SPEAKER_01: Colossians chapter 3 is our text this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Uh as you're turning there, let me just remind you there's no evening worship service tonight.
SPEAKER_01: Our evening worship service has gone into summer hibernation.
SPEAKER_01: We'll be resurrected in a couple months.
SPEAKER_01: But we are together this morning, and we are looking at the Word of God, finishing Colossians chapter 3 in our study of this book.
SPEAKER_01: So let me begin by reading from the book of Colossians, beginning in chapter verse, excuse me, chapter 3 and verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: Colossians chapter 3, verse 18, down to chapter 4 and verse 1 is our text for this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Follow with me as I read from the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.
SPEAKER_01: Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: Bond servants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you do, work heartily is for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.
SPEAKER_01: You are serving the Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_01: For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.
SPEAKER_01: Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I expect that a number of you have seen the recent Pew Research survey that's been doing the rounds in the media the last couple days, of a poll in which Pew Research Center discovered that fewer than four and ten Americans regard marriage and child rearing as a social good.
SPEAKER_01: That's not just Gen Z, that's Americans broadly, in all generations, fewer than four and ten regard marriage and child rearing as a positive social good.
SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of ways you could read a statistic like that, but I think a charitable reading would be the reality that many people have grown up in broken homes and have experienced such deep pain and suffering because of the sin that was characteristic of their upbringing that it's only natural that people would come in their adult life to have such an opinion of marriage and child rearing.
SPEAKER_01: But we live in a society that is characterized by some pretty big social problems.
SPEAKER_01: Drug addiction is higher than it's ever been.
SPEAKER_01: Children are growing up in a society where they are far more anxious, lonely, depressed than they have ever been in recorded American history.
SPEAKER_01: And I could just go on and on and on down the list of social ills.
SPEAKER_01: I don't need to tell you about them.
SPEAKER_01: You're very aware of them.
SPEAKER_01: You live in the world that I do.
SPEAKER_01: In such a world, elimination of the family is not going to be helpful.
SPEAKER_01: What would be helpful would be the recovery of a biblical, healthy, vibrant, flourishing family.
SPEAKER_01: A marriage wherein husband and wife discover love, intimacy, stability, and meaning and purpose for their lives.
SPEAKER_01: That environment where children are reared with stability and love, care, structure, are trained to love righteousness and live for things that matter.
SPEAKER_01: That kind of family is the vision that we are given in a passage like Colossians chapter 3, verse 18 and following.
SPEAKER_01: As we have been studying the book of Colossians, we saw at the very beginning that Paul's desire in this letter is to help us understand what it means to be united to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He says that that is the fundamental understanding of what it means to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to be a Christian?
SPEAKER_01: It means you are united to the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: You are in an indissolvable, eternal, mystical, real, ontological union with God the Son.
SPEAKER_01: So that you've died with him.
SPEAKER_01: In his death, all your sins were forgiven.
SPEAKER_01: All of the wrath due for you for your sin was satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: In his resurrection, you were raised with him, so that you share spiritual life.
SPEAKER_01: You've been wrapped up in the divine triune life of God, and you will be a partaker in the everlasting kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_01: You're so united to Christ that when the Father looks at you, he sees the Son, so that all the love of the Father is flowing towards you.
SPEAKER_01: All the inheritance that belongs to the Son of God now belongs to you.
SPEAKER_01: You are in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And that spiritual reality then shapes all of your life in this fleeting life that you're living in the fallen world.
SPEAKER_01: You're to put off all that is sinful, all attitudes, habits, and characteristic desires, and put on new attitudes and desires in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You're to put off the old, to put on the new, and what we're looking at in the passage we're studying this morning is that when you put on Christ, Jesus even comes home with you.
SPEAKER_01: The new attitudes that belong to you in your union with Christ, the new habits, the new desires, the new way of being that is yours in Christ comes into the most intimate relationships of your life, namely your home life.
SPEAKER_01: This morning what we're seeing is what happens when Jesus comes home.
SPEAKER_01: That's what happens to every person who's united to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You'll notice that in the passage I just read, there are six simple commands that come into three pairs: husbands and wives, parents and children, slaves and masters.
SPEAKER_01: This is the household of the ancient world.
SPEAKER_01: You'll notice that the commands in this text are very straightforward.
SPEAKER_01: As you study through Colossians, you discover some pretty profound theological truths.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes, as I was studying the Greek text, I encounter some difficult grammatical constructions or some very rare words, and you have to look up and understand the nuances of the words.
SPEAKER_01: But when you read this passage, you discover this is probably the simplest language in the whole book.
SPEAKER_01: Just six straightforward commands.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is not hiding the ball here.
SPEAKER_01: What he requires of us, what God desires for us in our intimate home relationships is very straightforward.
SPEAKER_01: But though this is probably the simplest grammar in the book, they're probably the hardest commands to obey, aren't they?
