A man bought a donkey from a preacher. The preacher told the man that this donkey had been trained in a very unique way (being the donkey of a preacher). The only way to make the donkey go was to say, "Hallelujah!" The only way to make the donkey stop was to say, "Amen!"
The man was pleased with his purchase and immediately got on the animal to try out the preacher’s instructions. "Hallelujah!" shouted the man. The donkey began to trot. "Amen!" shouted the man. The donkey stopped immediately. "This is great!" said the man. With a "Hallelujah" he rode off, very proud of his new purchase.
The man traveled for a long time through the mountains. As he headed towards a cliff, he tried to remember the word to make the donkey stop. "Stop," said the man. "Halt!" he cried. The donkey just kept going. "Oh, no..."
"Bible...Church!...Please! Stop!!" shouted the man. The donkey just began to trot faster. He was getting closer and closer to the edge of the cliff.
Finally, in desperation, the man said a prayer: "Please, dear Lord. Please make this donkey stop before I go off the end of this mountain. In Jesus’ name, AMEN." The donkey came to an abrupt stop just one step from the edge of the cliff.
"HALLELUJAH!" shouted the man.
I guess the moral of that story is that it’s not always a good thing to have an obedient donkey. But as we pick up again this morning on our journey through Ephesians, we’ll find that when it comes to our families, obedience is an essential element in not only raising our children to become disciples of Jesus, but also in creating a legacy that we can pass on to future generations.
An old Chinese proverb says, "One generation plants the trees, and another gets the shade." I can really relate to that proverb. For most of our married life, it seems like very time that we moved into a new house and finally got around to getting our yard landscaped, we ended up moving for some reason. And occasionally we’ve had the opportunity to go back to those homes and observe how the current owners are enjoying the shade from the trees that we planted many years ago.
If you’re a follower of Jesus Christ this morning, you’re living in the shade that comes from the spiritual trees that were planted by a previous generation. For many of you, there is a rich spiritual heritage that has been passed down to you from your parents, grandparents, and maybe even many generations previous to that. And, as we’ll see this morning, that is an essential part of God’s design for the family.
But I also know that some of you haven’t been the beneficiaries of parents who helped you to grow in your faith. You don’t have that rich spiritual heritage that has been passed down through your family from generation to generation. Perhaps you’re even the very first follower of Jesus in your family. And if that’s the case, then God, in His infinite wisdom and grace, has provided spiritual parents for you that have planted those trees in your life.
Although the passage we’ll look at this morning is, on the surface, a very clear and simple command for children to obey and honor their parents, that command is just part of a larger plan of God to develop followers of Jesus Christ who will plant trees for generations to come. And for us to see that we need to take a few minutes to review so that we can put our passage in it’s proper context.
In the first three chapters of Ephesians, Paul described God’s work in our lives. He began by describing the working of God’s grace as God the Father chose us and predestined us to be adopted as His children, God the Son redeemed us from the devastation of sin and God the Holy Spirit sealed us as a guarantee that we will one day receive our full inheritance. He wrote about how Jesus destroyed all the barriers that separate His followers and brought us all together in this one body we call the church.
And then in chapter 4, Paul begins to give us some very practical instruction about how we are to live our daily lives given what God has done for us. That whole section, which goes all the way through the end of his letter, is pretty well summarized in chapter 5, verse 18, where Paul commands his readers to be filled with the Holy Spirit. As we saw when we looked at that verse in detail, that is primarily a matter of being controlled by the Holy Spirit as we are saturated with God’s Word. And one of the results of being controlled by the Spirit is that Christ-followers submit to one another in their interpersonal relationships out of their reverence for Jesus.
We’ve already seen how that is to work in the marriage relationship. The husband is to love his wife with a sacrificial love that focuses on the needs of his wife rather than his own, following the example of Jesus’ love for the church. And the wife is to submit to the godly leadership of her husband in the same way that the church submits to Jesus. And now Paul is going to apply that same principle of mutual submission to the relationship between parents and children. Let’s read our passage out loud together:
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother" - which is the first commandment with a promise - "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."
