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Start with just kind of going over some of the just real quick, some of the things that we've come from. Deborah started us out talking about our blessings in the Lord and, how different ways that he's blessed us and who we are in Christ and that we're his children, we're that adopted, that we're seated in the heavenlies with him. Paul prayed earnestly that we would know him. We learned about the Old Testament and the New Testament how in both places it started out with faith and in our hearts to know God and that we are one and we talked a lot about unity and who we are in the body of Christ. Paul prayed again that would sink in the song that Amy and Casey were singing how deep and how wide is his love for us and that that would sink in that we'd know how much he loves us so we could be able to live it out.
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We've talked about how God does the work. He's created us to be new creatures, and that means there's no more futility and we have a purpose and that is to live for his glory. And then last week Deborah talked about being filled with the spirit and what that looks like and that was just such a clear picture of the visible things that God does. He brings joy and thankfulness and submission and that kind of comes into this week it's kind of a continuation of that this week but the focus of this week is the motivation for why we do it and we do it for Him and for His glory. And then next week Deborah's gonna talk about the battle that we are in spiritually and how we can stand firm.
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So I loved Deborah's talk last week just talking about those visuals and our small group instead of actually taking prayer requests we said, which one of these things do you want us to pray for for you this week? And I thought that was really neat and we each shared you know which thing we were struggling with the most and I was just like all three I just I don't know. And so I just asked that I would be filled with the spirit as I live my life out as a mom at home. And I just think it's really funny how God works in your life and of course this week I'm talking about children obeying your parents and of course this week was the last two weeks have been especially challenging in that respect and so I guess God's teaching me through that. So things have been going pretty well and I felt like you know, Dancey had given me this book that I was reading and it was really helping and it was going well and I felt like God was working and they were responding and then Monday night, getting ready for Iwana's, it's been a whole day of school.
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It's time for me to get dinner on the table and they were all playing outside and I just sat down for a second to read and they were right out my window, they're playing in the fireplace which is fine, they're getting dirty, it's fine, they're happy. And I looked out and Sam had cried, I said check on Sam, he's fine. I sit back down and I mean, it was maybe two minutes had gone by and I hear, hurry. Hide it. We don't want mommy to see.
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And so I go and I I look out the window, they're not where they were two minutes ago. So I look out the other window and you guys they had come inside, crawled up into the top shelf, pulled out the ant poisoning. The picture on the back has scissors to open it. They'd gone back around, gotten the scissors, cut open the ant poisoning. It was like this liquid gel stuff, and then they had poured it all over the back deck.
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It was on their clothes. It was Sam was like touching it in his fingers or dogs running around, and I was like, I just lost it. I was just like, what? I don't even know. Like, you don't use your brain?
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Like and and I was just I was just like so worried too. And I was just like I was crying and I was like angry and it was just like everything came out. And so anyways, I just tell you that just to show you that my family is not perfect and we don't have it all together at home. So harmony in the home. It begins with being filled with the spirit and everybody was okay.
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I did call poison control, and everyone was fine. We washed everybody up. And I I will tell you that I know people that have never called poison control, and I have called poison control probably 10 times. I mean, this is like my children like to, I don't know, test the boundaries. So, anyways, I'm glad I told that story because I needed to loosen up a little bit.
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Paul in so Weirsby said, Paul indicated that this spiritual harmony begins in the lives of Christians who are submitted to the Lordship of Christ. So that's kind of what we're talking about today is being submitted to the Lordship of Christ. And there's three things that I want to do today. We're probably just gonna go down through the text but three things I wanna do today. I wanna honor my parents through this talk.
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And I want second thing is I wanna inspire us to higher calling as wives, children, parents, employees, employers, whatever your role is. And then third thing is just bring it all back and point to him and bring him glory. So let's go to the text. So it's Ephesians six verses one through nine. I would like to just start by reading the whole thing and then we'll go through it.
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It says, children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise so that it may be may be well with you and that you may live long on this earth. Fathers do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling in the sincerity of your heart as to Christ. Not by way of eye service as men pleasers, but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the heart.
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With good will render service as to the Lord and not to men. Knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord whether slave or free. And masters do the same to them and give up threatening knowing that both their master and yours is in heaven and there is no partiality with him. Lord, I just thank you for this word. Lord, I pray you speak through me today and that we would be blessed and we'd be drawn closer to you in Jesus name.