SPEAKER_01: Very simple, straightforward, but very difficult.
SPEAKER_01: Because much of our natural desires and inclinations goes against what we're commanded to do in these relationships.
SPEAKER_01: So what is the power that is going to enable you to fulfill God's design for your intimate home relationships?
SPEAKER_01: Well, you see it again and again in all of these commands.
SPEAKER_01: There are six commands, and seven times those commands are linked to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: All of the commands in this text are linked to your union with the Lord, in the Lord, in the Lord, pleasing to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord, who you are in union with, is now the one who is directing, guiding, and empowering you to live a life that is fully pleasing to him even at home.
SPEAKER_01: So let's walk through the text this morning, trusting that the Lord is wise and good, and the Lord is gracious and powerful, who is with you at home and will enable you to live out your home life in a way that's pleasing to him.
SPEAKER_01: The first relationship that you see in this text is the marriage relationship.
SPEAKER_01: Marriage in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Look down at verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
SPEAKER_01: Children obey, excuse me, let's just stop right at the end of verse 19.
SPEAKER_01: Very simple and straightforward: wives submitting to their husbands, husbands loving their wives in an ordered and structured relationship of unity and harmony.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, much of our society is characterized by critique of this view of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: And I think some of you have even felt this in your own life.
SPEAKER_01: Surely, many of us have felt an implicit understanding that the biblical view of a husband's authority in marriage is inevitably going to create chauvinistic, insensitive men who will silence and abuse their wives.
SPEAKER_01: Have you felt that in your heart as you came to this text?
SPEAKER_01: You have at least heard this in society.
SPEAKER_01: It's interesting to note that sociological data, as it's coming more and more to the surface, just tells a very different story.
SPEAKER_01: Nancy Pearcy, a friend of many of you, who is a professor at Houston Christian University, has written a recent book titled The Toxic War on Masculinity, in which she surveys modern university sociological research on the relationships of husbands and wives and parents and children, and she discovered that what modern sociological data tells, the story it tells, is very different from the one the world would tell us.
SPEAKER_01: What she writes is that conservative evangelical men who attend church regularly are the least likely of any group in America to commit domestic violence, unquote.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you have grown up in an environment in which you have lived your life in a healthy biblical church, you probably would say, that kind of actually fits my experience.
SPEAKER_01: The people that I live with, the people that I live my spiritual life with, are generally characterized by healthy, vibrant, loving, forgiving Christian marriages.
SPEAKER_01: But there is a caricature in the world of a Christian man who says, I'm the head of this house and acts as a tyrannical demon.
SPEAKER_01: And the data actually says there is a kind of man who does that.
SPEAKER_01: It is not the man who goes to church.
SPEAKER_01: It is the man who marks on a survey that he is a Christian but is not part of the church.
SPEAKER_01: That man is just aware enough of the Bible to know that the Bible says I'm the head of the home, but is not participant in the life of the church, and twists the scriptures in order to abuse and neglect those around him.
SPEAKER_01: That person is no Christian at all.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord is an avenger of those who abuse and twist the scriptures for their own sinful purposes.
SPEAKER_01: But what the data demonstrate is that men who are engaged in church, those who are actually going to church, members of the church, are the least likely to be unfaithful, the least likely to divorce, the most emotionally engaged with their wives and children.
SPEAKER_01: Sociologist Brad Wilcox of the University of Virginia writes, quote, the happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives who hold traditional gender values, unquote.
SPEAKER_01: This data demonstrates a very simple fact.
SPEAKER_01: When you live in God's world in God's way, life generally goes better for you.
SPEAKER_01: The pattern that God has given us for marriage is not one that is one characteristic by neglect and abuse.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, it's one that's characterized by love, intimacy, and cherishing one another.
SPEAKER_01: So what is the pattern for marriage in this text?
SPEAKER_01: Let's look at it together.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 18.
SPEAKER_01: First, Paul addresses wives.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 18, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Wives, notice, not women.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a verse about women and men generally in society.
SPEAKER_01: This is a relationship between a husband and a wife.
SPEAKER_01: Women are not subservient to men, women are not to submit to men generally in society.
SPEAKER_01: A wife is to submit to her husband, a unique union between a husband and wife in which she renders her service to him as a joyful gift.
SPEAKER_01: And notice that the qualification here is as is fitting in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And there's two sides to that.
SPEAKER_01: Fitting in the Lord, that is, the motivation, why you would do this.
SPEAKER_01: Why would you render your strength, the creativity, and intelligence as a service to the Lord to your husband in willing submission is motivated by your desire to please the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: What you see in Scripture is that the Lord commands you to do this, and so out of service to the Lord, you put yourself at the disposal of your husband to love and to serve him.
SPEAKER_01: But it's also regulated by the commands of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And so the submission that a wife renders to her husband is not unlimited.