Ephesians 6:1-3 (NIV)
I suppose the greatest danger this morning is that a lot of you have just tuned out because you figure this passage doesn’t really apply to you. Since you no longer live in your parent’s house, you view this as a part of God’s Word that doesn’t really apply to you. But I’m convinced that we can all find some principles to apply in our lives from these words of Paul:
• Children – If you’re still living under your parents’ roof, regardless of whether you’re still in elementary school or you’ve graduated from college or you’re in the work force, then the commands to obey and honor your parents apply very directly to you.
• Parents – If you’re a parent, then you have a God-given responsibility to raise your children to be obedient and honoring. We’ll address this aspect in more detail next week, but this passage is really helpful in understanding the kind of children God wants us to raise.
• Those with elderly parents – Although the command to obey is probably no longer applicable, the command to honor your parents continues as long as they are on this earth, and even beyond.
• All of us – Even if you do not have children of your own and/or your parents are no longer alive, there are principles that all of us can apply here in the process of raising up spiritual children, which is our corporate responsibility as a body of believers.
So, as we look at this passage this morning, I’ll try to make this as practical as possible regardless of which group or groups you might be a part of.
In this passage, there are two commands and a promise. Let’s look at each one of those separately:
THE FIRST COMMAND: OBEY
Children, obey your parents...
• Definition of obedience – to hear under authority and respond positively to what is heard
The Greek word that Paul uses here is a compound verb that literally means to “hear under”. The word originally referred to someone who stood at a door listening intently, even to the extent of eavesdropping. So obedience first requires children to listen to what their parents are saying.
For those of you here this morning who are children still under your parents’ roof, how many times have you heard your parents say, “Listen to me”? There’s a reason for that. You can’t obey unless you first listen. But listening is only the first step. In order to obey you must also respond positively to what your parents are saying. You have to do what they tell you to do. And the way Paul writes this command, he is making it very clear that this is not just something you do occasionally. It needs to be...
o A lifestyle
This command is in the present tense. And by this point in our journey through Ephesians, we should all know that indicates continuing action. So we could very accurately translate the command:
Children, keep on obeying your parents...
In other words, obedience to your parents is to be a lifestyle, not just something that you do when you feel like it.
• Source of obedience – our relationship with Jesus
...in the Lord...
Paul didn’t just give an instruction to obey. He also makes clear the source of that obedience. When he writes that children are to obey their parents “in the Lord”, he is stressing that the kind of obedience that he is writing about here must flow out of our relationship with Jesus.
I think we’d all agree that the family is under siege in our culture today and I could bore you to death with all kinds of facts and figures that would support the idea that the family structure has seriously eroded in our country. But there is a wide range of opinions about how to address those problems.
There are those, including a number of well-meaning Christians who are trying to solve these problems politically. While I’m thankful for those politicians who stand up for what many call “family values”, these are not problems that are going to be solved politically. Others claim that we need to address these problems with education. So a bunch of well-meaning but naïve politicians and bureaucrats have come up with all kinds of mandates for our schools in an attempt to address these issues. But these problems are not going to be fixed by education, either.
The decline of the family is a spiritual, not a political or educational, problem. So the only way to address it effectively is through a personal relationship with Jesus. No wonder Paul writes that wives are to submit to their husbands “as to the Lord” and that children are to obey “in the Lord”. God’s plan for our families only works when the members of the family are rightly related to God through Jesus.
The concept that obedience is to be “in the Lord”, also provides us with one more important principle we need to discuss.
o The limit of obedience – don’t disobey God
This should be pretty obvious, but the command to obey our parents is not absolute. It is also true that this command for children to obey their parents is not limited to children who have Christian parents. Even if your parents are not followers of Jesus, you still have a responsibility to obey them, except if they ask you to do something that would be contrary to God’s will as revealed in His Word. That principle is clearly illustrated when Peter and the other apostles were commanded by the Jewish religious leaders not to preach about Jesus:
Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than men!
Acts 5:29 (NIV)
This narrow exception should never be used as an excuse not to obey your parents. You can’t just say to your parents, “I’m not going to clean up my room because I don’t think God wants me to do that.” This exception should be limited to those issues where God has very clearly revealed His will in the Bible.
• Reason for obedience – it is right
...for this is right...
