the vision that I have for my kids
life? Because once you have a vision,
then you can create a strategy. Pastor John Tyson, he wrote the
intentional father, he puts it this way, if you don't impart
your values to your son, the culture will impart its values
to your son in their place. Whoa, is that freaking freak
anyone out a little bit? A little, yeah.
OK, I was trying to remember this.
And so actually yesterday I threw this in.
Yesterday, I was with my son David.
We were in the sunroom, He was hanging out on a chair and all
of a sudden this little bug started crawling towards him.
And he was a little bit freaked out.
He's like, dad, take care of the bug, take care of the bug.
And you know what I was doing? I was like, no, I'm going to
train you up to be, you know, a, a tough, courageous individual.
And I said, no, David, you take care of the bug.
He's like, no, I want you to do it.
I'm like, David, just flick the bug man.
You're, you're big, you're strong, you're courageous.
And I'm trying to like pump him up.
You know what I mean? Trying to train him up and say
like, no, it's like think of David and Goliath, like, you got
this right. And I even like came over to
him. I'm like, here, I'll help you do
it. I stood right by him.
I'm like, David, just flick the bug off of the chair.
You know, I was like kind of showing him how to do it.
He never ended up doing it. OK, he didn't have the courage,
but later on he did actually stomp on it.
So I, we call that a win. So way to go, David.
But the point is like, we have to, we have to train and impart
our values into our kid. Otherwise, someone else will.
So for me in that moment, it was like, I'm not going to take care
of this for you. I want you to experience the
fear and I want you to learn how to overcome that fear.
You know what I mean? We need to have a vision for
Christ, likeness for our kids and then create a strategy for
it. Again, Tyson, he has four
questions to ask yourself about your children.
And the four questions are these, number one, what do you
want your child to know about God, about himself or herself,
or about life #2 who do you want your child to be #3 what skills
do you want your child to have? And #4 what formational
experiences do you want them to have?
Just four simple questions to give you a vision to begin
forming a picture of who they might be in the Lord.
Each of us are called to help our kids get to Jesus and follow
Him. Matthew 1914 in this sort of
radical statement, which would have been kind of upside down in
the world at this time, Jesus said this.
Jesus said, let the little children come to me and do not
hinder them, for the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
Jesus said, let the children come to me.
They can follow me. Let them be close, let them see
me. And an age where children were
not highly valued as much as adults.
Jesus says let them come. Parents, we need to remember
that our children answer to God. They answer to Jesus.
And generally speaking, by obeying us as parents when our
commands are good and right and helpful, by obeying us, they are
doing what is right to the Lord. So we must help our children to
obey so that they can obey and learn to follow God's
commandments. Like all followers, like all
disciples, we are to teach them to obey Jesus's commands.
It's the Great Commission. Teach them to obey.
Have you ever heard of the phrase God has no grandchildren?
In other words, God only has children.
He doesn't have grandchildren. Your children, they, they have a
relationship with the Father. They can come to Jesus.
And our job is to help facilitate that, helping our
kids get to Jesus, knowing his commands.
Deuteronomy 6 talks about impressing these commands on our
children. Again, the checkbook to talk
about them when we get up, when we lie down to tie them on our
hands and bind them on our foreheads, to write them on our
doorposts. The Christian is to continually
be encouraging the children to follow and walk in the way of
Jesus, to obey. I was talking with my daughter
Jane, and I got, I got permission to share this story
from her. So I'm trying to get better
about that. She she, I talked to her.
I was like, hey, yeah, I'm preaching on obeying Jane and
how children should obey their parents.
And I was like, hey, Jane, should I talk about like how
sometimes it's a little bit hard for you to obey, you know, right
away? Should I mention that to him?
And she's like, no, don't tell him that, you know?
And then and then she's like, well, what about instead?
What if instead you told him about how, how I have been
obeying? And I'm like, duh, that's a
better idea. Thank you, Jane, right.