SPEAKER_01: If a husband asks of his wife anything that would be displeasing to the Lord, then she doesn't have an obligation to obey that.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, she would have an obligation not to obey that because her ultimate allegiance is to the Lord Jesus Christ and to be pleasing to him.
SPEAKER_01: Now there's a couple other things that I think are helpful to note here.
SPEAKER_01: One is this word submission, notice, wives, submit to your husband.
SPEAKER_01: That's an active verb.
SPEAKER_01: This is not a passive servile laying back.
SPEAKER_01: This is an active engagement.
SPEAKER_01: If you'll notice 1 Corinthians chapter 16, if we do the back screens work?
SPEAKER_01: Are we able to see those?
SPEAKER_01: In 1 Corinthians and chapter 16, I'm gonna have to turn around here.
SPEAKER_01: Humor me.
SPEAKER_01: Paul writes, Now I urge you, brothers, you know that the household of Stephanus were the first converts in Achaea, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints.
SPEAKER_01: Be subject to such as these and to every fellow worker and laborer.
SPEAKER_01: Notice that word that I underlined in verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: They've devoted themselves.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same root of the word that's translated submission.
SPEAKER_01: That is, the leaders in the church in Corinth are devoting themselves to leadership, to service and love towards the rest of the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul says in verse 16, what the rest of the body does in response to this leadership is to be subject to them.
SPEAKER_01: That is, to place themselves at their disposal.
SPEAKER_01: The same word that's uh rendered here, be subject, is the word in Colossians 3.18, for a wife submitting to her husband.
SPEAKER_01: There's a parallel kind of idea and dynamic going on here between the leadership and the church and the rest of the body, as between a husband and a wife.
SPEAKER_01: The leaders in the church are devoting themselves to loving service, and the body is devoting itself to submission to the leadership.
SPEAKER_01: One translation of this text is not submit yourselves to the leaders, but to place yourselves at their service.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's an appropriate understanding of the nature of submission.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a passiveness, but it's an act of taking your intelligence, your strength, and your creativity and placing it at the service of the leader in a un excuse me, in a union of relationship, an ordered, united relationship.
SPEAKER_01: Let me go further and offer another parallel passage where the word for submission is used.
SPEAKER_01: You know, as you read through the New Testament, the first place the verb submit is used is of the life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter 2 and 51, in the story of the childhood of Jesus, we read that Jesus went down with his parents and came to Nazareth, and he was submissive to them.
SPEAKER_01: Now, does that mean that Jesus was servile and some kind of passive being trampled upon, subservient being?
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, of course not.
SPEAKER_01: This verse, in fact, occurs in the passage in which Jesus ends up in the temple, as his parents have traveled to Jerusalem, he's separated from them, ends up in the temple, and is questioning the religious leaders there.
SPEAKER_01: And Mary and Joseph can't find him, they go back, find him in the temple, and they ask him, What are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: And he responds, Don't you remember that I have to be about my father's business?
SPEAKER_01: And they ask him to come home with them, and he submits himself to his parents and goes home with them.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in this instance, as Jesus is submitting himself to his parents, what is he doing?
SPEAKER_01: Is he being servile?
SPEAKER_01: Is he being trampled upon?
SPEAKER_01: Is his dignity in question?
SPEAKER_01: Is he in some way any less glorious than who he is in his essential being?
SPEAKER_01: No, what he's doing is he's offering a gift of love to his parents.
SPEAKER_01: He's placing himself at their servants.
SPEAKER_01: All of his intelligence that he has just demonstrated by bamboozling the religious leaders is at the service of his parents and willing submission that creates an ordered union in their relationship.
SPEAKER_01: The reason I draw your attention to this model in Jesus is that what the Scripture is calling for wives to do when it calls them to submit to their husbands is not to be subservient, but to offer a gift of love to their husband.
SPEAKER_01: A gift of love that a wife doesn't offer to any other person in the world.
SPEAKER_01: They don't submit to any other person the way that they submit to their husband.
SPEAKER_01: In submitting to their husbands, they are taking all of their strength and intelligence and creativity and putting it at the service of their husband, to be devoted to him.
SPEAKER_01: And how is the husband to respond to this gift of love that his wife offers to him in her submission?
SPEAKER_01: Well, Paul says very clearly in verse 19, he is to love his wife and not be harsh with her.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 19 again.
SPEAKER_01: Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
SPEAKER_01: I love how simple Paul is.
SPEAKER_01: I think husbands, you need that tattooed on the inside of your eyelid so you just can't get away from it.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the nature of this command.
SPEAKER_01: Love your wives is an ongoing command.
SPEAKER_01: It's not start loving them or stop loving them a particular time.
SPEAKER_01: So let me say it like this.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 19, Paul says, love your wives.
SPEAKER_01: When?
SPEAKER_01: Yes is the answer in all stages of life, in all seasons of life, in all circumstances of life.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't conditioned on anything in your wife.
