1. "Obedience to parents is a gift we give in praise to God, ultimately. This is the way he's made us."

2. "Disobedience to your parents seems like a small thing, not quite like murder and pillage. But disobedience to parents is seen to be a fundamental sin against some of the most obviously loving authority you'll generally ever experience in life."

3. "Obedience is the training wheels while we're young and being formed. And honoring is riding the bike through our lives."

4. "Religious training of children is to come primarily from those who the children most know love them. That's the parents. There's a reason why parents are the main religious instructors. Because our love for our children leaves them less open to Satan's temptation to believe that any denial of what they want is out of a lack of love."

5. "Spanking without speaking or discipline without discipling is not just a missed opportunity, it's wrong. It will teach the child very poorly about what God is like."

6. "Think of how unloving it would be to withhold correction from a child that needs correction. It may save you a little time and trouble today, but they will pay for it later."

7. "These days that seem so long when you're in the middle of them, and they'll be gone before you know it and never come back."

8. "To exercise authority well, you had better be under authority yourself."

9. "The discipline and instructions of this Lord are for the child's best. Too often, other sets of instructions are not."

10. "What an attractive thing a Christian home can be for those tossed about in seas of conflict at home."

Observation Questions

1. According to Ephesians 6:1, what are children commanded to do, and what two reasons does Paul give for this command in verses 1-3?

2. In Ephesians 6:2-3, Paul quotes the Fifth Commandment from Exodus 20:12. What does Paul highlight as unique about this commandment compared to the others?

3. What specific negative command does Paul give to fathers in Ephesians 6:4a, and what positive command does he give in verse 4b?

4. In Ephesians 5:21, what is the underlying motivation Paul gives for all the submission he discusses in the following verses, including children obeying parents?

5. According to the sermon's reference to Luke 2:51, how did Jesus relate to His earthly parents, and what word does Luke use to describe this relationship?

6. In Romans 5:12, how does Paul describe the origin and spread of sin, and how does this connect to the broader context of human rebellion against authority?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul address children directly in this passage rather than simply telling parents what their children should do? What does this reveal about how Scripture views children as moral agents?

2. The sermon distinguishes between "obey" (for children) and "honor" (the broader term in the Fifth Commandment). How do these two concepts relate to each other, and why might this distinction matter as children mature into adulthood?

3. How does the phrase "in the Lord" (Ephesians 6:1) shape our understanding of what it means for Christian children to obey their parents, especially when parents may not be believers?

4. Why does Paul connect the command to "bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" with the warning not to provoke children to anger? How do these two parts of verse 4 work together?

5. How does understanding God as the Good Shepherd who exercises authority sacrificially for His people (as described in Ezekiel 34 and John 10) inform how parents should exercise authority over their children?

Application Questions

1. For parents: What specific practices could you implement this week to ensure you are bringing up your children "in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" rather than simply enforcing rules without explanation or spiritual teaching?

2. The sermon mentions that screens and schools can work to alienate children from parents. What concrete steps can your family take to guard against these influences and strengthen the parent-child relationship?

3. If you are an adult child, how can you continue to honor your parents in practical ways, especially if they are aging or if your relationship with them has been strained?

4. The sermon emphasized that the church family shares responsibility for children. If you do not have children of your own, what is one way you could invest in the spiritual formation of children in your church community this month?

5. Parents are warned not to provoke their children to anger. Can you identify a pattern in your parenting—perhaps being overly harsh, inconsistent, or failing to explain the reasons behind your rules—that might be exasperating your children? What would repentance and change look like in that specific area?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 — This passage provides the Old Testament foundation for parents' responsibility to diligently teach God's commands to their children in all aspects of daily life.

2. Proverbs 22:6, 15; 23:13-14; 29:15-17 — These proverbs expand on the biblical wisdom of training and disciplining children, showing the long-term benefits of faithful parenting.

3. Colossians 3:18-21 — This parallel household code reinforces the same commands to children and fathers, adding that children should obey "in everything" and that fathers should not provoke children lest they become discouraged.

4. Ezekiel 34:1-16 — This prophetic passage, referenced extensively in the sermon, reveals God's heart as the true Shepherd who rescues His sheep from bad shepherds, providing the model for all godly authority.

5. John 10:1-18 — Jesus identifies Himself as the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep, fulfilling Ezekiel's prophecy and demonstrating the sacrificial love that should characterize all who exercise authority.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Cultural Shift Against Biblical Family Authority

II. Children, Obey Your Parents (Ephesians 6:1-3)

III. Fathers, Do Not Provoke Your Children to Anger (Ephesians 6:4a)

IV. Bring Them Up in the Discipline and Instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4b)

V. Finding Trust in Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Please open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6. If you're using the Bibles that are provided, you'll find that on page 979, page 979. Let me read to you the first four verses of Ephesians chapter 6.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, this is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Twenty years ago, I was preaching on this very passage from this very pulpit.

And I said something that I now no longer believe.

Let me quote my manuscript.

Because there is not an entire revolt against this in our culture, we don't need to spend quite as long on this point. It seems to be obvious. Children's need for our guidance is more widely acknowledged and consequently the goodness of this instruction would meet with less objection than the words to the wives above.

Now maybe I'm being too hard on myself. Those things may be true, but I have my doubts. It feels like the battle has moved on, or at least expanded from Traditional marriage to traditional home. And by traditional here I just mean where it's assumed that morality, except for cases of gross abuse, morality should normally take place in homes where children are guided by parents. Children should, as our text says, obey their parents.