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So it starts out with children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. And I I love this that Paul is speaking to the children and he's using his authority to speak to the children. He's saying children obey your parents. And I actually after this happened I talked to pastor Ray about coming over and talking with my children, and he thought that would be a good idea. I think it might work.
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I don't know. It's I think the difficulty of this is that the way that we live this out is being submitted to the Lord. And our children are not always submitted to the Lord. And that's why as parents we have to train them. And so obeying your parents.
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So this is my mom when I was when I was raised she learned when she was young. She always said to the extent that your child obeys it's her parents is the extent that she'll obey God when she's older, when she's grown. And that really she was not, discipline didn't come easy to her but because of that, that motivated her to discipline us and to make sure that we learned how to obey because she wanted us to obey God when we were older. And my mom was the most steady person, she is. I've never seen her lose her temper.
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She's she can be angry, but it's not like it's more like angry at something that's wrong, know. But she's never she's never like yelled or lost her temper or been angry. So I'm just I feel really blessed to have grown up with that and grown up with someone who took discipline seriously and did it in a way that it wasn't in anger, but it was in the right way. In Hebrews twelve six says, for those whom the Lord loves he disciplines. So that's our motivation.
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We discipline because we love our children. My granddad, and I'm gonna talk about him a little bit more in minute. My granddad's turning 90 and when his grandmother died, my mom tells me this story because she still remembers when my granddad's grandmother died and he was crying. And he said to my mom, she's the only one that whoever spanked me. And he knew that she loved him because she cared enough to discipline him.
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In Samuel it says, I completely forgot to write down the reference. I'm sorry. He says, has the Lord as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to listen is better than the fat of rams. So that's what God wants from us.
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He wants our obedience and that's really what we want from our children. I'm always telling my kids this. I'm on your team like I'm on your side and I want what's best for you. When I ask you to do something it's because I want what's best for you. And then in verse two it says, honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with a promise that it may be well with you and that you may live long on this earth.
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And I love how it says, honor your father and mother with a promise that it may be well with you. And it didn't say, children honor your father and mother so it go well for your parents and you won't drive them crazy. But it says that it go it will go well for the child. And our discipline and our training are for the children and it's for their sake. And we want them to learn to honor us for their sake so it'll go well for them.
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Again, like mommy, mommy's on your team. I want what's best for you. I want you to live a long happy life. I want things to go well for you in your life. So the difference between obedience and honor.
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Obeying is like getting the job done, doing what you're told, but honor is about how you do it and it's about your attitude. This book that Dancey gave me, it's called motivate your child and it's by doctor Scott Teransky. That's really good. It defines honor. There's it says there's three parts to honor and it puts it in a way that you can teach it to your child.
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The first thing it says is treating people as special. That's a way to honor someone. Number two is doing more than what's expected. And three is having a good attitude. And I love that obedience is usually what you think about for children that are younger and still in the home, but honor and respect is something that you can do no matter how old you are.
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And we can teach our young children to honor as well and that's what this book talked about. It talked about like if you ask a child to set the table, if they set the table that's obedience, but if they do extra and make it special, they're honoring. And Amy, can you put up the slide now? So I thought I might as well tell a good story about my kids too. So this Saturday morning it was about a month ago, my kids that part might not have been the honoring the stinky dad part but they made us stay in bed and which is great on a Saturday morning and you know we kept peeking out like what's going on what's going on and because the stove was on we could hear all this stuff happening.
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And that's scary with my kids. Anyways, they had made us scrambled eggs and they had made confetti. You can't really tell but I mean they had like cut up a million pieces of paper and they had made snowflakes and decorated the whole kitchen and they made this banner and Sam's not in the picture but I'm sure he helped a little bit. But we walk out and they threw the confetti up in the air and they said, we love you mom and stinky dad. Anyways, so that is just a picture of honor because they made us they treated us as special.
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And anyways, so they do have some good parts. But I was really when Dansy shared this book with me about that and how young children can honor when they treat you as special, I just thought that is my Hayden. She does stuff like that when I ask her to set the table. She always does it perfect and makes it special and put something extra out. And, or she'll just do stuff like this when I'm not even asking.
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So it it made me just knowing in the struggles that I do have that there, God is working in her heart and I was encouraged. So anyway, so it can start with young children, but also if you're an older child or if your children are older, no matter how old your parents are or even if they're gone, you can still honor them. My mom so my granddad's turning 90 and a couple years ago, she made him this book. And he he was in the war. He was a radio operator on a b 17, but she took and my mom's not very good technically like with computers and stuff.