SPEAKER_01: It's not conditioned upon the times in which she just elicits love from you, the times when she's most lovely, the times when she just really gets your emotional fireballs burning.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, you are to love permanently, unceasingly, in every stage of life.
SPEAKER_01: Presumably, for most of you who are married in this room, you didn't enter into your marriage as a result of an arranged marriage.
SPEAKER_01: You probably, husbands, chose your wives.
SPEAKER_01: You fell in love with them, you chose to love them, at the moment that you got married, you were probably filled with affection for your wife.
SPEAKER_01: But the nature of life is that you go through life, things change.
SPEAKER_01: And there'll come a point in your life when you look at your wife and say, You're kind of not the same person that you were when we got married.
SPEAKER_01: What do you do then?
SPEAKER_01: Do you say, No, I didn't sign up for this?
SPEAKER_01: I married her.
SPEAKER_01: Who are you?
SPEAKER_01: The command in that instance is love her.
SPEAKER_01: Love her.
SPEAKER_01: Love your wife.
SPEAKER_01: Do not be harsh with her.
SPEAKER_01: Every season, every instance, all stages of life, and every circumstance, all the time, love your wife.
SPEAKER_01: How?
SPEAKER_01: How do you love your wife?
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians 5, which we're not going to turn there this morning, but Ephesians 5 tells us to love our wives as Christ loves the church, a sacrificial love, to sanctify her and to make her holy and without blemish, a purifying love, and to care for her by understanding her needs, because he who loves his wife loves himself.
SPEAKER_01: So there's no longer a zero-sum game going on.
SPEAKER_01: Most destructions in the marriage relationship happen when one of the parties, and because it's Father's Day, I'm going to blame all the husbands.
SPEAKER_01: Think about their relationship as a zero-sum game.
SPEAKER_01: I have the option to either do what she wants or what I want.
SPEAKER_01: But the nature of marriage, the way God designed it, is that there is no distinction anymore.
SPEAKER_01: You come into a one-flesh union.
SPEAKER_01: You are one.
SPEAKER_01: Indissolubly forever, you are one with your wife.
SPEAKER_01: So her needs are your needs.
SPEAKER_01: Her desires are your desires.
SPEAKER_01: So as you are serving your wife, understanding her needs, understanding her wants, and helping to sanctify her and grow closer to the Lord and live a joyful, fulfilled life, you are helping yourself live a joyful, fulfilled life because her needs are your needs, because you're one.
SPEAKER_01: Love your wife, and as you're doing that, look at the end of verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: You will not, excuse me, verse 19, you will not be harsh with them.
SPEAKER_01: That word harsh could be translated as harsh or embittered.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that you could probably say it, in a sense, it means both.
SPEAKER_01: The idea here is a husband who looks at his wife and thinks, you owe me something.
SPEAKER_01: That was a good laugh, appropriately times.
SPEAKER_01: And when she doesn't supply what you think you need, how do you respond?
SPEAKER_01: You get bitter.
SPEAKER_01: You get grumpy because she didn't give me what I deserve.
SPEAKER_01: And inevitably, as you're bitter in your heart, what's going to come out is harshness towards your wife.
SPEAKER_01: That is categorically condemned in Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: You are never to be harsh with your wife, and you're never to be bitter towards your wife.
SPEAKER_01: That's a fundamental misunderstanding of who you are in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Your relationship with your wife and your love for your wife flows out of your union with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Who are you?
SPEAKER_01: You're a person who doesn't deserve anything.
SPEAKER_01: I deserved hell yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: But God set his affection on me and gave me his only begotten Son, who was crucified for me, resurrected, has forgiven all of my sins, has given me all the love of God, and I'm held secure and a vibrant, everlasting, loving relationship with God.
SPEAKER_01: And now as I look at my wife, I can love her.
SPEAKER_01: And if she is in any way unlovely, then I can put on, verse 12, as God's chosen one holy and beloved, a compassionate heart towards her, kindness towards her, humility towards her, meekness towards her, patience, bearing with her.
SPEAKER_01: And even if they have a complaint, I forgive her.
SPEAKER_01: Just as the Lord forgave me, so I forgive her.
SPEAKER_01: This is the relationship God has designed in marriage.
SPEAKER_01: A loving and ordered relationship characterized by union with one another out of your union with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: But that marriage relationship doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_01: It also extends to your raising of children.
SPEAKER_01: So look at the next order of relationships.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to call this parenting in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Fathers do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: Now I call this section parenting in Christ, even though it starts with a command to children.
SPEAKER_01: Here's why.
SPEAKER_01: Children, do you know what you are doing?
SPEAKER_01: You are being parented.
SPEAKER_01: And so God's desire for you is that you would receive it and grow in wisdom.
SPEAKER_01: The command for you, verse 20, is to obey your parents in everything.
SPEAKER_01: Now, who is this command directed at?