And parents should bring up their children with discipline and Instruction. The traditional consensus is breaking down for many reasons, I'm sure. A couple of factors that seems to me are worth noting for kids who are here today. If you're wondering how your experience of being 12 is different than your parents or for parents, as you're thinking about what's happened, am I just a significantly worse parent than my sibling who's 15 years older and their kids just seemed easier?

What's going on? Two factors, screens and schools. First, screens. Around the time I was preaching that sermon, the first cell phones with internet connections were coming out. Several years later, in 2007, the iPhone came out with the ability to browse the internet just like you would from a computer.

Since then, literally billions of smartphones have been sold.

And kids are growing up in a world where social pressure causes them to relate to their peers online in front of everyone. New avenues are made for everything from envy to pornography, from cyber-bullying to severe body dysmorphia, all poured into our children's lives.

Meanwhile, advertisers are spending untold billions tailoring their apps to capture the most viewing time from every pair of eyes they can. Children, as the most vulnerable and least responsible members of our families, are lured in and trapped.

So children already prepared by television and video games and Computers are drawn away from interactions with those around them, perhaps most significantly their parents, and are babysat by screens which pull them into their own cyber world for literally most of their waking hours.

Second, Schools have been working to alienate children from parents as they reshape a rising generation's sense of morality.

Here in this more overt work are combined various circumstances that join together to cause suspicion or even hostility to the biblically minded parent.

The work of child rights activists in a number of countries encourages the state to constantly expand the child's direct access to its coercive powers against their own parents. This combined with cases of terrible abuse of authority by parents caused some teachers and schools to present themselves as leading the children in moral rebellion against their parents.

Once accepted norms of behavior are not explained and reinforced with heroic examples from history. Rather they are criticized and caricatured and made to seem inherently wrong. And so homes are divided rather than united. As children are taught that virtue comes in disobeying parents rather than obeying them. The revolutionaries of critical theories, theories which assume that all authority is bad and is to be deconstructed, that is, opposed, exposed, and taken down, poor out of university departments of anthropology and sociology and literature and history and on and on I could go.

They marched through the institutions, through the entertainment and news media and schools and into our already weakened homes. Meanwhile, the chief architect in such destructive division is no recent movie star in Hollywood, no CEO of a Silicon Valley tech company, no news organization in New York City, or political power here in DC, or even university radical in some European university. The chief architect is the one who ages ago acted for us. In Luke 3:38, Adam is called the son of God, meaning that God was his direct creator. And Adam doubted God's directions.

He suspected God's wisdom or good intentions toward him. He believed Satan's lie that God really cared for Adam, not at all, that his care was really abuse. And so Adam sinned. Paul writes in Romans 5:12, Just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. We have each one of us been willing conscripts in Adam's rebellion against God, and this rebellion finds its echo in all our rebellion.

Not against abusive authority. Rebellion against abusive authority is actually part of our submission to God and His good authority. And even the very vocabulary we have to do that comes in no small part from the Protestant Reformation. John Calvin's good work in the Institutes, where the middle magistrate is said to be morally correct to rebel against the ungodly prince. So friends, the resources of Christianity for both establishing authority and correcting abusive authority are substantial and real.

But Adam's revolt echoes in our own rebellion against God's own authority. That's why in our passage in Ephesians 5:21, when Paul was summarizing these various authorities he was about to briefly consider, he mentioned that all of this submitting is to be done... look at the words there up in chapter 5:21... all of the submitting is to be done out of reverence for Christ.

All of this is about the moral brokenness that we encounter on the part of the child, the one under authority. We've not even considered the brokenness of the parent, the one in authority. In a world where people are taught to so have pride in themselves that they are to worship themselves, is it any wonder that appropriate sacrifices in devotion to their own best life now would include their own children, whether through neglect or active abuse. Infanticide itself, the killing of young infants, is slowly but surely and increasingly accepted opinion among ethicists in respected universities.

And abortion, parents killing their own children in the womb, has been recast as a necessary entailment of being pro-life of the mother.

Is it any wonder in a dog-eat-dog world of Nietzschean will to power where parents openly embrace and champion their own interests, even murderously against their own children, that children would learn to champion what they take to be their own interests against their parents.

Apart from God's gracious intervention, his removal of his restraining hand will see the mirage of promised tolerance descend into the anarchy of conflict between competing interests, each suspicious of the other's good. Will move from being a commonwealth with generous thoughts about acting for the common good and become a kind of common poverty with suspicious thoughts that anyone else can only become rich by making me poor.

No shock when roles are reversed and the parents become dependent on the care of the children that more and more of those adult children are considering the moral and legal arguments for euthanasia, mercy killings, where dependent adults are being helped to see how much easier they could make it on their caregivers, their children, if they just weren't there.

And the world of family where the infant in the womb and the weak person in the home are both sustained in love is hidden from the public imagination and in the strange judgment of God on us vanishes.

Can we be surprised at all at this when any nurture and admonition, any discipline and instruction is not that, as it says in the last phrase in our passage, verse 4, is not that of the Lord. The Lord is Christ who gave Himself for us. We thought about this extensively last week in the way the husbands are said to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Friend, if you're here and you're not a Christian, we're very glad you're here. We have a very different way, an increasingly different way, of looking at the world around us and the use of authority than so many things you'll hear today, maybe than so much you've experienced or maybe even done yourself.