It is right, because that is the way God ordained it to be. The word Paul uses here is a form of the same word from which we get our word righteous, which describes the character of God. Paul uses that word here as a transition to the next verse where he is going to quote the fifth commandment from the Old Testament as the underlying principle that supports the command for children to obey their parents.
Children are to obey their parents, not because it reduces conflict, not because it makes it more pleasant to live, not because it is in the best interest of the parents and the children, not because others will think more highly of us, not even because it may draw some people to God.
These are all benefits that flow from children obeying their parents. But that is not the reason children are to obey their parents. They are to do it because it is right in God’s eyes. It’ really interesting to me that Paul writes that children are to obey because it is right and not some of the other reasons he could have given.
o It is not natural
Children do not naturally obey their parents. You don’t have to teach your kids how to disobey. Because they inherit a sin nature, they come into this world disobedient. So as parents, we must teach them to obey, because it is right.
o It is not easy
Every conscientious parent recognizes how difficult it is to exercise his God-given authority over his children. It is not easy to teach our children to obey. It takes time and effort. Sometimes it requires every ounce of energy we can muster and then some. Teaching our children to obey is not easy, but it is right.
o It is not convenient
Raising our children to obey isn’t always convenient. I am reminded of the mother who wanted to have the last word but couldn’t handle the hassle that resulted whenever she said no to her young son. After an especially trying day, she finally flung up her hands and shouted, "All right, do whatever you want! Now let me see you disobey that!" Teaching our children to obey is very seldom convenient, but it is right.
THE SECOND COMMAND – HONOR
"Honor your father and mother"...
Once again Paul’s command is in the present tense, which reinforces the idea that honoring one’s parents is to be an ongoing lifestyle. That is particularly important here because, as we will see, the duty to honor our parents doesn’t end when we leave their home.
• Definition of honor – to ascribe worth; to prize; to hold in awe
The word Paul uses here meant to place a price on something or someone and to prize it as a result of assigning that value.
Tuesday morning Owen Lamb shared about a rug that was being sold as part of an estate sale being run by his daughter’s company. Originally they were going to price the rug for a few hundred dollars, but after they started getting a lot of calls and emails, they decided to get an appraiser to take a look at it. They discovered the rug was actually quite rare and very valuable and ended up selling it by silent bid for tens of thousands of dollars. They very nearly failed to give that rug its proper “honor”.
So in this context Paul is commanding his readers to assign a high value to their parents and to appropriately prize them. This certainly goes beyond the idea of just obeying our parents. There are two significant aspects to honoring our parents.
o Requires a proper attitude
Many of you are probably familiar with the story of the little boy whose mother wanted him to sit down but he wouldn’t sit down. Finally she took hold of him and sat him down in the chair. He looked up at her with defiance in his eyes, and said, "You may make me sit down outside, but I’m still standing up inside!"
John MacArthur addresses this vital aspect of giving honor to our parents:
Honor is the attitude behind the act. The act is obedience, and honor is the attitude. Remember that an act without the proper attitude is hypocrisy. If you do what your parents tell you to do but you hate it and you’re unwilling and nasty about it, then you’re a hypocrite. If you do what your parents tell you to do but you’re bitter, fearful, reluctant, and selfish, that’s not the right spirit. God is after the attitude much more than He’s after the act, because if the attitude is right, the act will follow. But a right act with a wrong attitude is nothing but hypocrisy
But honor is not just limited to our attitude. It also...
o Requires proper behavior
I read this week about a man who was sitting at a stop light. The lady in front of him was going through papers on the seat of her car, and when the light changed to green she did not obey its command - a green light is a commandment - NOT a suggestion. When the light turned to red, and she had still not moved, He began (with his windows up) screaming and beating on his steering wheel. His expressions of distress were interrupted by a policeman, gun drawn, tapping on his window. Against his protestations of, "You can’t arrest me for hollering in my car," the officer ordered him into the back seat of his patrol car.
After about two hours in a holding cell, the arresting officer advised him he was free to go. He said, "I knew you couldn’t arrest me for what I was yelling in my own car. You haven’t heard the last of this." The officer replied, "I didn’t arrest you for shouting in your car. I was directly behind you at the light. I saw you screaming and beating your steering wheel, and I said to myself, "What a jerk. But there is nothing I can do to him for throwing a fit in his own car. Then I noticed the ’Cross’ hanging from your rear view mirror, the Jesus is Coming Soon’ bumper sticker, and the Fish symbol, and I thought you must have stolen the car."