SPEAKER_01: Is it directed at every stage of life?
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that that is the direction of this command.
SPEAKER_01: This is directed towards children who are in the home.
SPEAKER_01: This is a household code.
SPEAKER_01: Parents living with their children, husbands living with their wives, and in the ancient world, slaves would have been living with their masters under the same roof.
SPEAKER_01: This is a household code directed towards those children who are being raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, as Ephesians 6.4 says.
SPEAKER_01: So until a child moves out and establishes their own independent home, they are under the authority of their parents.
SPEAKER_01: And so if you are listening to my voice, and you are, suppose you are a 19-year-old who lives under your parents' home, you are under your parents' authority.
SPEAKER_01: Now that might spark in some of you a desire to put your big boy and big girl pants on and get a job and move out, that would be okay.
SPEAKER_01: But so long as you are living under your parents' home, you are under their authority.
SPEAKER_01: What is God's desire for you in that situation?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 20, children, obey your parents in everything.
SPEAKER_01: Everything.
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, in everything means everything.
SPEAKER_01: And of course, the everything is regulated by in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So if a parent asks you to do something that would displease the Lord, then you're under obligation not to obey it.
SPEAKER_01: But the everything is not up for you to decide.
SPEAKER_01: That is, it's not obey everything your parents tell you when they tell you to do something that's explicitly spiritual.
SPEAKER_01: Read your Bible, okay, I'll do that.
SPEAKER_01: Take out the trash.
SPEAKER_01: Eh, no, that's not in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: No, according to this text, the Lord is in that garbage can.
SPEAKER_01: And you are to obey your parents, and when you do, that pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Obey your parents in everything.
SPEAKER_01: And notice the difference between verse 18 the wives' relationship to husbands is one of submission.
SPEAKER_01: Rendering a love gift to their husbands.
SPEAKER_01: But verse 20, children are to obey their parents in everything.
SPEAKER_01: That is, this is not a mutual relationship in which you come into an ordered unity where you are offering up all of your talents and gifts to your husband and you are making decisions together.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the way children relate to their parents.
SPEAKER_01: The way children relate to their parents is they obey their parents.
SPEAKER_01: There might be times where a child can offer a question to their parents, but children, your content the contingency for your obeying your parents is God said to, not whether you think it's wise or you understand it.
SPEAKER_01: I said so is a perfectly sufficient reason for you to obey your parents.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know why?
SPEAKER_01: Because of this.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the end of verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: Why do you obey your parents?
SPEAKER_01: Because this pleases the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: The primary way that you can measure your relationship with the Lord is through your relationship with your parents.
SPEAKER_01: If you are disrespectful and ungrateful towards your parents, you are disrespectful and ungrateful towards the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: The primary way that you as a child can measure your relationship with God is through your relationship with your parents.
SPEAKER_01: So let me just ask you, I'm looking around here and I'm noticing I see children.
SPEAKER_01: You have Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus loved you and gave himself for you.
SPEAKER_01: Then what Jesus wants for you is to obey your parents.
SPEAKER_01: And every time you obey your parents, you please Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: So when you hear a command from your parents, they tell you to do something, and you don't want to do it, then you ask yourself this question Is this what Jesus wants me to do?
SPEAKER_01: And the answer is yes.
SPEAKER_01: Then the reason you do it is because you love Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Now I have a lot more to say on that.
SPEAKER_01: I have a very long sermon that I preach to teenagers on a regular basis.
SPEAKER_01: But this is my one chance to talk to the parents in the room.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm going to move right along here to the next half of this dynamic in verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: Look down at the rest of the text, and it says, Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: And that word for fathers is a gendered word.
SPEAKER_01: It's talking to fathers, and yet in the Greek-speaking world, it was common that sometimes you could say father's plural to refer to the mother and the father.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews chapter 11, for example, Moses' fathers hid him from Pharaoh.
SPEAKER_01: That's not saying that he had two daddies.
SPEAKER_01: That's a normal Greek-speaking way of saying that father and a mother.
SPEAKER_01: Speaking of the father first in the sense of having leadership and responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: And you notice verse 21, this is speaking to both parents, both to the father and the mother.
SPEAKER_01: But I think one of the reasons that Paul says fathers, rather than just the generic word for parents, and there is a generic word for parents in Greek, is to emphasize that fathers are to step up and take responsibility.
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's very important, particularly in the modern day, where for most families, most of the time, mothers will end up spending a larger quantity of time with their children.
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the experience of most families.
SPEAKER_01: And in that situation, it's natural and normal for a fallen dad to think, well, I'm out here, I have these other responsibilities.
SPEAKER_01: That's her job.
SPEAKER_01: But according to God, no, that's your job too.
SPEAKER_01: Your responsibility is to provide your wife with all of the support, emotionally, spiritually, and parental support to enable her to do her duty before the Lord well.