The one who truly has all authority is God and He is completely good. His authority is never abused.

He made us in His image, every one of us. All the members of this church, all the members of every other church, all the members of every other religion, all the people who have never been members of any church or any religious organization, everybody on the planet is made in the image of God. We are all made to reflect the character of our Creator. And yet, as I was just mentioning, the Bible is so clear in teaching that in Adam, in our first parents, all of us revolted. He acted for all of us when he sinned against God.

And all of us have joined in that rebellion. We've all done what we want rather than what God wants regardless. And God would be entirely just to leave us under his judgment for our sins.

And that's where a lot of natural religion will just leave you. Some idea there's a God, some feelings of guilt, and that's about it. Kind of maybe vague hopes that God will forgive you for some reason. But Christianity, at the very core, has what we call the gospel, which is just old English, the good news. And what is the good news?

It's news. Someone has done something. Who? God. What has he done?

He sent his only Son. He became flesh, the Son of God. He was incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth. He lived a fully human life where He did not rebel against His heavenly Father's authority, but He perfectly obeyed His heavenly Father. He gave the kind of obedience that none of us ever have, though we should have.

He gave that obedience and performed it entirely. He died as a sacrifice, really, in substitute for all of us who sin and should bear that penalty, but who will rely on Him, who will trust in Him. God raised Him from the dead. He accepted His sacrifice, and He calls us all now to turn from our sins, to repent of them, and to trust in Jesus Christ. Friends, I want to make sure you know this at the very beginning, because these simple commands here will increasingly make no sense to people today.

If you don't understand the goodness of the God who is behind this command. This God who has exercised authority in such a costly way for himself out of his love for us to give us the new birth and to nourish us is the one who tells us, Children, obey your parents. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. But nourish them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. You see, if you break that instruction off from this good news, it might sound different.

But when you put it together, you realize the discipline and instructions of this Lord are for the child's best.

Too often, other sets of instructions are not. If you want to know more about this, friend who's here who's not a Christian or not religious and you're curious more to understand it or even to know what it can mean in your own life. There will be at all the doors pastors on the way out so you can just speak to one of us. We'd love to talk to you about that. And for that matter, there are hundreds of members sitting around you who would love to spend a few minutes after the service talking to you about that.

There are Bible studies we do with people who want to look into one of the Gospels and understand more about Jesus. We would happily do that with you. Satan taught Adam and Eve to think the thoughts they thought. And he is abroad teaching his old ideas in new ways to all that will listen today, to the powerful and the powerless, the wealthy and the poor, the young and the old, and he's teaching them to children and to parents. So kids, I really want you to listen to this.

This is a part of God's Word that's written very directly to you.

And parents, this is a part of God's Word that's written very directly to you as well. In the face of such deep and complete cultural revolt against God's good provisions for us in the family, how should we hear and believe and obey God's Word today? That's what we're considering this morning. And we'll do that in two simple parts: first, for the children, and then for the parents. So let's hear this increasingly rare wisdom, the kind of wisdom that too often these days you won't find online or at school or next door.

Paul begins by telling, number one, the children, obey your parents. So to these Ephesian Christians who had themselves been saved out of moral darkness and lostness, Paul is explaining how they could walk in a spiritually hostile world. World. Paul is referring to this as instruction for how to walk in love. He'd set up in chapter 5, verse 2, as children of light, discerning what is pleasing to the Lord.

He's explaining to them how to walk wisely and carefully, understanding what the will of the Lord is. He'd said in chapter 5, verse 17, or verse 18 about what it looks like to be filled with the Spirit of God. And submit to one another out of reverence for Christ, he said in 521. Paul has addressed the wives and he's about to address the bond servants. What he's doing, he's addressing common categories of where the authorities that these young Christians are under may not themselves be Christians, and therefore where questions may arise in their minds.

How are they to relate? To non-Christian husbands, to non-Christian masters or employers. And in our passage today, how are they relate to non-Christian parents? Look at our passage again. Chapter 6, verse 1.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. It's interesting to me that Paul assumed that children would be present in the meeting where all this theology was being read out. So when Paul wrote Ephesians and he sends it, he'll give it to a human being, you know, he doesn't send it over the internet, he gives it to a human being and a physical copy of the letter is carried, like on a boat to Ephesus.

And when the person gets there, they'll have some knowledge of who's in the Ephesian church or somebody who would know someone who's in the Ephesian church. And this letter would have been taken to the Ephesian church. And the next time the Ephesian church met, the letter would have been read out. Six chapters, as we call it, that wasn't divided into chapters when Paul wrote it. It really doesn't take that long to read.

You can read it out loud this afternoon when you go home. You find it won't take that long at all. And it's amazing to think that sitting there in that group hearing that are going to be lots of people who are not only 15, but 10 sitting and listening to this and five-year-olds sitting there. And this is what they would hear. And he says to the children that they should listen to their parents and heed them.

This is how he sees living out the fifth commandment.

To honor your father and mother. Respect them by obeying them. That's simple enough. Let's consider this passage a little more closely. Paul's addressing children like this not only presumes that they're in the service, but that they're listening.

So children, no sermon you hear will directly do you any good if you don't listen. You have to listen. Now you may be helped to listen by drawing or maybe even making some things that it makes you think about, writing down some of the words that I say, things that will remind you as you talk to your parents later. But for these sermons to be helpful to you, more than in just teaching you patience, you'll be helped to listen to what's said in them.

