Series: Ephesians
Title: Children, Obey Your Parents
Text: Ephesians 6: 1-3
Date: December 14, 2014
Place: SGBC, New Jersey
Ephesians 6: 1: Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. 2: Honour thy father and mother;
(which is the first commandment with promise;) 3: That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the
earth.
We will
focus our attention on two sons this morning.
One was disobedient; the other obedient.
I am speaking of Adam and of Christ.
THE DISOBEDIENT SON
First,
Adam was the disobedient son. Adam was
the first son of God the Father. God was Adam’s Father; Adam his son. God the
Father gave his son one command, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying,
Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Gen 2: 16-17)
Adam
was to obey God his Father. It was right for Adam to do so. By his obedience Adam would honor God his Father. Had Adam obeyed and honored God, it
would have been “well” with Adam. And he would have “lived long on the earth.”
Instead, Adam disobeyed God. And because he dishonored his Father, it was not
well with Adam; spiritually, he did not live long on the earth but died. This
law was given later to show us the offense but it is why Adam must die, “For
every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death:
he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.”
(Lev 20: 9) Since Adam was a representative head, he passed on his sin and death
to us, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin;
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” (Rom 5: 12)
So the
first disobedience to a Father resulted in sin and death entering the world. You
and I were conceived in sin. We came forth from the womb disobeying and
dishonoring God. We are all disobedient sons and daughters of God by nature. We
can by no means come to God the Father by our obedience to his law.
THE OBEDIENT SON
There is
another who is the obedient Son. Of Christ Jesus, God the Father said, “This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.” (Mt 17:5)
God the
Father sent his Son into this earth to do his will: to uphold his law—including
the one set before us—to magnify and make it honorable by his perfect
obedience; to declare God just by bearing the full penalty of the law in place
of all God’s spiritual sons and daughters until justice was satisified; to
declare God the Justifier because God was in his Son justifying his children
from our sins; to save all God’s chosen children from our sins of disobeying
and dishonoring God.
The Son
of God, who is equal with the Father, took flesh like his brethren and took the
place of a servant before his Father, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I
hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but
the will of the Father which hath sent me.” (Joh 5:30) The law is the will of
God who sent Christ. One rule of law said, “Honour thy father and thy mother.” Christ
honored God his Father. Christ honored Joseph, though he was not his true
father; Christ honored his mother. He did so in perfection! Parents, have you
ever thought what it would have been like to have the Lord Jesus as your
son? He was a perfect child.
Yet,
his people had not honored God. We broke that law. And the law said, “For every
one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath
cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him.” So Christ
honored God his Father by also bearing the sin of his people, by being made a curse
for us. And he bore the stripes due unto his people.
Doing
so, he highly exalted God the Father; coing so, he obeyed and honored God the
Father to the highest honor. And God’s law also said to the child who is
obedient, “that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God
giveth thee.” (Ex 20: 12) So God the
Father was so well-pleased with his Son that God made his days to be long in
the land which God gave him.
Philippians
2: 9: Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is
above every name: 10: That at
the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things
in earth, and things under the earth; 11: And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 12:
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only,
but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling.
Psalm
2: 7: I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my
Son; this day have I begotten thee. 8: Ask of me, and I shall give thee
the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for
thy possession.
There
is one Son that obeyed God the Father with perfect obedience. Only one Son
honored God the Father with perfect honor. The obedient Son is the Lord Jesus
Christ, the only begotten Son of God.
But what
about you and I? All God’s elect must
obey God the Father in perfection or we cannot enter his holy and righteous
presence. But we came forth from our
mother’s womb speaking lies. How can we
possibly obey and honor God the Father?
HONOR THE
SON, HONOR THY FATHER
The law
says, “Honor thy father.” This is the good news of the gospel. The Son of God
honored God the Father for every chosen child of God. Now, Christ declares to
you and me, that the way we honor God the Father is by honoring his Son by
believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.
John 5:
22: For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the
Son: 23: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the
Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent
him. 24: Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth
on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into
condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
The obedient Son fulfilled the law. The obedient Son
worked the works of God the Father. Now, the obedient Son says to those he
creates anew by his grace, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him
whom he hath sent.” (Jn 6: 29) You and I can never come to God by our obedience
to the law. We have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. But through
faith in Christ we establish the whole law because Christ obeyed the Father and
honored him perfectly for his people.
This is God’s promise to all who honor the Father by
honoring his Son, by resting in Christ alone through faith, “That it may be
well with thee”—how well? “Ye are complete in him.” God says, “That thou mayest
live long on the earth.” What earth? We shall live in the new heavens and the
new earth. How long shall I live there? For all eternity, “Verily, verily, I
say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting
life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.”
He said in Exodus, this is the land “which the LORD thy God giveth thee”—salvation
is a free gift. There was nothing good in us—but God chose his people freely
without a cause in us. Righteousness is free because Christ Jesus paid all the
debts for his people. Through that very faith which God gives us to rest in
Christ, we are freely justified. Eternal life is the gift of God to the
believer because it is God honoring his obedient Son Christ Jesus.
THE EXHORTATION
Now, let’s hear the exhortation of grace
given to every true believer, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for
this is right.” (Eph 6: 1) Constrained by Christ’s love for us, children of
God, obey your parents in the Lord. A born-again child of God is the only one
who can obey their parents in the Lord. Our gracious God says, “This is right.”
Whatever he says is right. Happiness is doing what he says is right.
And constrained by the love of Christ who fulfilled the
law for us and is the end of the law, our perfect righteousness, he says, “Honour
thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it
may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.” (Eph 6: 2-3) When
God our Father makes his child to be born-again, he makes us to see that our
heavenly Father’s love is from everlasting to everlasting. He has given us
everlasting life.
Then if we have father or mother who does not know this
good news—we want to honor God our Father and honor our parents by telling them
this good news of the obedient Son, Christ Jesus; by honoring God by praying
God will make it effectual in their hearts and waiting on God to do so if he is
pleased. And by obeying our parents in the Lord and honoring them, even as we
would unto the Lord.
And if we have father or mother who taught us this good
news, then how God’s grace will make you to want to obey and honor them.
One last word, if you are a child who is yet in unbelief,
obey and honor your parents by listening as they teach you the gospel, by
coming to hear the word preached and in everything they command so long as it
is in the Lord. Your parents may be the earthen vessels that God uses to draw
you to Christ and save you from your sins. I pray it be so!
Amen!