SPEAKER_01: And your responsibility is to engage with your children directly and raise them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the rest of the text, what it says, Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: You notice it's just a negative command here.
SPEAKER_01: But in order to understand the negative command, I think we need to remind ourselves what is the positive command that fathers have towards their children.
SPEAKER_01: Fathers, Ephesians 6.4 says, do not provoke your children to anger, but here's the positive side: bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: This is core and fundamental.
SPEAKER_01: Your duty as a parent is to create an environment and a relationship with your children where you help them to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
SPEAKER_01: That's your duty as a parent.
SPEAKER_01: It's to create an environment in your home and cultivate a relationship with your children where you are helping them to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
SPEAKER_01: That's the bullseye.
SPEAKER_01: Everything else, a good college and good grades and sports and everything else, those are just manifestations of glorifying God and enjoying him forever.
SPEAKER_01: But they are not the bullseye.
SPEAKER_01: And if you make anything else the bullseye, you're not fulfilling your God-ordained duty.
SPEAKER_01: Your God-ordained duty is one task to create an environment and cultivate a relationship where you help your children to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
SPEAKER_01: You raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now, once you understand that, you will be able to understand the negative command in Colossians chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the text again, verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: Fathers, do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: What kind of provoking is Paul referring to here?
SPEAKER_01: I have heard some fathers say, I don't want to spank my young child or I don't want to discipline my teenage child because they'll get provoked.
SPEAKER_01: Is that the kind of provoking that we're talking about?
SPEAKER_01: So, and if that's the kind of provoking that Paul we're talking about, then what kind of a squishy parent would you be?
SPEAKER_01: You'd have to be bending over backwards all the time to say, Teenage punk, what do you want from me?
SPEAKER_01: That's not parenting.
SPEAKER_01: The way the word understand provoking our children is, I think, pretty clearly demonstrated in the way this word gets used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Let me give you a couple examples here.
SPEAKER_01: In Deuteronomy and chapter 21, verse 20, parents who have a rebellious son bring him before the community and say, Our son, he is disobedient and provoked.
SPEAKER_01: He does not listen to our voice.
SPEAKER_01: Provoking here is the idea of a child who is provoked to rebel against God.
SPEAKER_01: You are not to lead your parents to parent your children to have a relationship with your children in such a way that you are cultivating in them rebellion against God.
SPEAKER_01: Here's another verse where the word is used in Proverbs 25, verse 23 A shameless face provokes the tongue.
SPEAKER_01: So how is it that you would provoke your kids by having a shameless face?
SPEAKER_01: What's a shameless face?
SPEAKER_01: That's an idiom in the Old Testament for a person who claims that they believe in God, but then acts in a way contrary to God.
SPEAKER_01: You will provoke your children and make them discouraged if you bring them to church, tell them that we're Christians, but then you live the rest of your life in a way that's contrary to the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: That will fundamentally provoke your children, and they'll become discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: Discouraged from what?
SPEAKER_01: Discouraged from the primary goal that you have for them, which is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.
SPEAKER_01: You'll discourage your children from knowing and enjoying the Lord if you act in a way that blasphemes him at home.
SPEAKER_01: What the Lord is commanding us to do as parents is to act in a way that enables our children to know the love of God in Christ, to know the goodness and the joy of righteousness, to see the beauty of God's truth.
SPEAKER_01: You're acting in such a way so as to cultivate in your children attitudes, habits, and disciplines that help them to know God and enjoy Him.
SPEAKER_01: This is your goal as a parent.
SPEAKER_01: So you ought to be able to ask yourself: everything that I'm doing as a parent, whether it's the bedtime that I set, the food that I give them, the sports that I place them in, how am I able to trace that back to developing in them attitudes that help them to know God and enjoy Him forever?
SPEAKER_01: This is the goal of all parenting.
SPEAKER_01: And to do anything less would be to provoke them lest they become discouraged.
SPEAKER_01: Now, there's obviously a number of ways in which we would do this, and I think it would be helpful because I, as I said, I'm the youth pastor, I don't always get to talk to the parents, but I have a thing or two to say to y'all.
SPEAKER_01: There are a number of very practical examples of ways in which you can provoke your children.
SPEAKER_01: Here are a few lack of affection.
SPEAKER_01: A parent who has unrealistic expectations that can never be attained, and so the kid just is never living up to his parents' expectations.
SPEAKER_01: That kind of relationship doesn't demonstrate what Colossians chapter 3, verse 12 says.
SPEAKER_01: Put it on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.
SPEAKER_01: Parental instruction ought to entail affection, kindness, tenderness towards your children.
SPEAKER_01: That's a baseline starting point.
SPEAKER_01: Do you express kindness and tenderness?
SPEAKER_01: Are your children confident in the affection that you have for them?
SPEAKER_01: Here's another way that very commonly we could provoke our children: anger.
