Text: Colossians 3:18-4:1
Title: Playing by the rules
1.Rules for Christian employers. (4:1)
2.Rules for Christian employees (3:22-25)
3.Rules for Christian fathers (3:21)
4.Rules for Christian children (3:20)
5.Rules for Christian husbands (3:19)
6.Rules for Christian wives (v18)
1.Rules for Christian employers (4:1)
Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
1.Playing by the rules- be generous employers.
2..Principle to remember: Treat those who work for you as you would have your heavenly father treat you.
3.If you want your heavenly father to be generous to you – then you be generous to those who work for you.
4.Who are those who work for us?
Example:Baby sitters, waitresses, hairdressers, paper-delivery person…
The rule is- be generous
2.Rules for Christian employees (3:22-25)
“Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, 24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. 25 Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for his wrong, and there is no favoritism.”
1.Playing by the rules –be excellent employees
2.Do your job to the best of your ability
3.Principle to remember: Serve your employer as you would serve the Lord.
4.Age-old problem: Serving your employer as you would serve the Lord only when they are looking at you.
5.Act busy the boss is looking.
6.God is always looking and He will repay you either for doing your best or for doing your worst.
7.How might God repay you for doing your job to the best of your ability?
He may promote you. (Joseph, Joshua, David, Daniel)
He may help you to keep your job
He may get you another job.
He may provide for you while you are waiting for another job.
3.Rules for Christian fathers (v21)
"Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged."
1.Playing by the rules – Fathers -Be encouraging to your children
2.Principle to remember- Earthly fathers are meant to reflect the character of our heavenly fathers.
3.How to be more encouraging to our children
“Don’t overcorrect your children…
“Avoid irritating your children…
“Do not harass your children…
“Do not rouse your children to resentment…”
Why?
“lest their spirit should be broken…”
“they grow up feeling inferior and frustrated…”
“become discouraged and quit trying.”
4. Rules for Christian children (v20)
Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
1.Playing by the rules – Children- be obedient to your parents.
2.The 5th commandment- “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
3.The first commandment with a promise
5.Rules for Christian husbands (v19)
"Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them."
1.Playing by the rules –Husbands love your wife
2.Principle to live by: Husbands are to love their wife as Christ loves the church.
3.To love her means –to esteem her, to cherish her, to favor her, to honor her, to respect her, to accept her, to prize her, to relish her, to be devoted to her…
4.The love spoken of here is not a love based on feelings but a love that is rooted in the mind and will of the husband.
5.The “and do not be harsh with them” part of the verse means- “do not let your love for your wife turn sour or bitter.”
6.Question: How does anything end up turning sour or bitter?
7.By neglect! (You leave the milk out for to long)
8.What causes neglect? Busyness with other things.
Illustration: Five components of a healthy marriage
By Rick Warren
Pastor, the marriages in our churches – including our own – are either growing together or drifting apart. There’s no middle ground. Your church has a unique opportunity to encourage healthy, growing marriages. How do flat marriages rekindle their romance? The same way Jesus tells us to rekindle our love for him in Revelation 2:4-5. Jesus says, “You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen? Repent and do the things you did at first.”
First, you remember the good times. You do again what you did when you first fell in love. Then, you repent or deliberately change how you treat your spouse. But what are those actions that you “did at first”? Married people did five things when they first fell in love. And they’ll need to do it again if they are going to recapture that romance: attention, affirmation, affection, adventure, and accordance (spiritual oneness) they had when they first fell in love.
1.Attention: The very first sign that you were falling in love was that you noticed that someone was paying attention to you – and you started to pay attention to that someone. Do you remember how much attention you paid your mate before you were married? You wrote notes. You made phone calls. You spent hours talking together. You sent cards. You bought flowers. You brought gifts. You said over and over again, “You have my total and undivided attention.”
What happened after you got married? Instead of saying, “I’ll get that for you,” we started saying, “Get it yourself!” We became complacent in our relationship and took one another for granted. But if you’re going to rekindle the romance, you’ve got to make time for each other and pay attention to each other. If you don’t, you’re headed for trouble.