She's she like humbled me And and she told the story about
like, she's like, we remember that time where we, me and David
were riding our bikes and he we, we collided and he fell to the
ground. And remember how you told me
that when someone falls down, we help them back up?
I was like, oh, yeah, I did tell you that.
Like, that's right. I did.
And and then she reminded me. I was like, Jane, you're
absolutely right. The last two times, The last two
times where I saw David fall down in front of you, you went
over and you helped him back up. And I said, way to go, Jane.
That's amazing, right? And here I was thinking about
all the times where she wasn't obeying.
And I, like, missed over the fact that like, no, she's
getting it right. She's figuring it out, and as
parents, that's the beautiful and challenging job is to teach
and to train and to help our kids walk in the way of Jesus.
When people fall, we help them back up.
It's a good reminder that there is no junior Holy Spirit, right?
That our kids can be filled and living and walking in the Spirit
just as we can. There is no lesser disciple to
Jesus. Our kids are capable of walking
into the fullness of discipleship and following
Jesus. So as parents, we nourish our
children into maturity through godly instruction.
What a great vision to nourish our kids into maturity.
Now Paul then he he shifts gears so he talks about the the child
parent relationship, but then he continues on to the slave and
the master relationship. Here in verse 5 S Ephesians
chapter 6 verse 5, Paul writes Slaves, obey your earthly
masters with respect and fear and with sincerity of heart,
just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their
favour when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ doing
the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly as if you
were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that
the Lord will reward each one of you for whatever good they do,
whether they are slave or free. OK, so he's encouraging the
people who find themselves in the condition of slavery at this
time in Greco Roman era. He's encouraging them to work
with a different motivation and calling in mind to work as if
they're working for Christ himself.
So now we need to talk a little bit about slavery to provide
some some context. It's different from what we
envision when it comes to slavery when when we think about
slavery, we were taught about the transatlantic slave trade
that took place, which was essentially kidnapping and
enforcing people into slavery based on race.
Now, it's important to distinguish what this was back
in their time versus what we have in our mind.
Slavery at this time was much more akin to what we would call
indentured servitude. This was about 1/3 of the
population that made-up of slaves.
So this is a huge group of people that we're talking about.
People would fall into slavery for a variety of different
causes. Some would be born into it,
Sometimes parents would sell or abandoned their kids into
slavery at this time. Which is of course of all is
awful. Often times slaves would be
captives of war or if someone was had the inability to pay
their own debts, they would sell themselves into slavery.
There wasn't such a thing as bankruptcy like we have today.
So you would sell yourself into slavery to pay your debts.
Some people would voluntarily become an indentured servant or
a slave in order to better their own condition.
And of course slaves had the ability to buy their way out.
As a matter of fact, Paul in the New Testament encourages this
when possible. He says if you can get your
freedom, be free. Now, of course there was still
cruelty. There was still harsh masters
during slavery at this time. But in in other cases, the
slaves were considered to be a part of the family.
Again, this was not based on race like we are familiar with
now. None of this makes it makes it
right, but it's important to distinguish the cultural era at
this time. It was commonplace.
It was very, very common at the time.
Klein Snodgrass, he's a, he's a theologian.
He writes it this way. In the Greco Roman world,
slavery was so much a part of life that hardly anyone had
thought about whether it might be illegitimate.
It was considered an economic and practical necessity and
assumed part of life as much as birds and trees.
In other words, people weren't like thinking about like, is
this morally right or wrong at the time by and large.
So it begs the question for us then, what kinds of evils do we
just accept as practical necessities in our day and age,
right? Amazon one day delivery, Walmart
one day later, right? Like I know y'all aren't
choosing the like carbon friendly option when it comes to
that. OK.
Like, but whether it's fast fashion or whether it's cheap
labour or whatever it is, right? We have to kind of this, this
begs the question, like what are the things that we just kind of
accept as normal? That may not be OK, but one
thing we need to understand about slavery is that the New
Testament never endorses slavery.