SPEAKER_01: Outbursts of anger towards your children accompany that with a lack of repentance.
SPEAKER_01: That's a surefire way to undermine any instruction that you're trying to give them in righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Is when you live in such a way that you you act like you don't believe it.
SPEAKER_01: Because you're you're acting in ways that demonstrate what matters really ultimately, no matter what comes out of my mouth, what matters is me.
SPEAKER_01: And if you assault my little kingdom, I'm gonna get at you.
SPEAKER_01: That kind of tyrannical behavior is a surefire, simple way to undermine your child's ability to understand the love of God.
SPEAKER_01: Here's another simple way: a combination of lack of good standards and overprotective neutral standards.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I mean by this.
SPEAKER_01: We live in a fairly affluent part of the world where it is a very common reality that parents have very, very, very, you could even say overprotective standards for their children's success in this world.
SPEAKER_01: Parents regulate their children's grades, they regulate their parents' activities, they regulate everything in their par in their children's lives in such a way as they are aiming, calculating, how do I help my kids succeed in this world?
SPEAKER_01: Now that's a neutral kind of standard.
SPEAKER_01: That's in a sense that's good.
SPEAKER_01: As you children grow up, you need to measure how much freedom you give them, and they ought to be able to develop responsibility and freedom.
SPEAKER_01: But you ought to be providing them structure so that they do develop good habits that will enable them to succeed in this world.
SPEAKER_01: But a surefire way to provoke them, to provoke in them rebellion and to discourage them from following the Lord is to have highly protective standards for enabling them to succeed in this world, but lacking any provision of standards to help them cultivate explicitly godly attitudes.
SPEAKER_01: And what I mean is, if you are constantly asking your children about their grades, but you never speak to them about their Bible reading, what are you communicating to them?
SPEAKER_01: W what kind of priorities are you cultivating in their hearts?
SPEAKER_01: When you tell your student your kid that they need to be on time to their practices, but then you send them to bed at night with an unlocked smartphone, what do you think you're communicating to them?
SPEAKER_01: In fact, on this point, if I can be provocative here for a moment, fathers, would you drop your son off at a brothel at night and tell him, exercise good judgment, and I'll pick you up in the morning.
SPEAKER_01: Then why do you send your son to bed with an unlocked smartphone?
SPEAKER_01: Your son has all kinds of sinful desires in his heart, and all the filth of the world is actively trying to assault him.
SPEAKER_01: Your duty as a father is to provide some spiritual protection and guidance.
SPEAKER_01: As much as we provide protection and guidance for success in this world, our chief priority ought to be protection and guidance to help our children flourish spiritually.
SPEAKER_01: We ought to be creating an environment and culting of a relationship wherein we enable our children to know God, to glorify him and enjoy him forever.
SPEAKER_01: That's the bullseye of parenting.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we've walked through two of these relationships here: our marriage in Christ and parenting in Christ, but there's one more relationship, and so we ought to hasten on to that.
SPEAKER_01: Work in Christ is what I'm going to call this relationship.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 22 and following.
SPEAKER_01: Bondservants in everything, obey those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you do, work heartily is for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.
SPEAKER_01: You are serving the Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Then drop down to 4-1.
SPEAKER_01: Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is describing the slave-master relationship.
SPEAKER_01: It was common in the ancient world that the slaves would live in the same household.
SPEAKER_01: So this is touching one of the most intimate relationships of the ancient world.
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm going to make the connection principially to the work relationship in the modern world, so that the master corresponds to the employer and the slave corresponds to the employee.
SPEAKER_01: But before we get there, I think it's necessary just to say a brief word about why Paul didn't just outright condemn the institution of slavery explicitly.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't have very much to say.
SPEAKER_01: I actually have a lot to say about this, but Jesse's already stolen my thunder.
SPEAKER_01: So if you are curious about this, Jesse has preached multiple sermons in which he addressed every single passage in the Bible about slavery, and I would encourage him to encourage you to go to the website and to find them.
SPEAKER_01: But here's just a very brief word.
SPEAKER_01: The ancient context into which Paul is writing, the Greco-Roman world is a world characterized by slavery.
SPEAKER_01: Between a third and sometimes more than a half of the Roman population were slaves.
SPEAKER_01: But it was a very different environment than the Annabelle of the American South.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't based on race, and slaves couldn't have any kind of job in society, just dependent on your master.
SPEAKER_01: So there were slaves who were skilled in all kinds of tasks and trades.
SPEAKER_01: So if you walk through a Roman street, it would be literally impossible to determine based on sight who was free and who is a slave.
SPEAKER_01: Now that doesn't make it a good institution.
SPEAKER_01: It was a sinful, evil institution.
SPEAKER_01: But what Paul is doing as he's writing this letter is he's writing to people living in the realities of a fallen world and helping them to cultivate attitudes that honor God and store up treasure in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: The principles that he teaches to the church undermine the entire institution of slavery.
