Class Outline:

Sunday February 6,2022

Our main idea remains: walk in a manner worthy of your calling, and the idea behind that is that Christ through His death and resurrection has made all things new.

 

Christ has made all things new, which things can only be entered by faith - individuals, church, marriage, family, and work.

 

Our last class was dedicated to parents and children and I’ll summarize it at the start today. If you are not listening to all of the classes you are still responsible to God to live His way. You can read the Bible and seek understanding. If you do not hear my exposition of a particular passage, seek another’s, either in print or in teaching. There are many sources available to every believer without cost, or if you want to amass a small library to do some of your own research, you can do that as well and I can help you with that. The pastor teacher is given as a gift to the church and that gift is God’s way of helping you to understand God’s word. My point is that understanding is every believer’s own responsibility. You should understand all passages of the Scripture over time, especially those that immediately apply to you. I am willing to help you in any appropriate way that I can that will foster that.

 

These divine principles of marriage and family (children) cannot be overemphasized. Any good society is based upon good families, which Satan has relentlessly attacked. When German progressive philosophers looked back upon the thirties and forties and tried to discover the reason that the revolution of proletariat didn’t take hold, they discovered that the problem was strong fathers and strong families, so they decided on a new course of sexual revolution.

 

Everything we do in life is to be done for the Lord who we do not see. In that we worship Him every day.

 

COL 3:18-25

Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. 19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be embittered against them. 20 Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing to the Lord. 21 Fathers, do not exasperate your children, that they may not lose heart. 22 Slaves, in all things obey those who are your masters on earth, not with external service, as those who merely please men, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. 23 Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men; 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance. It is the Lord Christ whom you serve. 25 For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.

 

EPH 6:1-4

Children, obey [hear under] your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 Honor your father and mother (which is the first commandment with a promise), 3 that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth. 4 And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up [nurture them] in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

 

Last time we clarified some of the words. Obey is derived from the word to hear. Honor your father and mother is the fifth commandment and it’s not the first commandment with a promise attached. “Provoke to anger” is a very strong word and so a solemn warning to parents.

 

“Bring them up” is a word that means to nourish or nurture. It is a tender word that is used in EPH 5:29 for the desire in each of us to nourish our own bodies. Therefore, Paul’s use of this word has a “do unto others as you would have them do to you” feel to it. The husband who loves his wife like Christ loves the church nourishes his own body. The parents are to nourish or nurture their children. It is a great reward to parents, perhaps the greatest, when their children experience the blessing promised by God here and in the 5^th commandment.

 

Finally, “discipline and instruction are synonyms of a sort. Both refer to training, but discipline is action and instruction (a word that literally means “put to the mind”) is by word. Discipline is the same word used of the Lord’s discipline of all of us in Heb 12 in which it is said that He scourges us.

 

Parents have the role of discipline and instruction while being careful not to provoke them to anger or discouraging them (COL 3:21). Parents are not to let their children find their own way, which is a modern, progressive, disastrous idea. Nor are children to be wards of the state. Children have the role of obeying in the Lord and honoring their father and mother all their days, even after they become adults themselves.

 

Paul is pulling together the new creature, his personal walk by the Holy Spirit and the truth, his relationship to his fellow believer (joints who fully supply one another) and their spiritual gifts, his church (local church and the body of Christ as a whole), his marriage, his family, and his work. These, and all the conduct that we have seen in Eph 4-6:9, are not separate as if they were different disciplines, but they are all together as links in a chain. All flow from the one source, Christ, and His truth, the Word, and His power, the Holy Spirit, and Christ flows in each of us and the rivers of living water flow from us to one another. The new creature was not made by Christ in isolation, but as a part of a dynamic whole - the body of Christ that He fills and a part of the kingdom of God that He rules.

 

Christ has given to us the ability as the new humanity to make our marriages, our churches, our homes, and our careers into something that looks like the kingdom of God. Paul shows us how each institution is different in the ways he tells us to behave and he ties each institution together in the function of love and self-discipline that leads to goodness and sanctification.

 

EPH 5:7-10

Therefore do not be partakers with them [live in a manner in step with the unbeliever]; 8 for you were formerly darkness [unregenerate], but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), 10 trying to learn [proving] what is pleasing to the Lord.

 

Paul writes to parents to emphasize their role, their duty (constructive and reproving instruction/discipline), and restraint.

 

A child is to blossom in the loving, understanding, and encouraging Christian home. The divinely loving parents are interested in each child, looking for their potential, and actively helping them to develop it though modeling righteousness in their own lives alongside teaching, encouraging, reproving, and discipline. Children are made in the likeness and image of God, and in their own proper way, are to be respected as such.

 

“bring them up” - nourish or feed. “Let them be fondly cherished … deal gently with them” (Calvin). “Rear them tenderly” (Hendriksen).

 

Centuries before modern psychology emphasized the vital importance of the earliest years of life, God revealed to parents that children are fragile creatures needing tenderness, security, love, and enough discipline to break their rebellious will.

 

This is the key term for parents. Discipline and instruction and the warning to not provoke to anger are terms that describe their main goal which is to nurture. Obey and honor are the key terms for children. Blessing in life is promised by God for those who do.

 

From the home to the economy and society.

 

There is nothing in Paul’s writing that indicates a shift in subject matter. All areas of life are tied together in one sweeping execution of eternal life in truth and the Holy Spirit.

 

EPH 6:5-9

Slaves, be obedient [same command as given to the children in vs. 1] to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ; 6 not by way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. 7 With good will render service, as to the Lord, and not to men, 8 knowing that whatever good thing each one does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether slave or free. 9 And, masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.

 

 

 

 

 

Communion: Paul admonishes and warns the Corinthians…

 

1CO 11:17-22

But in giving this instruction, I do not praise you, because you come together not for the better but for the worse. 18 For, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you; and in part, I believe it. 19 For there must also be factions among you, in order that those who are approved may have become evident among you. 20 Therefore when you meet together, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper, 21 for in your eating each one takes his own supper first; and one is hungry and another is drunk. 22 What! Do you not have houses in which to eat and drink? Or do you despise the church of God, and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this I will not praise you.

 

Corinth had a complete breakdown of their relationships. This is what happens when Christians live as they did as unbelievers, in darkness of mind.

 

1CO 11:28-34

But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. 29 For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he does not judge the body rightly. 30 For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. 31 But if we judged ourselves rightly, we should not be judged. 32 But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord in order that we may not be condemned along with the world. 33 So then, my brethren, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. 34 If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you may not come together for judgment. And the remaining matters I shall arrange when I come.

 

We must be careful to have our hearts right when we come together to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

 

1CO 11:23-26

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; 24 and when He had given thanks, He broke it, and said, "This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me."  25 In the same way He took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."  26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.