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So this was a big deal. She took every picture that she had of him as a baby, letters he wrote. This is his Western Union. It says, mission completed. We'll be home soon.
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And she like all these letters that her dad had written his dad, his father, pictures of his his grandparents, his report cards, and she put it all together in this book. This was him in a newspaper article and she did this to honor him and it says it at the beginning of the book. This book is dedicated to you out of love and respect from our from your family. Anyways, and it was just to honor him. And anyways, he's turning 90 and we're about to go down in a week to be with him and he's not doing well.
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But anyways, I just thought that was a good picture of you don't have to be a young child to still honor your parents. And I also I always think of the verse, it's Joel two twenty five. It says, then I will make up to you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten. And I just felt like I wanted to share that if if you felt like there's been some lost years, there's still time, God can make up for those years and the brokenness if it's there. My other granddad, my dad's dad died right I think I was a freshman in college.
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And so and when I was in college, was in a writing class and I had always been a straight a student but I got to this class and I kept getting CCC on papers and I was like, I thought I knew how to write. And she was a great teacher because she was really trying to teach us what good writing was. And finally, I just scrapped it all and I wrote this paper and it was about my grandfather and I got an a. And so it was one of these things that he felt really special by it and before he died he asked me to send this paper to his military school and I still haven't done it. So but, the thing what happened was is I lost that original paper and that that paper that I wrote about him wouldn't have honored him because because it was the a paper, it was so real and so much detail that you wouldn't share that with the public.
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It was more of like, he was such a special man. And, anyways, so I need to write a new letter even though he's gone, write the new paper and put it at the university to honor him. And so we can do that even for those that are that are gone. Okay. So verse four, it says, fathers do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
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And I love this because it's the discipline instruction of the Lord. So this is the submission part of being a parent. I thought we'd look about how the Lord did it. How did Christ instruct? There's two ways that he instructed.
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He constantly directed people back to his father, to the father. And number two, he served. And so in pointing back to the father, that's kind of and it says fathers but I think because we're all women here that we can think about it as parents. The purpose of fatherhood is to show the fatherhood of God and to glorify the father in heaven. And so we Christ's life, he he was a demonstration.
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He lived it out as well as his teaching. And that's our life as parents, to be a demonstration and to teach and to always point back to Christ. Even when Jesus was headed to the cross, he said, it's John seventeen one. He said, father, the hour has come. Glorify thy son that thy son may glorify thee.
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So he wanted even in his death to glorify his father. We need to teach our kids that God is great and we're meant to live for his glory And we do this by submitting to the Holy Spirit. And again, this can be no matter how how old your kids are. And, one of you came up to me two weeks ago and I don't think she's here today, but she said, I'm going to see my daughters and they love Jesus, but they might not be walking with him now, but I'm gonna share with them what I'm learning from Ephesians. And those are her two grown daughters.
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So it doesn't matter how old your kids are. I loved first Timothy I mean, second Timothy chapter three. So this is Paul writing to Timothy and he's like a son to him and he's mentoring Timothy. And again, I think about my mom as I read this but so second Timothy three thirteen through 17. It says, but evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.
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You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Jesus Christ. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work. So that's another thing of pointing people to the pointing your children to the father and doing it through the word and through scripture, growing them up to know the sacred writings from childhood And that will lead that gives them the wisdom that leads to salvation. We can use scripture as we're training our kids because it's useful. It says it's useful for teaching.
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It's useful for reproof, for correction, and training, and righteousness. And that's what equips them. And I am blessed because my mom my mom is a Bible teacher and, she started teaching the Bible when I was, I think I was like 14 old. So, but she was passionate about sharing it with us as kids and because she had grown up in the church but didn't really understand the gospel until college. And when she finally understood, it was like in a complete life change.
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And she became passionate about, we have to tell our kids need to understand the gospel and it's the parents role to share Christ with their kids. And it's not taking them to church but it's that too but it's we as parents need to share Christ with our kids and she did that for my brother and I and she led us to the Lord when we were both three. And then she continued to she she read the Bible to us every single night. Just she didn't have like a children's Bible. She would just read from the Bible.
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And then she started teaching us Bible studies when we were in like middle school. She found precept is another Bible study that that's the one she usually teaches but they have a precept for kids. So she started leading my brother and I and our friends in precept studies. And so anyways, that's just an example of growing your up growing up your children and using the word, for teaching and and correction. So the other way that Christ did it was through serving.