I need to be clear on that. But then the criticism often
times as well. Why doesn't it directly condemn
it then? Or why doesn't it just outright
say this should not take place? I want to introduce to you this
idea called the redemptive movement hermeneutic.
The word hermeneutic is just basically the approach to how we
study Scripture. So this is a hermeneutic and an
approach to interpreting Scripture called the redemptive
movement hermeneutic. And it's the ideas of this that
Christ is continually moving his people from the ravages of the
fall, meaning the curse and the fall of man and sin in this
world. He's moving them from the fall
to life in his Kingdom. But this process is progressive
and not instant. In other words, it's progressive
not because God is changing his mind on the matter, but because
we can't receive either individuals individually or
culturally all of the redemption that God has for us all at once.
So Doctor William Webb in his important book called Slaves,
Women and Homosexuals, he terms this this phrase I redemptive
movement hermeneutic, and he explains it by the XYZ
principle. So let me walk through this
really quick 'cause it's a little bit thick.
So when it comes to the XYZ principle, X is the cultural or
original cultural context of the day and age in which it was
being written. So in this case with slavery,
slavery had many, many abuses that were taking place during
the time of Paul. So why then is the words of
Scripture? So the words of Scripture, as we
see in the Bible is slavery still exists here.
However, it has better conditions in fewer abuses.
Paul is saying you need to have dignity and there needs to be
mutual respect and mutual submission in our culture.
Then the next phrase over in our culture, this is the place where
we're in this process. Now, when it comes to this
movement, what we see is that legal slavery has been
eliminated. We're still continuing, of
course, to work towards equality and civil rights and true
reconciliation. Now, slavery obviously still
exists in the world. It's, it's, it's a huge problem
when it comes to sexual trafficking and things like
that. But legal slavery, at least in
our culture, has been eliminated.
And then Z, this is the, the sort of the ultimate ethic.
So this is where we are being led to by Christ.
This is the, the end picture where everything is redeemed and
made right again. So the ultimate ethic when it
comes to slavery then is that there's harmony, there's
equality and respect. So in other words, this
hermeneutic is saying there's been a trajectory that God is
leading people on that is all leading to perfect harmony,
perfect unity, perfect equality and dignity, right?
He's moving people in their actual cultural context, in
their actual where there really are towards the perfect picture.
All of this, in other words, is pointing to the new humanity
being fulfilled in Christ. So to summarize Paul's intention
here in Ephesians, Paul's intention wasn't to lead the
anti slavery revolt which surely would have killed the Christian
movement under the boot of Rome. That wasn't his intention.
Rather, the letter to the Ephesians is reminding every
Christian of the immensity of the riches and freedom they've
already attained through Jesus's victory on the cross.
He's calling them to live into this reality in their everyday
actual relationships. So by calling them to the
highest virtue in Christ, he's undermining the hierarchical
status quo of ruling men and masters.
He's undermining it by calling the focus up to Jesus.
What Paul is doing is he's planting the seeds of life and
freedom in the heart of every believer, and that would
eventually grow and multiply and transform their cultural
surroundings. In other words, it's an inside
out revolution taking place in the Kingdom.
FF Bruce puts it this way. What Paul's letters do is bring
us into an atmosphere in which the institution of slavery could
only wilt and die. What is that atmosphere?
It's the atmosphere of the Kingdom of God that the beauty
of the way of Jesus becomes so much more compelling than the
allure of wealth and power and control and greed.
It's an inside out thing. The Kingdom is like a seed
that's planted and eventually it grows and it has many branches.
Everything is moving to that beautiful picture, that new
humanity, that perfect picture at the end of the age.
So as a church then as a church, we we recognize we're not going
to be able to address every single social injustice that's
out there in the world. Does that make sense?
We don't have the resources, the time and the energy to do that.
We will focus on some the ones we feel called to.
