Blueprints, Part 16

This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Winter Springs, Florida where Reverend Kevin Labia's our senior pastor. Today's message is by our assistant pastor Reverend Kurt Moore. It's part 16 in a series on the Book of Ephesians titled, Blueprints. The sermon is taken from Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1-4. Now here's Kurt with today's message. My wife always tells me introduce yourself. My name is Kurt Moore and I'm one of the pastors at Willow Creek Church. I'm the pastor of discipleship and Christian education and it's great to be with you this morning as we continue to look at God's Word in our series from the Book of Ephesians in the title of our overall view of Ephesians as Blueprints. It's God's plan for humanity, God's plan for his church. And we want to release the children at this point for children's church so you may fly like the wind. We're going to begin and actually looking at the relationship between parents and children as it's found in Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1-4, and the text will be up on the screen in front of you. But here's the Word of God. Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother and 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 to bring them up in the discipline and in the instruction of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we come before you as parents, as grandparents, as children. We are all children. But Father, we are thankful that we are your children, the children of our Heavenly Father. We thank you Father that you have rescued us, that you have pursued us, that you've forgiven us and that you've restored us and you continue to pursue and renew us and to forgive us. But Lord, we forget. And Father, in our relationships, many times suffer as a result. Father, we pray that you would, as you always do, override our sinful flaws, our wrong desires and our imperfections. And we thank you that part of your love for us is that you would transform all of these things and make them whole. We anticipate that. We long for that because we do continue to struggle. By the way, thank you that you love us and the assurance of your unfailing love is before us on the cross. And an empty tomb with Jesus who was obedient in every way and who took our penalty for our disobedience. So Father, we thank you for the assurance, even as we've heard this morning. But Father, we want to hear from you more. We want to hear from your word the roles that you've set for us as parents and as children. But Father, we need you to speak to us. We pray that you would silence the anxieties and the fears, the failures as parents and as children. And that we would only hear you. We pray about your Holy Spirit that you would make it so. And we thank you that you want this more than even we want it. So we do ask that you would, you would talk to us this morning and we pray that we respond in great love and praise. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. The last time I was before you preaching, it was I think three or four weeks ago. And after I preached, I walked back down to the pew where my father was sitting and he's there right now and he said, did you pick the short straw? It was the text on sexuality and the relationships that God has established between husband and wife. It's very challenging text. And I would say this could be considered a very challenging text as well. But it is God's word. So it's true. And it's for us. It's for our blessing and for our benefit. But we were looking at the relationship, sexual relationships, sexuality and the purpose that God had designed for that was for human flourishing. And then two weeks ago, Kevin preached the continuation of that in greater detail of the marriage relationship between a husband and a wife. And so today we're going to continue this theme of God's design for human flourishing by looking at the relationship between parents and children. It's very significant for us. And as we begin, and by way of illustration, I want to draw your attention to the Disney Pixar classic of 2003, Finding Nemo. It's one of my favorite movies. How many of you have seen Finding Nemo? Now you're going to present your church, which is unusual that you raise your hands this high, but can you raise a little bit higher? All right. We'll see. There are many of you that have seen it. Some of you haven't, you have not seen it. Well, we're going to talk about Finding Nemo. And the reason we're going to talk about it is because it's a great relationship between a father and a son. They're clown fish and they live, and this is animated. They live on the great barrier reef just off the coast of Australia. And here's the plot line. The plot goes like this. Nemo, who is the son, he is born into a world that is both beautiful and dangerous. It's both beautiful and dangerous. And his father, Marlon, is understandably worried about Nemo. He's worried about Nemo because Nemo is born with a birth defect. He's born with one fin smaller than the other, and therefore he's not a great swimmer. And so his father is overly concerned for him, but another thing has happened. Before Nemo's birth, his mother and all of his brothers and sisters are killed by a barracuda. Thank you, Disney, for nightmares for children. I don't think we're scarred by seeing Bambi's mother died in the very beginning, right? But it's true that we live in a beautiful world, but we also live in a world that's very, very dangerous. And so because of what happened in Nemo's past, because of his birth defect, he's broken, but Marlon is extremely cautious. He's an extremely cautious parent, but he's rightly so. He sees the world as it is full of hidden dangers. But what's happened to Marlon's father is that he has lost a vision for the beauty and grace and wonder of the world that he lives in. Now on the other hand, well, let me say this, his parenting is fear-filled. His parenting is overprotective for his son, Nemo. Now, on the other hand, Nemo, Nemo only sees the world as beautiful, full of