2.Affirmation: The quickest way to put spark back into your marriage is to start focusing on your spouse’s strengths instead of their weaknesses. Paul reminds us in 1 Thessalonians 5:11, “Give encouragement to each other. Keep strengthening each other.” Everybody wants to be admired, appreciated, and looked up to. We fall in love with people who admire us.
You’ve probably heard this before, but it’s so true. “Treat your husband like a king and he will treat you like a queen.” Very simple yet profound. We tend to become what others expect of us.
Verbalize your love for your spouse every day. If you will verbalize your love, you will begin to feel that love you once had.
3.Affection: Remember how affectionate you and your spouse were during your courting days? In fact, you can always tell who the unmarried couples are. They can’t keep their hands off each other. Unfortunately, after the wedding, the touching and tenderness stop in so many marriages. All marriages need large amounts of hugging, kissing, caressing, and other forms of non-sexual touch.
Ephesians 5:19 (Amplified) says, “Husbands ... be affectionate!” It is a command. Husbands, if you’re not doing this, you’re sinning. Some say, “I’m just not naturally affectionate.” So what? Change! It’s not in your genes. You learned the behavior from your background. You can learn to be affectionate.
4.Adventure: Most marriages are dull. Ecclesiastes 9:9 says, “Enjoy life with your wife.” I’ve read that the number one cause of affairs is boredom. Are you fun to live with? You had adventure when you were romancing your spouse. But you’ve probably lost that sense of adventure. Everything is predictable. Predictability kills a marriage.
Unfortunately, most of us define fun as what you do after you’ve got all your work finished. But you never get all your work finished! The work is never done. Even after you retire, you still have got work to do. As a result, you don’t have any fun in your marriage – and you wonder why the feelings have died.
You need at least one date a week. It doesn’t have to be expensive, and it doesn’t have to be at night. (Kay and I have done them on Monday mornings.) But regardless, do something you like to do together. And do it without the kids. Schedule it – every week – so you can’t back out when your schedule gets tight.
5.Accordance (spiritual oneness): The key to fellowship with your mate is for both of you to live in God’s presence. When you and your wife are both committed to Christ and what he’s doing in the world, you’ll be naturally drawn together. Spiritual unity enhances romance. I ended up proposing to Kay while we were praying together. I felt so close to her – our hearts were knit together – that I figured we might as well join our lives together. Prayer joins you together. And then there is the natural desire to show physical affection, physical oneness, when you are spiritually one.
God wants you to have oneness. Romance was God’s idea. The Bible says two shall become one – intellectually, emotionally, physically, recreationally, and spiritually. When you are only having oneness in three of those areas, your marriage isn’t fully what God wants it to be. But when you and your spouse connect in all five areas, that’s when you find real, honest oneness.
Do you and your spouse pray together? Do you do ministry together? Do you share what God is doing in your life with your spouse, and visa-versa? Make those things a part of your time together, and romance will return.
6. Rules for Christian wives (v18)
“Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.”
Playing by the rules: Christian wives are to submit to their husbands.
What wives submitting to their husband does not mean?
“Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” (1 Corinthians 11:3)
1.It does not mean that the husband is more intelligent than the wife
Is God the Father more intelligent than God the Son?
The man is the head over the woman as Christ is the head over the church.
Meaning: The man has the final say when it comes to decision-making.
Illustration: The Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46)
Matthew 26:39-44 39 Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." 40 Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?" he asked Peter. 41 "Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak." 42 He went away a second time and prayed, "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done." 43 When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44 So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.”
The lessons from the Garden of Gethsemane – Dr. Gary Chapman
1.There ought to be communication about the decisions made.
2.The process would involve mutual sharing of feelings with a view of unity
1.Wait (postpone the decision)
2.The husband is the recognized leader among equals
Finally submission also does not mean
1.The wife must do all the giving
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Eph. 5:21)
2.It does not mean the wife cannot express her own ideas
The wife is a helper
3.It does not mean the wife makes no decisions of her own. (Proverbs 31:10-31)
Conclusion
Playing by the rules means
Being generous to those who work for us
Doing excellent work for those we work for
Being encouraging Father’s to our children
Being obedient children to our parents
Being loving husbands to our wives
Being submissive wives to our husbands.
Conclusion
All these rules have one thing in common – attitude!
Philippians 2:3-8 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross! “