So rather our approach, our mission instead is to make the
kinds of disciples that will instinctively live out the heart
of Christ against any social injustice in any context that we
find ourselves in, right? Because we believe the potential
of that is enormous. Like what if instead of just
like tackling 1 little thing at a time, what if we could create
the type of people that multiply, the type of people
that go into every corner of the globe and fight injustice with
their time, their effort, their resources.
That's a powerful thing. So that's why we say at Presence
Church, we want to witness a spirit LED disciple making
movement in our churches and communities.
It's what we're about, making disciples, planting the seeds of
freedom in people. The seed of freedom is seen
germinating, and we saw it germinate in the early church,
even as early as 380 AD. Saint Gregory of Nicaea.
He laid out a four fold argument against slavery in his homily
with Ecclesiastes Early at the early abolitionist movement in
the United States was led primarily by Christians and
Christian values, people like William Wilberforce, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Sojourner Truth, and more.
They believed in these transcendent truths about human
dignity, justice, and love. And where did they get it from
Scripture. They got it from God.
So we need to remember that when it comes to the issue of
slavery, that because God planted dignity and worth in
every individual, slavery couldn't survive.
And what if Paul is doing here when he's talking and addressing
the slaves here who find themselves in this cultural
circumstance, in this difficult, difficult environment where
they're stuck? Is he saying when you're slaves
to the one true master, when you truly submit yourself as if
you're submitting to Christ himself, nobody can truly rule
over you because Jesus rules over you.
He is your true master. This is a protest against the
evil powers of ruling. And he doesn't stop with the
slaves. He starts talking to the masters
here in verse 9. Verse 9 masters, treat your
slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them since you
know that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven
and there is no favoritism with him.
So just picture how radical this would have been at a time Paul
treats the masters, he looks at the Christian masters and he
says treat your slaves in the same way.
He provides this equalizing statement and he's levelling the
playing field between masters and slaves here.
This statement alone should have abolished all Christian slavery
back in the day. If this verse was followed, it
should have eliminated it all together.
Now we know that Christian slave owners in America used passages
like these incorrectly. They use them as as means of
control and they misused and abused these passages.
It's because they weren't actually reading the text.
In the heart of Jesus it says in the same way, treat these
slaves. How we treat the people beneath
us says everything about our character.
Would you agree? How we treat the people that we
deem as being beneath us reveals who we really are.
Ever been on that? That like half hour 45 minute
phone call with the customer service representative?
You know what I'm saying? And like 1 hold leads to the
next hold and you've asked for a manager and it's just not
happening. Anyone ever been there before,
right? Anyone else like start to just
get this like boiling anger to begin to form right?
Where you're just like, just solve my problem, right?
How we treat even those people in those moments says a lot
about who we are. So Paul here is saying masters
in the same way, treat them as if you're treating Jesus
himself. Why?
There's the instruction, but what's the motivation?
He says do not threaten them since you know that he who is
both their master and yours, he's talking about Jesus.
He who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and there is
no favoritism with him. So when Paul's saying, hey, he's
basically looking at these masters and he's saying, hey,
just a reminder, just a reminder, they're actually
serving Jesus, who's your master as well.
In other words, both master and slave will stand side by side in
front of God as equals. And Paul's looking at the
masters and he's saying, hey, you should probably remember
that when it comes to treating your slave, one day you're going
to be standing in front of the true master, King Jesus, and
you're going to have to answer for how you treated your slaves.
This is the This is what Paul is communicating here.
There is no favoritism with God. Acts 10 God does not show
favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears
Him and does what is right. God does not show some favor
over others based on station in life, based on nationality,
based on material possessions, based on skin color or tradition
or creed. He judges the inner and outer
character and condition of the heart.
Our God accepts foreigners as well as natives, children as
well as parents, slaves as well as masters, rich as well as
poor, men, women, Jews, Gentiles, and so on and so
forth. In other words, every dividing
wall of hostility is torn down when it comes to Jesus Christ.
Every dividing wall is broken. And if the slave and the master
could live into this type of mutual submission for one
another, their lives would be a protest and a witness to the
higher calling in front of them if they could live it out.