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Mark ten forty five says, for even the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And I think about serving and, you know, there there is that struggle like how much do we serve our kids? We shouldn't just be like waiting on them hand and foot, but I just I think that especially when they're young, everything that we do is serving them. And it's it's also in the way that we teach them and the way that we interact them because the verse says, do not provoke your children to anger. And when I think about that and usually if I have provoked my children to anger, it's when I'm disciplining because I'm frustrated or I'm annoyed with their behavior.
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But when I'm serving them, I'm disciplining for their good and for their benefit because I want them to grow up to be to obey God and to honor God. Philippians two three through something. Starting in verse three, do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind, let each of you regard one another as more important than himself. Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who though he who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond servant, and being made in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man.
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He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. And I just think about that. This we're bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, and that's the way the Lord did it by pouring himself out in humility and in service. It wasn't about his rights, but he would point them back to the father. And I think that a lot of parenting is laying down some of our rights and our privileges, for the good of our child to bring them up to know the Lord.
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And that verse can also play into it's just kind of a segue into the next section, and this may be where many of you more are right now. Not this not as slaves, but but maybe in employees and employers. Verse five says, slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh with fear and trembling and the sincerity of your heart as to Christ. And I just wanted to mention that this this first doesn't mean that the Bible condones slavery or that saying slavery is okay. It's just admitting that this is a real situation in which a lot of people find themselves in this world.
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It's kind of like saying, if you find yourself in this situation, this is how you should handle it. And we can look at it from the standpoint of employers and employees. So what it's saying here is sincerely follow orders and be respectful of those in command over you. We all have someone that's over us or an authority over us and we should be respectful and follow orders in a way that's sincere. I love how it says as to Christ and that's our motivation.
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Verse six says, not by way of eye service as men pleasers, but of slaves but as slaves of Christ doing the will of God from the heart. You may have a boss that's hard to follow, or someone above you that you don't care for, but you can look at it as serving Christ and that makes it easier to do it from the heart because you know you're doing it for the Lord. Colossians three twenty three says, whatever you do, do your work heartily as for the Lord rather than for men. Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ you serve.
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So verses seven through nine in Ephesians six, it says, with goodwill render service as to the Lord and not to men. Knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free. And masters, do the same things to them and give up threatening knowing that both their master and yours is in heaven and there's no partiality with him. And I loved the message. That's another version of the Bible is it just says, keeping in mind that no matter who happens to be giving the orders, you're really serving God.
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And so that should be our mindset that no matter who we're serving, whether it be our kids or our boss or whoever it is, our husbands, we're we're really serving the Lord. John Piper says, it is the work of the spirit of God in the lives of those who do everything for Christ's sake. I'll say it again. It is the work of the spirit of God in the lives of those who do everything for Christ's sake. And then he said, therefore, the question for you who want a happy home and a meaningful mission and destiny for your family is, are you filled with the spirit of God and yielded to the lordship of Christ?
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So the spirit in us, this the the mission of the spirit in us is to exalt Jesus. In John sixteen fourteen, Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit coming and he said, the spirit he will glorify me. So when we are submitted and filled with the spirit we will bring glory to Christ. And so just kind of wrapping up that whole section from Deborah's week. It started in verse 18 when it said, be filled with the spirit.
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And it said, submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ. So no matter who we're submitting to or respecting or obeying, we're doing it as to the Lord. So it said, submitting to each other out of reverence for Christ. It said, wives to your own husbands as to the Lord. Husbands are to love wives as Christ loved the church.
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Children are to obey your parents in the Lord. The father is supposed to bring them up in the discipline instruction of the Lord, and slaves are to be obedient to masters as to Christ. So first Corinthians ten thirty one says, whether then you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. So everything we do should be to honor Jesus. And I think about a couple weeks ago when we talked about how we were in the past and it was like the futility of our minds and how that meant we had no purpose and now we have a purpose and we don't have futility anymore.
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So I just I wanted to end with I love this quote another John Piper quote about our purpose and our homes. He said, if we desire to see the spirit of God transform our family life, we must surrender totally to Jesus as Lord and turn all our daily doings into an offering of worship to him. When the spirit reigns in your life, you do everything with the you do everything with a view to honoring Jesus. And in that way, Jesus becomes the foundation and focus and goal of the family and the life at home or at work or in your personal life is transformed. So I love that.
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It's just like you do everything with a view to honoring Jesus.