Preachers like Paul and Timothy addressed children. They spoke publicly to children while the adults listened. And friends, that was a uniquely Christian approach to address subordinate parties directly. These things are called household codes where you talk to the wives and the children and the servants. They were a common part of Greek and Roman ethical philosophy.

There would be little compends that people could read of them and read them in the family circle or read them in public gatherings. But none of those ever addressed the subordinate parties. They would address the people who are in authority, in power, and they would describe to them what their role is and what the people underneath them should do. But here Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, speaks directly and first to those who are under that authority, speaks to them clearly about what they should do. This showed respect and gave dignity to those addressed as the moral agents that they are before God.

They are to be addressed. They have choices to make. He spoke to the subordinate parties first here in each case, showing that their obedience was a gift for them to give, not something for those in authority above them to take.

Do you see how that is effected by speaking to them, treating them as moral agents, giving them commands that they can choose to obey? It's a way of showing respect.

So friends, obedience to parents is a gift we give in praise to God, ultimately. This is the way he's made us. So perhaps some 12-year-old boy sitting there had been wondering how he should relate to his idol-worshipping parents who were always stopping at the famous Temple of Diana in the middle of Ephesus. Or maybe it was a nine-year-old girl along with her mother who had been converted from the local synagogue while her father was still a Jewish person who was not accepting Jesus as the Messiah. How should these children relate to their parents now under this new circumstances of their being so spiritually different from them?

Paul's instruction is clear. Obey, he says, just like he does when he writes to the Christians in Colossians over in Colossians 3:20 where he says, Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Believing children should be submissive to their parents, also to their Christian parents. That I don't think would have been as surprising to them, but to their non-Christian parents as well. That may have been a little bit of a, oh really?

Even to them. In the Gospels this word for obey is used to describe how the unclean spirits and how nature responded to Jesus. It's what Paul says we should not do to sin in Romans six. Obedience to God is said to mark the Christian. Paul wrote to the Philippian Christians in Philippians 212, My beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

The Old Testament too, we see this. Abraham obeyed the call of God. Sarah, 1 Peter 3 says, obeyed Abraham.

So when we come to children relating to parents, it's no surprise to find out that obedience to parents should be normal for children. In the first chapter of Proverbs we read, Hear, my son, your father's instruction, and forsake not your mother's teaching, for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck. Disobedience to right authority, on the other hand, brings God's judgment. In a particularly graphic word picture we get in Proverbs 30 verse 17, the eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures.

This is why Paul inserts disobedient to parents in that Romans 1:30 list of what happened when God gave people up to do what ought not to be done. Or when Paul later wrote to the Ephesians own Pastor Timothy to warn of what was coming in dark times, he warned of days in which people would be, and I quote, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful. It may be disobedience to your parents seems like a small thing, not quite like murder and pillage. But disobedience to parents is seen to be a fundamental sin against some of the most obviously loving authority you'll generally ever experience in life. My wife and I don't pay our taxes because we're certain that the IRS loves us.

You know, we pay our taxes out of obedience to Scripture's exhortations. But friends, even people that don't have that kind of spiritual motivation can often obey the people who gave them life, who give them a roof over their heads and food for their bellies. Even that simple kindness of God is to be reflected in the home, and that's why this should be such a both a fundamental and an understandable ask of God for children. That you obey your parents.

Paul is especially addressing children who intend to be following Christ. You see there he says in verse 1, Obey your parents in the Lord. And he doesn't mean by that your Christian parents, though again you should of course obey your Christian parents. He means that since you are intending to live your life as a Christian, if you understand yourself to be wanting to follow Jesus, You're living your life in reverence for Christ, treating Him as you should. Part of that means you obey your parents.

You say you want to obey Christ. That will normally include obeying your parents. Obeying your parents is part of your following Christ. Your obedience to your parents is also part of your own witness. Your friends, even other adults, even your own parents.

I grew up in a nominally Christian home. I wanted to live in such a way that I'd be a witness to my own parents. Part of the way we witness to our own parents is by our love for them, our proper regard to them. When we're small and in the home, obeying them is a way that we win them. What a simple way God has left you to witness to others.

What an attractive thing a Christian home can be for those tossed about in seas of conflict at home. Jesus, we read in Luke 2, went down with his parents and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. Have you noticed that? That's Luke 251. Jesus was obedient.

To his parents. It's right to obey your parents. Paul cites one of the Ten Commandments here to show that this has always been God's way. In verse 2 he cites that command, Honor your father and mother. Honor is a broader word than obey.

And it's here, I think, to be like a footnote reference for when Paul says, Obey your parents. He's citing here we know this really because it's there in the Ten Commandments. When we go back to the Ten Commandments, it's a broader word which would include obedience for children, but it's a word honor which means really it's a verb, it's related to heavy or the consequence of having value. So your parents, he's saying, the Lord says in the fifth commandment should be like the heavy weights in your life.

Moses was said to... the Lord said to Moses in Leviticus 19:3, Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father. So God called His people to treat our parents as special, as prized. And that makes complete sense again, because under God our parents gave us life. They taught us how to live.

Therefore we should listen to what they say, and as children that means we should Obey them. Now, here's the question that I will get at the door afterwards: As adults, should we still obey our parents? And the short answer is no. But we should honor them. When is our obligation to honor them by obeying shift over to honoring them in other means?