So Paul addresses the children obey parents nourish slaves work
as if you're working for God. Masters treat with equity in the
same way treat with fairness. Do not threaten Paul is
equalising the playing field in front of Jesus.
And so for us here today, when it comes to these, these
authoritative or these subordinate roles that are here
in, in in Ephesians chapter 6, when it comes to us, we need to
remember that whether it's with a spouse or with a child or with
a servant, the biblical call is to treat everyone with value,
dignity, and equality, nourishing, speaking in love,
submitting and loving like Jesus loved.
So for the parents here today, we need to nourish our kids into
maturity through godly instruction and training.
What does that actually look like?
Well, I'm here today to tell you the exact right parenting
techniques so that you'll have it all figured out by the time
you leave here. Just kidding.
OK, I have not figured this out, but there are a few things I
think we can all agree on as Christians.
Number one as as as parents to nourish our children, we need to
always be creating a context of grace, of love and support and
respect and encouragement for our kids.
We need to always be speaking the truth and love to them.
We need to attend to their material and their emotional
needs. We need to always be teaching
and enlightening, warning, holding accountable and
disciplining our kids as a part of a life lived to Jesus.
Let the little children come to Jesus.
We need to be able to give them a theology of who Jesus is.
It's good to give our children experiences, especially in work
and in caring for others. If someone falls down, we pick
them up. This means refusing to put down
our kids, to demean our kids, or to damage our kids.
Shrill or angry speech does not belong in the mouth of a
Christian parent. It's convicting for me.
We need to reject any jealousy and contempt when it comes to
our kids. We need to be able to grant
freedom to our kids within legitimate boundaries,
experiencing and allowing them to, allowing them to encounter
an appropriate amount of risk. We need to avoid any unhealthy
pressure or expectations that we place on our kid.
And finally, we need to refuse to live through our children
vicariously. For many of us, the temptation
is to have an over focus on our kids as well.
We need to be on guard against that.
Our kids can become an idol in our lives, a good thing that
becomes an ultimate thing. We can even put our kids above
Christ through overindulgence or over leniency, Right?
And please hear me, Parenting is one of the most important and
most difficult jobs in the world.
Children are enormously valuable and important, but they're not
the ultimate end goal in life, OK?
So we don't want to put them on a pedestal that they can't even
support. We don't want to idolize them
and over focus them either. So for parents, we need to
remember that as we're disciplining our kids, we first
need to discipline ourselves first.
Rather be disciplined ourselves. We need to have an appropriate
and healthy mentality. We need to focus on our own
mental health at times and focus on our own emotional
intelligence. Here's a reality that is that
all of us should remember with the sober mind.
If we as parents don't transform the pain that we experienced in
our upbringing, we will end up imparting that pain onto our
kids. We need to be willing to go to
therapy. We need to be willing to take
breaks, to practice breathing exercises, to check our
emotions, to practice pausing or whatever it is.
We need to have structured and consistent age appropriate
discipline in agreement with our spouse the other day, just this
week, a lot of illustrations. There's just this week, just
this week alone right there. One of my kids, I won't say who
one of my kids was just delirious after a really long
day. You ever had that where like
there's no reasoning. They're not listening to the
instruction. No part of their brain is
function functioning logically ever.
You know what I'm talking about parents.
I don't see any head nods. OK, a couple of you, I heard a
yes. No, part of them is, is like,
it's just time for bed. You know what I'm saying?
Like just get them into the bed. And man, I was getting so
frustrated, to be honest with you.
That's a confession. I was getting frustrated.
And the kid was, it was in a room.
They weren't supposed to be. They were doing something they
they weren't supposed to do. And I just went into the
bathroom and by God's grace, by God's grace, this thought came
to my mind. And it was a simple thought, but
it was profound. And the thought was this, choose
how you're going to respond now rather than just reacting.
You're like, duh, that's self expected.
But for me, it was like a moment, right?
And I was like, OK, I have to choose now how I'm going to
respond and how I'm going to handle this situation before I
even get into the room to address it.