wonder, full of excitement, full of fun, but he lacks a proper understanding of the hidden dangers that exist in the world in which he lives. And the beginning of the movie, what happens is Marlon, because of his fear-filled overprotective parenting, barricades his son, Nemo, in front of his friends. And so Nemo rejects his father's warning to stay on the reef, and he swims out into the open waters. And when he swims out into the open waters, because of his disobedience to his father's request, he's captured by scuba diver, and he's taken away. And so the movie, which is a great movie, it shows how the father pursues the son in order to rescue him and to bring him back home to the reef. It's a great story. It's a successful story. It's an enduring story because it speaks to a truth. There's the layers below that speak to the reality of our own lives. We live in a world that is both beautiful and that is dangerous. It's the reality of the world in which we live. And children are not born knowing the beauty and the grace of God. They're not born knowing the dangers of their own desires, and they're not born knowing the dangers of the world in which they live. And so God has established the family to be the primary community for teaching and for learning, for the children to learn about God, godliness, and the gospel. And so God has established the family for that purpose. And as we'll see this morning, God's word gives instruction and it gives promise to both children and to parents. And it also provides practical warning to parents to have the appropriate measure of both grace and truth and daily parenting. And so we'll see that from the text. The first thing we want to see from our text is the purpose of obedience. We want to see the purpose of obedience. Paul says it's because it's right. Because it's right. It's the right thing to do. Obedience is right. And I'm going to give you a little bit of a background on the Bible. It's very brief. The reality is Jesus is the center of the church, of the New Testament church. He's the fulfillment of the promises made to Old Testament Israel. And you and I, believers of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are rescued through His through Jesus's life, death, burial, and resurrection. And He has made us His own. And so we are the continuation of God's people in exile. We are God's people in exile. But we're brought into the kingdom of God and we're not merely subjects of His kingdom. We're called children. We're called beloved children and we're placed into a family of God. And so the reality is that God's love is based upon relationship. God's plan for rescue is always through relationship. It's always been through relationship. And as a result, He's established earthly relationships that would promote human flourishing. So when we look back at some of the previous chapters that we've looked at in Ephesians, if you look back in Ephesians chapter 4, for example, we saw that God puts us in relationships with other believers in the church. And it's for this purpose in verses 14 and 15 of chapter 4, He says, He puts us in relationship with other believers in the church so that we may no longer be children. Tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes, rather speaking the truth and love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head into Christ. And then by way of review in chapter 5, we saw that God's most intimate relational design for establishing human flourishing is marriage. And God has designed it for that purpose. Now we see that God has yet another relational design to promote human flourishing and it's the relationship between the parents and the child. And so in verse 1, there's a very, very strong command that's given. The command is children obey your parents because it's right. Obey your parents because it's right. You have to know this that in the original language, this is a stronger command than exists between the relationship even between the husband and wife. Because that relationship, that command was based upon voluntary submission based upon love and respect. It was to be voluntary out of love and respect. There is no voluntary option in this relationship. The command is very, very strong and it carries great force and weight with it. Children obey, obey your parents because it's right. And ask the question, why do you think that the wording would be so strong? Why would it have such great force? Well, the reality is this, it's because the human heart is not naturally inclined to obedience. It's not naturally inclined to obedience and the heart is naturally, it's not inclined to submit to God's laws nor to understand His grace. In Proverbs 22, 15, we hear this, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. It's not an insult, but it's true. Fulishness is bound up in the heart of a child, and a child's heart desires, wants, loves, inclinations are always towards self. There's a thing that's going on right now in social media. It's called a selfie. Some of you know what a selfie is. Some of you don't, so I'm going to tell you. A selfie is where you take your camera and you take a picture of yourself, and then you put it on social media, Twitter, whatever, Pinterest. I don't even know if you do that on Pinterest, whatever. I just use that word so you'll think I know what I'm talking about. You put it on Facebook. But before selfies were invented, which is only a product of our development within the last few years as a human race, prior to that, children or natural born selfies, always with an inclination towards themselves, always with a desire towards whatever happens to be the most attractive thing that's before their days at that very moment. So whatever happens to be the most appealing thing at the moment, and the heart therefore, the reason the wording is so strong here is that the heart needs to be shaped by parents, which God has given for this very purpose. The heart needs to be shaped by parents and God has given, but the heart needs to be shaped and parents are the ones that are given to children