Well, I looked long and far this week, and I can tell you that Scripture does not give us an age. There is no certain number set there. But I think the combination of Genesis 2:24 that he cited last week, look there up in chapter 5 and verse 31, he's citing Genesis 2:24, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife. So that leaving and then holding fast shows us that a shift is happening. Paul has just quoted that to show more about the nature of the wife and the husband's relationship.

So when we move out to establish our own household is a normal time for that shift to occur. Now, what if we still live at home when we're older or we don't get married? Well, the point would still be that obedience is the training wheels while we're young and being formed. And needing the help. And honoring is riding the bike through our lives.

Scripture gives no age. If you really want to push for an age, the closest thing you can find, I think, is 20. And I say that from the Old Testament because there are repeated instances of where 20 is when they're treated as adults. That's when you could work in the temple. That's when certain sacrifices would be made.

That's when you could be a warrior. That's when you're in the census, that's who dies in the wilderness. If you were that age or older when you didn't go into Canaan and you were told to, that's when moral culpability seems to reach its full maturity. Now, I don't think that means as opposed to 19 or 21. I think in different cultures and at different times that may move slightly, but the point is at some point you become an independent moral actor.

And it's not then that your parents have no influence, but you're no longer at that stage of being formed as softly and supplely as you are when you're eight and when you're twelve. And that's what Scripture, I think, recognizes even by the use of this broader word honor.

So as we age, get married, many of us have our own children, the command to honor our parents also means that we should more generally show them respect in any way that we can, including being careful never to be disrespectful toward them. Parents should never be regarded as a liability because of their needs emotionally or physically or in terms of time or money. And as so many of you do, it means caring for them in their declining years, whether in their own home or in your own home, or in a nursing home? One of the ways I tried to think through the implications of this passage, and I don't think Paul is thinking about all this, I think his point is verse 1, it's the children, but we naturally ask this question because of the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother. One of the ways I tried to think about this is I just wrote down, you know, on my text here, a column that had nine months, nine years, 19 years, 39 years, 59 years.

About how old the person is or the child, and then what does this mean for the child to the parent, what child relationship would be child to parent, and what would this mean for the parent's relationship to the child? And I tried to think through just from what we know, what should we do and what should we be? And I thought, well, to the nine-month-old, we should obey our parents, whatever that means.

To the nine-year-old, okay, if you're here and you're nine, this is really clearly to you. Obey your parents. To the 19-year-olds, it's getting a little fuzzy. Obey your parents when they're right. And assume they're probably right more than you think they are.

But exactly what they've been doing with you is to try to teach you to learn so that you won't have to turn to them to know everything. So as parents, as painful as it is to have our kids leave, it's actually success. It's what we're aiming for, right? So Enzo, your dad wants you to stay around now, but at some point you're going to get as big as your dad. And then you're going to go do what he does.

It's just the way things happen, the cool way God has made things. So then what about after that point, let's say when you're 39 or 59? Well, I think you honor them. You continue to honor them and the Lord will do that. In your life in many different ways will call you to do that.

Okay, what about the parents' relationship to the child, going on cheating, stepping into our second point just for a moment? Well, I think when they're nine months old, we nourish them. When they're nine years old, well, we're disciplining them. And by the time they're 19, 39, 59, we still are their parents. We're instructing, loving, supporting, praying for them.

That's the kind of shift, I think, that happens. So kids, don't misunderstand what we're being taught here. If you're recognized in your world as coming under the authority of your parents, probably living at home, being dependent on them, then you should obey them. So if you're living at home, you should obey them. Sometimes Christians are called to make very difficult choices.

About obeying your parents or obeying God. Those are very hard choices. And for those, you should talk to older Christians that you know, maybe people here at church, me or one of the pastors, or maybe someone who's taught a Sunday school class of yours. Paul underscores the importance of our honoring our parents by pointing out in verse 2 that this is the first commandment with a promise. Is the first command of what we call the second table of the law.

So in the Ten Commandments, the first four are about our duties to God, and Commandments five to ten are about our duties to each other. Well, this is the first one, Command five, in that second table. So perhaps that's why the promise is attached there, to show if we live as we should with others, normally then blessings follow in this life. This is very much like the book of Proverbs.

The promise is stated in verse 3, that you may live long in the land. If you go back to Exodus 20 where he's quoting here, the Lord said, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. That's referring to Canaan. So here what Paul is doing by omitting that last phrase, he's showing that this promise for Christians is a bigger thing. It's not just Canaan, it's the whole earth.

In fact, we know from the book of Revelation, it's the new heaven and the new earth.

That this is all ours in Christ. So it's not that we save ourselves or we get to inherit the earth by means of our obedience to our parents or by means of our meekness, but rather, as he said up in chapter 5 verse 18, because we are filled with the Spirit, one of the ways that we will see that we're filled with the Spirit and will give evidence of it is that we are meek and we do honor our parents. That doesn't make sense? You've got lunchtime to figure out a little bit more of that. Talk with each other.

Just one more note before we go to the second point. Christians have sometimes wondered after the coming of Christ if it's still appropriate to speak of the law in the Old Testament as having any use in our lives besides convicting us of sin and driving us to Christ. And are we ever to be instructed from God's law in the Old Testament? Well here Paul seems to be at least showing how important God represented this obedience to be in the Old Testament by citing this law. He seems also to be assuming that there's a continuing validity of this command.