And sure enough, I said, OK, this is what I'm going to do.
I walked into the room. Their response was not great,
but I already had a plan. I carried out the plan.
I got him into bed. They fell asleep extremely
quickly. And you know what?
It was one of those rare times where I'm like, I did it.
I'm an awesome dad, you know? But it's a reminder that as
parents, we need to be disciplined ourselves first as
we're disciplining our kids. I'm the first to say I have not
figured this out, but by God's grace, in that moment He gave me
that simple instruction. Choose how you're going to
respond now. Don't just react for employers.
As we're wrapping up for employers and those who hold
power over others, remember the simple line that we are to treat
the people under us in the same way out of reverence to Christ
serving them wholeheartedly. We do not Lord our power over
others like the Gentiles do, but rather we enable their
well-being through fairness, service, and treating them like
Jesus would. And so for those of you here
today who you feel like the slave, maybe you're stuck and
you're in a dead end job or you're stuck in some kind of
position. Maybe your circumstances have
led you to be in a low position or you just feel trapped in your
circumstances. I just want to encourage you
with Colossians 323, Paul writes.
Whatever you do, in other words, wherever you're at, work at it
with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for human
masters. The instruction is followed by
the motivation, and the motivation is this, that all of
our work can be done for the glory of God, our one true
master. During Paul's time the slaves
could not have a invest in a in a 401K.
The slaves couldn't buy stocks to better their status.
They couldn't build wealth through real estate.
They couldn't have value or build equity in this life.
And yet what Paul is saying is that through Christ they could
still gain reward in the next life.
That even the slaves who quote UN quote wasted all of their
able bodied years for an earthly master can still hear the words
well done by the one true Master of the universe.
What a promise afforded to even those who are in the lowest
position that their life can still matter in God's new
humanity. Anyone stuck in their
circumstances can still contribute to the Kingdom.
Even in the worst of circumstances, you can still be
building the Kingdom. You can invest in the Kingdom.
You can reap eternal awards because here's the truth, I want
us all to walk away with in the Kingdom.
Even those who are lowest on earth can live a life of highest
significance. So if you're here today and
you're feeling low, you're here today and you say I don't have
much to my name. I don't have accolade or
position or notoriety or whatever.
Even you, if you live your life for Christ, can live a life of
highest significance. In Paul's day, it was the women
and the children and the slaves who were seen as insignificant.
In our day, it's the poor, the impaired, the marginalized, the
immigrant, the widow, the unintelligent, whoever.
And to those people, Ephesians 6 says, serve wholeheartedly as if
you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know this
one thing. Here it is.
The Lord will reward each one of you for whatever good you do.
You can pour your entire life out sweating and toiling for
evil kings and dictators and employers or masters, gaining
nothing for yourself in this life.
And yet if you do it for the Lord, all of it still counts.
All of the effort still counts. It all matters because you're
investing in the next life. You're investing in the Kingdom
for eternity. All of our work can be done into
the Lord. So you're here today and you're
hurting and you're stuck and you're lowly.
Maybe it's painful to be in the position you're in right now.
I just want to remind you of one simple thing, and it's this.
God never wastes a hurt. He never wastes a hurt.
No life is insignificant and no one is above the other.
Everyone can live a life of eternal value.
Everyone can honor God no matter the circumstance.
And so we look forward to this day.
We look forward to the new humanity that God is building,
the promised land that is going to be offered to us at the end
of the age where all people are together.
Slave masters, rich, poor, child and parent are together under
the one true Master, the ruler who will lead and direct us in
perfect unity and harmony and peace.
But here today, the Christian households and the Christian
relationships can embody this future now.
We can signal a better way and a future hope that we have in
Jesus. That's the hope and that's the
prayer for our church, that in our relationships, as we submit
to one another gladly, freely, as we work hard to the Lord, as
we raise up our children, we're showing the world around us a
beautiful future that God has for everyone who's in Christ.