SPEAKER_01: And in the course of European history, it only takes a few centuries before enough people are touched by these principles that the institution of slavery is overturned.
SPEAKER_01: Now, in the course of European history, those principles were forgotten, and the institution was resurrected to a terrible to a terrible fate.
SPEAKER_01: But what Paul is doing in this text is he is not writing a tract about societal change.
SPEAKER_01: He is writing a letter to individuals to teach them how to honor the Lord in a very fallen, sinful world.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I think that one of the things that would be very helpful for us to keep in mind as we go through this text is this.
SPEAKER_01: Look at what Paul says in verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord, not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as the reward.
SPEAKER_01: A very helpful starting point to understand any of Paul's teaching is this.
SPEAKER_01: Paul actually believed in the realities of heaven and hell.
SPEAKER_01: He actually believed in the resurrection of the dead and everlasting life.
SPEAKER_01: So much of our misunderstandings or our troubles in this world are because we forget or become jaded about the reality of eternity.
SPEAKER_01: So many of our misunderstandings of Scripture or problems in our life are because we fail to recognize eternity is on the horizon.
SPEAKER_01: And what Paul is doing in this text is reorienting our lives towards the reality that eternity is coming.
SPEAKER_01: And the chief focus in your life ought to be how do I please God in this life so as to store up treasure in the next?
SPEAKER_01: Because there is a payday that is coming.
SPEAKER_01: It's on that day.
SPEAKER_01: So let's walk through this text, and I think that some of the basic principles, not only in the ancient world, but in our world, reorient our work lives to be oriented towards eternity.
SPEAKER_01: First, with regard to those who have jobs, bond servants, verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: Obey in everything those who are your earthly masters.
SPEAKER_01: That is, Christians are to be those whose work in the world is characterized by excellence.
SPEAKER_01: When do you work as for the Lord and not for men?
SPEAKER_01: Verse the rest of verse 22, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart fearing the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: All the time.
SPEAKER_01: All of your work is to be characterized by excellence.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is that you do, you do it with excellence as for the Lord and not for men.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because you know that you will receive from the Lord the inheritance as your reward.
SPEAKER_01: That is, all of your work in this world is sacred when you do it for the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: All of your work in this world matters because you do it for the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: All of your laziness and all of your half-hearted efforts matter because you're robbing from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That attitude is an attitude that is oriented towards the reality that eternity is coming.
SPEAKER_01: And so it would behoove us to just ask ourselves, how much do I focus on just getting through the day?
SPEAKER_01: That's a reality that is natural, normal.
SPEAKER_01: But this isn't it.
SPEAKER_01: Your workday isn't just this day.
SPEAKER_01: Your workday is everything that you do for the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You are storing up another payday, a greater inheritance, a greater reward, because all of the work that you do in this world you do for the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: What about for masters in verse chapter 4 and verse 1?
SPEAKER_01: Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because you have a master in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, you are owned.
SPEAKER_01: And so you act in such a way that you want to be able to stand before your master and give an account for the way you treated people in this world.
SPEAKER_01: Because there is a judgment day coming.
SPEAKER_01: There's a day of reckoning, there's a day of accounting coming.
SPEAKER_01: How often in our lives have you had a deadline?
SPEAKER_01: Whether it was in school or it's in work or it's just any stage of life, you have a deadline, and you let everything else in life kind of creep up on you and cloud out the reality that you should be working for that deadline, and then it's here, and you're in a panic, and you wish and bemoan, oh, that I had worked on this before.
SPEAKER_01: You recognize all of your life is like that.
SPEAKER_01: Your entire life, you're working towards a due date wherein you will give an account before the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: All of the work that you do now is work that you will look back on and be glad and rejoice that you invested in.
SPEAKER_01: But every day that you waste now is a day that you will never get back.
SPEAKER_01: This is the reality of work in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: All of your work in Christ is work for the Lord and will be rewarded by the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So just walk through these relationships.
SPEAKER_01: Marriage in Christ, an ordered loving unity, parenting in Christ, cultivating loving relationships with children to help them to know and understand God, working in Christ, working not for men but for the Lord, knowing that from the Lord you'll receive a reward.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see how when you are in Christ, your union with Christ goes with you everywhere that you go?
SPEAKER_01: And what that means is every moment matters because every moment is lived in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Father, we do thank you that you have given us a reason for living.
SPEAKER_01: You've given us your own only begotten Son, and we pray that just as you have been eternally satisfied in the glory of your Son, you would open the eyes of our hearts more to be satisfied in our union with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Please help us to labor diligently in our lives, to be kind and patient, to be diligent and hardworking, to labor and to love in this world in such a way that it just makes sense because of the love that you have given to us.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that you would help us to be kind and wise, spouses and parents and children and workers, and that we would have our eyes oriented towards heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And we pray all these things in the name of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.