So do you want to understand what the will of the Lord is? Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. If you have any questions about what you should obey, talk to your parents about it. Why do you ask me to do this? They can talk to you about it.

They can tell you. They can explain. And they can hear more of your concerns. And of why you might not think that's a good idea. Listen to your parents' children.

Obey them. To understand what the will of the Lord is, Paul also speaks, number two, to fathers. You look at that in verse 4, and he gives two simple commands, one negative and one positive. I'll consider them in turn. So this is not a three-point sermon.

It's a two-point sermon. There are two sub-points in this second point. They're the two halves of this verse, verse 4. The first is this, Do not provoke them to anger. You see that at the beginning of verse 4.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger. Very much like the way he exhorted husbands last week in the text that we considered. The one who is in authority has special obligations and responsibilities for those that they're in authority over. So Paul exhorts fathers to care for your children and to do so in quite specific way. Don't come down too hard on your kids.

And kids, let me just say, you may find this second half even more enjoyable than you found the first half. So listen up for ammo in communication with mom and dad at lunch today. Hey, didn't the preacher say?

Now, to put this in context, this command to not provoke your children to anger, would again be a pretty striking command in the first century. In the Roman world and in the world of the Mediterranean, the fathers' authority and power in their family was amazing. In Rome particularly, the Roman citizens, the fathers had complete control over all members of their family. They could order them around. They could physically beat them.

I don't mean spank them as a Christian parent might spank a child in discipline without anger for their own good, but I mean beat them. They could even sell them. They could physically maim them. They could kill them. And that was legal.

That's the terrible distortions of the institution of the family. That God set up that was happening just in the Roman world alone. A lot of the secular context, very different than the Old Testament teaching. But that's the world in which the gospel comes crashing in the first century. Not all ancient cultures were that sweeping in the authority that they gave to the fathers, but that was far more common than the kind of consideration that children are shown here.

What Paul says to the The fathers here is move them by love. Win them with your care. Don't aggravate them or exasperate them. Don't make them resentful of you and your rules by the way you treat your children or any of those under your authority. If you know the Westminster Catechism, the larger catechism has a great way of dealing with the Ten Commandments, where there's about six long answers to each commandment about figuring out what it means.

What it means directly, what it does not mean, what it implies as our duties, what it forbids. In this they even have separate categories for the superiors and for the inferiors, not meaning how you're made in the image of God, but meaning the position that you're in. Lots of good meditative work to think through, lots of verbs you can look at to get application there in the Westminster Larger Catechism. Anyway, this direction is given primarily to the fathers because they're the head of the home.

But I think by Paul's use of the commandment about honoring fathers and mothers in the verse just before, I think we can understand that it can be extended to parents in the authority that we exercise over our children. In other words, you can have dads that are too harsh. You can also have moms that are too harsh. And mom, you don't get a bypass on it just because you're a mom and not a dad. So parents, we should not provoke our children to anger.

It's the duty of both parents to teach children. And what Paul simply says is that parents are not to treat children in such a way that we provoke their anger or their wrath, but rather, I love the way Matthew Henry put it, treat them in such a way that we provoke their graces. That's what we want to provoke in our children. We shouldn't be selfish and lazy in our treatment of our kids and let a child's heart go untended. Allowing them to wander all the way up to the edge of danger or sin, and then simply yell, no!

Again and again just frustrating their desires. We shouldn't provoke them to discouragement as Paul warns the Colossians in Colossians 3:21. Don't just bark orders at them, but lovingly explain the truth about what's going on, even in their own sinful nature. There's a reason that you're like this. Your mom and I are the same way.

But we've been changed by God's Spirit, and that's what we're praying for in you. That's what we want you to come to know. You understand the significance of Paul's writing to fathers here. He's warning them. It shows that nothing he's saying should ever be used to approve vicious parents abusing their children.

Fathers, ask yourself if you are unnecessarily alienating your children by how you're disciplining and instructing them. Now, if you're kind when you tell them they may not have an iPhone and they get mad at you, well, there's not much you can do. Pray, love them, persevere. Know that they'll be doing the same thing or the equivalent in 25 years' time.

It'll be payback. But even in our method of teaching our children, we want to draw them to us, not push them away. I am thankful for how many of you in your families, I see such good examples of this. And I'll tell you in private if you talk to me, but if I call out your names, I'll just make it harder on you with some of your kids sometimes. You think dad's that good?

You know? I'm so thankful for many of you who I think are doing a really good job of this, drawing the kids alone. One of the great things about a church and getting to know each other is you find other families. No two families are ever exactly alike, but man, you can learn a lot from other families. So let me encourage you to look around, get to know the other families, and be willing to let your own family be a resource for them.

Even in our method of teaching, We want to, as I say, draw them to us, not push them away. And even when we do have to discipline our children, the whole point of disciplining them is for their good, and we want to restore their affection to us. Parents, let's live with our children in such a way that we make it easy on them to respect us as representatives of God and His authority, not to see us as rebels against such a good God. And mom or dad, if you feel that you have failed in this area, because kids, parents actually do fail, and we fail at this. Your parents, I mean, your kids understand more than you may realize.

Confess it to them. Show them that you can see the truth of that. Show your humility before them and before the Lord. And watch God restore in mercy that relationship. And, friend, if your parents did poorly in this in your own life, don't mock them for it.

