Sermon Tone Analysis

Children in The Home

Parenting: to direct our children on God's behalf; a mission to rescue a soul from Satan and raise him to love and serve the Lord.

— Ken Collier

Parenting: to direct our children on God's behalf; a mission to rescue a soul from Satan and raise him to love and serve the Lord.

— Ken Collier

mission to rescue a soul from Satan and raise him to love

(1) The Principle (6:1)

and serve the Lord.

— Ken Collier

The Child’s Simple Task (6:1–3)

a.

The Child’s Simple Task (6:1–3)

(1) The Principle (6:1)

“Children obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.”

This verse summarizes the whole duty of a child, manward and godward.

His sole duty is to learn to obey authority, and his parents are to be his only voice of authority.

Later on, parental authority will compete with the school’s authority, the government’s authority, and possibly an employer’s authority.

We are born rebels.

Each of us raises the voice of selfishness and rebellion at an early age.

We need to learn to obey.

Children who learn to defy parental authority will go on to defy other authority and will often grow up to defy divine authority.

There exists of course the sad possibility that parental authority might be arbitrary.

Yet God’s rule still applies.

A child owes obedience to his parents.

The larger issues must be left with God, the ultimate source of all authority.

He can sovereignly overrule in the end the misuse of parental authority.

One could think of instances where a godless parent might demand that a child do things that are morally wrong and contrary to the laws of God and man.

Paul was not requiring that children obey orders contrary to the laws of God.

He had the Christian home primarily in mind.

Many children are born into homes where God is hated and atheism holds sway.

Others are raised to bow to idols and false gods.

Others grow up in cruel environments.

Of all the millions of children born every year, relatively few are born into Christian homes.

We have no idea how the selection is made, but it has incredible advantages.

Children raised in homes where God is known, where Christ is loved, where the Bible is read and believed, and where the Holy Spirit is honored have great opportunities.

From their earliest days, these privileged infants are taught to say the saving name of Jesus, are taught to say childish prayers, are taken to Sunday school, are told Bible stories, are encouraged to memorize the living Word of God, and—above all—are taught the way of salvation through Jesus Christ.

While others born the same day are being raised, in China for example, to chant the Communist International, to scoff at the idea of God, to revere Marx and Lenin, and to believe in dialectical materialism, children in Christian homes are being taught .

While others are being taught to worship Krishna, bow before idols, believe in reincarnation as the secret of life and nothingness as its ultimate and most blissful goal, children in Christian homes are being taught to sing,

For the Bible tells me so.

(Anna B. Warner)

Children raised in Christian homes also have an awesome responsibility.

A child who rebels against parental authority in a Christian home earns God’s displeasure.

For him to obey is right.

Anything else is terribly and criminally wrong.

The whole duty of a child in a Christian home is to obey Mom and Dad.

That is God’s supreme command to that child.

One could think of instances where a godless parent might demand that a child do things that are morally wrong and contrary to the laws of God and man.

Paul was not requiring that children obey orders contrary to the laws of God.

He had the Christian home primarily in mind.

We get just one glimpse of Jesus between His birth and His baptism.

We see Him when He was twelve years old, already in complete control of the knowledge that He was the Son of God.

Yet we read that He went down to Nazareth with Joseph and Mary “and was subject unto them” ().

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What a lesson in obedience!

To think of Him—the Lord of life and glory, the Creator of the universe, the One who was the express image of God, the One whom angels worshiped—being in willing subjection to a village carpenter and his wife!

II The Precept (6:2)

“Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise.”

The ten commandments found in —is the essence of the law.

It is the heart and core of divine legislation; the other six hundred commandments are expansions and expositions of it.

The Decalogue divides man’s duty into two categories: his duty to God and his duty to man.

The commandment concerning children, quoted by Paul in , is the fifth commandment.

Because it deals with human relationships, it is often included with the last five commandments,

In chapter 5 we learned that one of the results of being filled with the Spirit is being submissive to one another.

We saw that a Spirit-filled wife, for instance, is submissive to her husband.

Now we learn that Spirit-filled children willingly submit to the authority of their parents.

The fundamental duty of all children is to obey their parents in the Lord.

Whether the children are Christians or whether the parents are Christians does not make any difference.

The parent-child relationship was ordained for all mankind, not just for believers.

The command to obey … in the Lord means, first, that children should obey with the attitude that in doing so they are obeying the Lord: their obedience should be as if to Him.

Second, it means they should obey in all matters which are in accordance with the will of God.

If their parents ordered them to sin, they should not be expected to comply.

In such a case they should courteously refuse and suffer the consequences meekly and without retaliation.

However, in all other cases they must be obedient.[1]

The distinction is important, for the fifth commandment puts the parents in the place of God over their young children.

And for the rest of their lives, the children are to render honor to their mothers and fathers as the human authors of their being—as those who loved them, protected them, taught them, and sacrificed for them.

[1] MacDonald, W. (1995).

Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments.

(A.

Farstad, Ed.) (pp.

1949–1950).

Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

Failure to honor one’s parents is an insult to the God who chose them.

Rebellion against

God, however, does not want children to honor their parents because of a threat, so he appended a promise to the fifth commandment.

Paul reminded his readers of that promise when he added this to : “Which is the first commandment with promise.”

That promise is the subject of the next verse.

(3) The Promise (6:3)

“That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.”

A child who grows up to love, honor, and obey his mother and father lays the foundation for a happier, more stable, and more successful life than does a child who is rude, disrespectful, self-willed, and rebellious.

A stormy path lies ahead for a disobedient child.

He will drift into bad company, resent all rule and authority, and in many cases end up on the wrong side of the law.

Contemporary society has produced a bumper crop of young people who are determined to “do their own thing.”

Many of them are enmeshed in the drug and sex scene, and are filled with restlessness and rage.

b.

The Father’s Sublime Trust (6:4)

(1) A Word about Methods (6:4a)

“Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.”

The Bible is a balanced book.

God does not command children to obey their parents without giving an injunction to parents.

Fathers (or parents, as the Greek word pateres can be translated) are not to provoke their children to wrath by being unreasonable in their demands, outrageous in their punishments, or inconsistent in their examples, rules, and controls.

My father often referred to children as “the little people.”

It was a quaint expression, yet a profoundly wise one.