That man’s behavior was not consistent with all the symbols with which he was supposedly trying to honor God. Honoring our parents requires both the proper attitude as well as behavior that demonstrates that we value and prize our parents. And that responsibility clearly doesn’t end when we move out of our parents’ house. Look at how Jesus rebuked many of the religious leaders for failing to act in a way that honored their parents:
And he said to them: "You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, ’Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ’Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother: ’Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is Corban’ (that is, a gift devoted to God), then you no longer let him do anything for his father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that."
Mark 7:9-13 (NIV)
These religious leaders were taking their resources that should have been devoted to honoring their parents by taking care of their needs and claiming that it was a gift devoted to God instead. And Jesus very clearly condemned that kind of behavior that failed to honor their parents.
Although taking care of the needs of aging parents is certainly one way that we can honor them, we also honor our parents when we live our lives in a manner that is consistent with the principles of God that they have helped to develop in our lives. I can think of no better way to honor our parents than to live the kind of godly lives that Paul describes in the last 3 chapters of Ephesians.
THE PROMISE: QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF LIFE
... which is the first commandment with a promise - "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."
Out of all of what we refer to as the “Ten Commandments”, the fifth command to honor our father and mother is not only the first, but the only one that has a promise directly associated with it. We know that there are actually many more than ten commandments contained in God’s Law, and some of those other commandments do have promises associated with them, but I think there is a reason that this is the only one of the ten that contains such a promise.
As Christians, we generally tend to separate the Ten Commandments into two lists – the first four that deal with our relationship with God and the last six that deal with our human relationships. But in the Jewish handling of the Ten Commandments, they place the fifth commandment with the first group of commandments that deal with our relationship with God. They tend to look at honoring of parents as an integral part of their relationship with God. They recognize that disobedience to parents is actually spiritual rebellion, which is why under Jewish Law the death penalty was prescribed for the most egregious forms of disobedience.
Perhaps this fifth commandment really functions as a hinge, or transition, between the two groups of commandments. One could make a convincing argument that this is really the heart of all relationships. Children who honor their parents are at the very core of the family; the family is at the core of the church; and the church is at the core of society. When we raise up a generation of children that honor their parents, that seems to transfer directly into a society where people also honor and obey God. I’m completely convinced that children who learn to obey and honor their parents grow up into adults who have a much easier time obeying and honoring their heavenly Father. That’s why this fifth commandment comes with the associated promise of a life that is rich both in quality and quantity.
But let’s just admit right up front that we have a hard time understanding exactly how this promise works in real life. I know that Steve Ponzo has a friend that just died a couple weeks ago at the age of 27, leaving behind a wife and two young children after a long bout with disease. Does that mean he didn’t honor his parents? Of course not. From everything I know about this young man, he was a very godly man who both honored his parents and built that kind of character into his own children.
This promise is a general principle that children who obey and honor their parents will have a life that is richer in both quality and quantity than if they choose not to do that. However, because we live in a world that has been corrupted by sin that doesn’t mean that those who obey their parents will automatically live longer or have less problems in this world than those who don’t. Warren Wiersbe helps us to understand this promise better when he writes:
God enriches the life of the obedient child no matter how long he may live on the earth. Sin always robs us; obedience always enriches us.
To fully understand this promise, we also need to keep in mind that our life here on this earth is not the full extent of our life. We’ve already seen that honoring our parents is an integral part being a follower of Jesus. And for the follower of Jesus Christ, we not only have the benefit of living abundant life on this earth right now, we also have the promise that we’ll reign with Christ here on earth for a thousand years and then live for eternity on the new earth. That is a life that is certainly rich in both quality and quantity.
However, I believe this promise is not just a promise that those who honor their parents will live for along time, but also that the followers of Christ who live like that will create a legacy that provide a foundation for future generations. By obeying and honoring our parents and by helping our young people to develop those habits in their lives, we can help raise up a generation of Christ followers who will also obey and honor their heavenly Father.
Let’s be the generation who plants the trees, so that future generations can get the shade.