Forgive them and love them and pray for them. And if they're still alive, work to restore your relationship with them. And if they're not, commit the whole bunch of memories to the Lord and pray that He would give you wisdom to know what to do with what you've learned from your own painful experience. We don't want to provoke our children to anger. Instead, the second half of verse 4, we should do what Paul turns to.

He says, But bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So brothers and sisters, we should take responsibility positively to teach our children the way to nurture them and disciple them.

This is why Paul opposes this exasperating to bringing them up in the nurture, the training and instruction of the Lord. Now, just to be clear on this, religious training of children is to come primarily from those who the children most know love them. That's the parents. There's a reason why parents are the main religious instructors. Because our love for our children leaves them less open to Satan's temptation to believe that any denial of what they want is out of a lack of love.

It's just a confounding mystery to them. Because they know that this big person loves me, but they're also telling me no. And it's a creative confusion that we get to instill in their minds for a little while, until they grow and they understand more of what would go wrong if they did that thing they so want to do. Lessons that they'll learn and they'll continue to use throughout their lifetime. But that's why you can't shift that off to the church.

It's not the church's job most fundamentally to bring up your kids religiously. We'll do the best we can and we're working on getting back to it. But really that's with you. That's your job before the Lord. It's here in black and white, bring them up.

In the discipline and instruction of the Lord. We have this responsibility from God. God has always instructed parents to instruct the children. You can see the Old Testament parallel of this in Deuteronomy 6:4-6. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently. To your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. This has always been what God's people have been told to do.

Nourish your children. Bring them up. We covenant together to do this as members of the church. We said this last Sunday night, do you remember, around the Lord's table? We will endeavor to bring up such as may at any time be under our care in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

They even got that language directly from this verse. This is from the King James translation of Ephesians 6:4. So we are to discipline and guide our children. We are to inform and warn and advise them. We are to disciple our children.

Brothers and sisters, spanking without speaking or discipline without discipling is not just a missed opportunity, it's wrong. It will teach the child very poorly about what God is like. What a blessing for kids to have godly parents who will care for them in the way that the Bible teaches us here too. What a picture of God's care for us!

Friends, make yourself wise in the Lord's ways so that you can do it, as it says here, bring them up not in your own ways, but in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Lord.

I wonder if this could be even more helpful to our nation than the public work that some of you came to D.C. to do.

A few resources to help you in this: Paul David Tripp's book, Parenting. There are copies of this on the bookstall that you can purchase afterwards, but I'll give this one away. And Barrick has 12 copies that we're going to give away right now. Yes, during the sermon, and to encourage you even more near the end of the sermon. We are giving this book away to you.

If you're a parent and you want to think more about it, Barrack, stand up. If you have a copy of this book, stand up. If you want a copy of this book for free, you just need to read it soon, put your hand up and it's coming to you. All right? Mark, would you just grab this one and take it back somewhere?

We're hands up. All right? If you don't get one, there are more copies there. Balcony? Did somebody say?

Balcony right up there. So make sure one gets up to balcony. Unless we're out. Ah! Anyway, one is either coming or they'll be at the bookstall.

It's a good thing for you to read. Also, moms and dads, Kathleen Nielsen has written a series of little books, Prayers of a Parent. She has four in this PNR series for young children. For teens, for young adults, for adult children. Where she, dear Christian sister from Chattanooga, Tennessee, she writes about, she writes out prayers, simple prayers for kids at different ages.

And Austin is gonna order copies of this on the bookstall, but I've got this one set, and I can give, Christian, you gotta tell me which one you want of the four. The first one, young children, all right, I've got teens, who wants teens, right back there, all right? Jonathan, thank you. Over here, I've got young adults, parents of young adults who would like, okay, right in the back, all the way in the back. And I've got of adult children who would like this one, Prayers for Adult Children, right there.

So, Austin.

And then the last one to suggest, I think I've got five copies of Andy Naselli's book, Conscience, what it is, how to train it, and loving those who differ. This should be a good thing, mom or dad, for you to get and read yourself and read with some of your older kids. So if you've got a 15-year-old, a teenager at home who's thinking through things, this would be a great book for you to reason with. So if Barrick, you stand up and you've got three copies? Between the two of you, you've got five copies.

So Ray, I've got a copy here, I'll give you. So if you would like this, Mark, right there.

I encourage you to get this, read it through with teenage kids or kids that would seem to like this kind of reasoning up in the balcony. Great. I'm gonna let them keep doing that while I move on. Using resources like this, taking the time to read them ourselves or read them with our children is part of the way we can bring them up. We've got two more of the conscience right here.

If you want copies of Andy's book on conscience. How to reason through debatable issues. And then the purpose of this is for you to take it and do it with others, especially with your children. It's the same idea, by the way, that he uses up in 5:29 about nourish, about how someone treats his own body. This is how we're to love our children.

So think of how unloving it would be, say, to withhold correction from a child that needs correction. It may save you a little time and trouble today, but they will pay for it later.

So don't do that. Take the extra time and trouble. If you want more help in this in the Bible, turn to the book of Proverbs, where disciplining is presented as a source of peace and delight, of hope, really as an essential part of our love. So when our kids were younger, we would sometimes just take whatever the date is and read that chapter of the book of Proverbs out loud at the dinner table. We would literally pass the Bible around, each one of us would take turns reading a verse, and then we would have to explain what that verse means.

So today would be chapter 14. And I would read a verse and I would explain what it means. Hand it to Nathan, hand it to Connie, hand it to Annie, back to me. We just keep going and talk about it. We get into very good conversations sometimes about that.