for that very purpose. Children, you're to obey your parents because it's right, and it's proper, but you're also to obey your parents because it's good for you. That's the next thing we see here. The purpose of obedience is because it's right, but also because it's good. Look at verses two and three. The command to obey in verse one is followed by the promise in verses two and three, which read, honor your father and mother, and this is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land. Now Paul puts this command to obey the parents in this broader story of the Bible. He doesn't just say obey, but he puts it into a story, a beautiful story of God's plan of redemption of his people Israel, and so if you know what this text comes from, this is the fifth commandment of the Ten Commandments, that God had given to his people as after he had rescued them from Egyptian slavery, had crossed the Red Sea with his beautiful miracle of sea-crossing. Now they're on their way to take possession of the land that God had promised his people, and as they prepared into the land, God gives them these commandments that are both blessings and warnings. The commandments that God gives are blessings and warnings, and the reason he does that is because he's preparing them to go into the land and he's going to remind them that as they go into the land they're going to go into hostile land that's foreign to the things of God, that the things and the customs and beliefs of these foreigners are going to be competing against this one true God who is the only living God, not not false gods that they worship. And so we remind them by giving them the commandments and Paul wants to pull this out and remind the children that there are promises, and the promises because they're good, but God reminds the people of Israel that when they go into the foreign lands that they be tempted to turn to the customs and the beliefs of those who live in the land, and so what God says is, I give you these, I've led you out, I've bound myself to you with a binding love contract which we call a covenant, which God has made a covenant that continues on, and we see the fulfillment of that in Jesus. But what God is saying is I am the one true God, follow me, trust me, and so he binds himself to his people, and he says this, he says, I will be your God and you will be my people if you will follow me, you'll receive blessings. But if you go your own way and if you're disobedient, you will you will have hardships that are unnecessary hardships. So there are blessings and there are curses along with this, and so my Paul saying pulling this out and saying there's a promise, he's saying it's good, it's good for you. The purpose for obedience children is not only because it's right, but because it's good for you. God promises blessings for your obedience and there's warnings for your disobedience. It's good to obey. And if you're a child, if you're a child living with your parents, you need to obey the truth of God's word because it's right, but you also need to have your heart shaped by the promise, by the promise that obedience is for your good. But you also need to have your heart captivated, you need to have your heart captivated by this beautiful love story of God's plan of redemption, that God's grace and God's love for you is binding and it's pursuing of you even in the midst of your disobedience. And so your hearts need to be captivated by a God who forgives, by a God who extends mercy and a God who extends grace, not license. What kind of God could you follow if you thought his standards were beyond, he was not willing to forgive you. It would be difficult and so that's actually Paul's purpose for setting this within the context. But I want to go back to the story of Nemo. I want to take you back into the story because there's a turning point for Nemo. The turning point for Nemo and the story comes and to give you back story if you've not seen it. Nemo was taken by the scuba diver and he's put into an aquarium in a dentist office in Sydney, Australia. Very creative writing, beautiful picture. Well, Nemo is in this aquarium. It's not a great life. He's just within a small aquarium. But also he's been picked out by a little girl who is notorious for killing fish. It's not that she's mean. It's that she overly loves them. And so when she takes them in the little baggy that they're in, she shakes them violently and then they wind up as fish that swim upside down. But actually that means it's a dead fish. And so Nemo knows that his life is going to be pretty short even in the tank. And so the turning point comes when Nigel who is the pelican, I've seen this movie. I've seen this. I can't count the time. I've seen it. It's a beautiful story because kind of it's a gospel story. So Nigel who is this pelican, he flies in and he tells the fish in the aquarium where Nemo is and he tells Nemo he says he says your dad's been fighting the entire ocean looking for you. And Nemo says incredulously he says my father really because he knows his father is very fearful. And Nigel says oh yeah he's traveled hundreds of miles. He's been battling sharks and jellyfish and then he goes on and on. And then Nemo comes to the reality that it is his father that he does love him, that he is pursuing him and he says it's my dad. He's coming for me. And prior to this point in the story Nemo has lost all hope of being rescued. He's lost all hope of ever being reunited to his father at their home on the reef. And knowing that his father has committed to his rescue that he is pursuing him and that he is knowing that his father loves him and has forgiven him and is coming after him. It motivates his desire to return home. It motivates his desire to return home where he will be welcomed, loved and forgiven. And it's then that he begins his plan of escape. You have to go watch it if you haven't seen it yet. But let me tell you this, children knowing that God loves and forgives you, knowing that He loves and forgives you that His promises are good and they're intended to motivate your