We read in Proverbs 13:24, Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. And so here in Ephesians 6 we're commanded to nourish our children with discipline and instruction. And by the way, those two terms, discipline and instruction, are overlapping, they're meant to be comprehensive, I think, together, everything that's needed from a young child to an older one. Now, perhaps you're a member here whose parents are out of the picture for whatever reason, or maybe you don't have any children. You still have a great role to play in this.

Jesus says in Mark 3, looking at those who sat around him, Here are my mother and my brothers. It's the members of the church family. We promise in our church covenant to bring up such as may at any time be under our care in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and by a pure and loving example to seek the salvation of our family and friends. Brothers and sisters, this church's children are your children. You have a special covenant and obligation to work to help us.

You don't supplant the parents' responsibilities, but you supplement them. You're part of God's kind provision. You will learn things from those kids and those families and they can learn things from you. That's part of the way the Lord has made this. That's why so many here serve in childcare, in Sunday school, and in praise factory and other such ministries.

In fact, this congregation got its start from trying to care for children on Capitol Hill. That's what was going on in the 1860s. Christians organizing to try to reach out to and care for children. And I'm thankful for how much we're still doing that today. And I pray that we can recover all those ministries.

You know, I'm glad for how many of our children's ministries we already have back, but I'm like sad for the kids who are going through those praise factory years right now, and they'll never get that because we don't have enough people volunteering. So I'm thankful for all the people that are volunteering, but I wish we could have as many as we did two years ago. So that we could get those children who aren't gonna repeat these ages, we could get that content into their minds. So brothers and sisters, if you are a member of the church and you would like to volunteer in childcare, praise factory, Sunday school, you haven't done that, don't wait any longer. These years and months are ticking past and they won't come back.

Let's take this opportunity now. While the Lord gives us these children here, to do what we can to help their parents listen themselves and be taught more. Pray that we would give ourselves to doing more of this excellent ministry, the Lord entrusts to us. Praise God for the privilege he gives to all of us to work together in serving and blessing our children, whether by praying or by giving, by being a good example or volunteering yourself. And thank you, dear church family, for all of you that are involved in our children's ministry.

There are so many of you that are involved. Let's pray though for even more workers and more fruit from our labors. So children obey your parents in the Lord. Fathers don't exasperate your children, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. We should conclude.

What a wonderful encouragement to be reminded today by God's word that at home the parents are to care for the children and the children are to obey the parents. We've been reviewing this to help us understand what the will of the Lord is, as we've been called to do up in chapter 5 verse 17, understand what the will of the Lord is. Such a topic could hardly be more important for a young congregation filled with busy parents of young, impressionable children in a day and age that's so hostile to us handling this stewardship as we should. What a precious stewardship it is. These days that seem so long when you're in the middle of them, and they'll be gone before you know it and never come back.

One writer reflecting on the situation parents and children often face here in Washington said, Washington is full of people who work at the office late and go in on Saturdays and Sundays to prepare and argue over child-friendly welfare bills and child-friendly education initiatives and Head Start programs and Reading programs for impoverished children. They're doing good work at HHS and the Department of Education and in the OEOB. It's work that's important to our country. And sometimes at their desks, they think of their own children and look up and promise themselves, next week we'll go on a picnic or to a ballgame. And their children are at home, staring at their screens, thinking, where's dad?

Where's mom?

Parents, does this sound like you?

Parents, how do you learn to love your children and nourish them as you should? Of course, to exercise authority well, you had better be under authority yourself. Our passage reminds us that children are under their parents' authority, but what about parents?

What authority are we under that we would learn about this from? We're under God's authority.

Last week, many of you were encouraged by the sermon, though I promise I didn't know how long it was until afterwards. Same thing's happening right now. My clock is turned face down to bless you.

But what's interesting about 80% of the things that comments people made to me about last week's sermon was all about one thing. It was that reading of Ezekiel 34. Why would that be so touching? Because it shows God cares about us. It shows the right use of authority is so important.

That's the good authority that parents are under. Let me just read you the end of that again from Ezekiel 34, picking it up at verse 7.

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: As I live, declares the Lord God, surely because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild beasts, since there was no shepherd, and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep; therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I I am against the shepherds. And I will require my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep. No longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them. For thus says the Lord God: 'Behold, I, I myself, will search for my sheep, and will seek them out.

Seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered. So will I seek out my sheep and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and will bring them into their own land and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel by the ravines and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture. And on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land.

There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God. Brothers and sisters, when you hear that, what do you think of? You think of that time in Matthew's Gospel where Jesus saw the crowds and he had compassion on them. Because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

You know what Jesus taught in John 10, I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. Have you found the care of the Good Shepherd?

Mom or dad, you need that care every bit as much as your children do. Can you say with David of old, the 23rd Psalm?

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for your are with me. You, rod and youd staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil.

My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Trust for the family. Is built most fundamentally finding trust in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Good Shepherd, come to rescue His lost and scattered sheep. Will you trust Him?

Let's pray.

Lord God, we pray with Augustine, Give what yout command and command what yout will.

Lord, we hear these commands for children to obey and for parents to nourish and love and discipline. Make us adequate to bring you glory and honor by heeding your Word and living wisely even in these challenging days. Drive us to Christ. Pour out your Spirit and fill us. Make us examples of the way youy've called us to live in youn image under your good authority, giving testimony to youo goodness and glory.

We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.