obedience to your parents and to God. This is why the command is given and why the promise is given immediately following. It's right and it's good and there are promises but it's attached to the reality that to motivate your obedience to both God and to your parents. And so when you know that God's promises are intended to rescue you from potentially bad choices, when you know that, when you hear that, when you come to understand that reality, then you can trust and obey your parents who God has given to you. And in trusting them, this Bible says that you're actually also trusting God. But the command is to obey your parents in the Lord. That means you're not to obey them if they're asking you to do something that violates God's will and God's word. That's the only condition that's given here. But eventually children, you can say as Proverbs 197 says, the law of the Lord is perfect. It's refreshing the soul. The statues of the Lord are trustworthy making wise the simple. And so it's right and it's good for you to obey. That's the purpose of obedience. Now parents, you can have a tremendous impact on your children. And in verse 4, as we continue on, we'll see the pattern for parenting that Paul has provided. It's a tongue twister. The pattern of parenting that Paul has provided. Say that really quick, but don't do it now. Say it in your mind. So I'm going to look at the pattern for parenting from verse 4. Listen to the text from verse 4. Fathers do not provoke your children's anger but bring them up in the discipline and in the instruction of the Lord. British theologian John Scott died a few years ago. He was a prolific writer. He wrote a number of commentaries. One which he wrote is from the Book of Ephesians. And I think what he says is profound. Scott says this. He said when Paul outlines how parents should behave towards their children, it is not the exercise but the restraint of their authority that he urges upon them. He says, here's a throttle. We're going to throttle you back a little bit. That's what starts saying that the text which gives the warning first and then the command, saying don't provoke your children but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. It's an exercise restraint. And so therefore he begins with this warning. And the pattern he gives is in complete contrast to what existed in the culture at the time because Roman fathers, Roman parents, were notorious for their abuse, for their heavy-handedness. And let me tell you this as well because it says father, you can include mother in this as well. He's including parents in the raising of children. The reason we can add this is because when you read other texts of scripture where it says brothers, he's not just speaking to men. He's speaking to believers. So you can insert brothers and sisters in that. And so it's completely appropriate and should be read, parents, this is a responsibility for both of you to raise your children. But the picture here that Paul paints is a picture of fathers as self-controlled, gentle, patient educators of their children which was in stark contrast to the norms of the day. And that's the reality. So what is the pattern? What is the pattern of parenting that we see here in verse four? Well, immediately following this warning, Paul uses key words with the desire to evoke an image of tender care. It's designed to evoke this image of tender care. And so the words in the original language which says to bring them up really mean literally to nourish or to feed. And the image is to nourish or to feed as if you would a fragile plant. And so if you think about, if you know anything about gardening, you know that like you wouldn't you wouldn't put a plant that is supposed to be in shade and direct sunlight. It needs the appropriate amount of light or shade. And also with plants you need to have the right soil and you need to have the right drainage of water. You need to have the right nutrients coming in. So what he's saying is there's gentle care that needs to take place that needs to be an appropriate measure of both discipline and teaching. And the reason for this is because children are very delicate. Their personalities are very delicate. And in the same way to use this illustration plants different plants are different. Your children are different. And so you can't you obviously learn this if you have multiple children that you can't parent the exact same way with each one because their personalities are so different. And so the command here in the pattern for parenting is to use this image of tender care because the reality is parents you can rob your children of the life shaping influence by being either too strong or by being too absent as a parent or too relaxed. You can crush their spirits as much by a lack of love and care as you can by being too overly strict. And so this is call for this measured balance of discipline and instruction based upon upon your children. But you are called to parents. And you are called to apply that. But with this with this warning. But the reality is how do you how do you avoid bad parenting? Well the reality is you don't. Well your your centers. Just as we've talked about in marriage in order for you to have a good marriage you need to recognize that there are two centers in that relationship in order to have this good relationship with your children you need to recognize that your center as well as your child. And so how do you avoid bad parenting by either you know either by being too strict or too relaxed as the text calls children to trust and obey parents this is the same command for you to trust and obey your heavenly father too in your parenting. And what does that what does that look like back to the story? The turning point in the story for Marlin is found in the in the belly of the fish. Actually he swallowed by a whale. And so he is in in the belly of the fish with what's the name of the fish that accompanies him? Dory thank you class you guys are awesome. So he's in the he's in the belly of this whale with Dory and actually in the mouth. And so