Ephesians chapter 6. My subject this morning is things
to know concerning precepts. Things to know concerning precepts. Let's read this right here in
verse 1-3. Children, obey your parents and
the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and mother,
which is the first commandment with promise. that it may be
well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth."
This is a precept. The back half of the epistles
are full of precepts that God's saints want to obey. They're full of precepts. The
problem is that many preachers, when they preach on these precepts,
they don't preach the gospel. And so, men and women sit and
hear the message, and leave out of the congregation thinking
that by obeying this precept, this is how I'm made righteous
or made holy, and this is how I'll be accepted of God. And
the front half of these epistles are full of the gospel. And so
when we preach the gospel or when we, as God's saints, are
considering these precepts, there's some things we need to remember.
There are some vital things that we need to remember. In every
precept, we must remember these three things. Number one, no
sinner, not me, not you, not any child of Adam, none of us
are made righteous or holy by obeying any precept in the Bible. We're not made righteous before
the law by it, and we're not made holy by that. Our holiness
is Christ being formed in the new man, which turns us to Him
to see He's our perfect sanctification. And number two, we must remember
Christ is the righteousness and the holiness, the perfection
of His people, because He obeyed every precept in perfection and
then put away all the sins of his people for not keeping any
precept. He's our only righteousness and
our only holiness. And then lastly, if the Spirit
of God blesses these first two points to our heart, then we
will consider the precept and we'll seek to obey it from a
right motive of the heart. That right motive is faith, knowing
we're complete in Christ This is not going to make me accepted
of God by doing this. My acceptance is Christ. And
two, you're constrained in your heart. The motive of your heart
is God's love in Christ for his people. and coming and laying
down His life and redeeming us, that's the motive that constrains
us. That's the motive by which we
do any good work in a right way. God looks on the heart and the
motive is vital. If the motive of the heart is
to do something from a legal, mercenary, motive to try to be
made righteous or holy or gain rewards from God, indebt God
to us, it's nothing but sin. The work may be good in itself,
but it's total sin. But if the motive of the heart
is faith in Christ, working by love, then God receives it in
and by Christ. and it's a good work. It's the
motive of the heart that makes a work a good work or a wicked
work. You could take somebody who is a God-willing saint who
may do a work, keep a precept, and he just doesn't do a very
good job at it. But his heart, he trusts Christ
and he's doing what he's doing, as feeble as it might be, he's
doing it in gratitude from Christ's great love for him, and God receives
it. It's a good work. Another man
may do something just abundantly better, but his heart's far from
God. He's trying to indebt God. It's
nothing but a dead work. You get what I'm saying? The
motive of the heart. So this text here, I'm just taking this
one precept as an example. And when we hear preaching, we
need to hear these three things preached. And when we consider
a precept, we need to know these three things about the precept.
As a child, this was one of the first precepts I remember my
parents teaching me. Children, obey your parents.
But they didn't know God when they taught me that. They were
just trying to guilt me into obeying them. And it worked. I thought for years, I remember
thinking, this is how I'm going to be saved. And if I don't do
this, God's gonna get me. That's what people go out of
congregations thinking. Now there may be somebody here
that's one of God's saints and your earthly parents have passed
from this life. And you may think, well, this
scripture has no application to me. Oh, listen, back in Ephesians
5.1, God said, be ye therefore followers of God as dear children. and walk in love as Christ also
hath loved us and given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice
to God for a sweet smell and save. This applies to all God's
saints. It applies to us toward God,
our Father, and it applies to us if we have living parents
in this life. So first, let's consider these
three things. First there, why is this the
first commandment with promise? I know one reason. I know one
reason. because their two sons both had
the same father. And these two sons and what they
did toward their father determines every man's condemnation or his
salvation. I know that's one reason this
is the first commandment with promise. This will give weight
to why this is an important precept. First of all, let's consider
the disobedient son. Adam is the disobedient son.
God was his father. Adam was the son. He was the
child. And God gave him one commandment
in a perfect world without sin. And at one commandment, he said,
the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the
garden there mayest freely eat. He gave him everything he needed
to freely partake of it. But of the tree of knowledge,
of the knowledge of good and evil. One treat thou mayest not
eat, for in the day you eat thereof thou shalt surely die." And what
did Adam do? In a perfect world where there
is no sin, a man who had no sin disobeyed God. What do you think
we're going to do in a world of sin, in a body of death that's
nothing but sin? So when Adam disobeyed God in
the garden, all Adam's children died in him. They all died in
him, all men without exception. We all disobeyed our Heavenly
Father in Adam. Now if you'll turn with me to
Romans 5. Romans 5 verse 12. It says, Wherefore,
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. And so death passed upon all
men, for in Adam all have sin. Now look at verse 16. Look at
this phrase in verse 16. The judgment was by one, and
the word is offense. The judgment was by one offense
to condemnation. Verse 17, by one man's offense,
death reigned by one. Verse 18, therefore by the offense
of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation. Now look
at verse 20. Moreover, the law of Mount Sinai
entered that the offense might abound. God gave the law at Sinai
to teach his elect how abounding our sin was in the offense that
Adam committed in the garden. That's what the law teaches us.
The law teaches us all the sins we committed in the offense that
Adam committed in that garden. We know what things serve the
law, saith it saith to them who are under the law, that every
mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before
God, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. No man can be justified
by the deeds of the law, for by the law is the knowledge of
sin. It gives us an understanding of our abounding sin in the offense,
and it teaches us the abounding sin that's in our nature. What
was the offense in that garden? Well, in the law given at Sinai,
God said in Leviticus 20 verse 9, He said, Everyone 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.
You know what Adam did in that garden when he took that fruit,
God forbid? He cursed his father. When he
disobeyed God, he cursed his father. You ever disobeyed God? You ever had a thought that wasn't
absolutely perfect without sin? Then we've disobeyed him. And
all sin is cursing the father. That's what it is. It's that
heinous. That's the abounding sin of the garden. How did Adam
die? How did we die in him? Well,
first of all, we died legally. Became guilty before the law.
Secondly, we died spiritually. We were born of Adam's corrupt
seed, so we have a sin nature, we're conceived in sin, we're
formed in the womb in sin, and come forth nothing but sin. Adam
began dying physically, that's why we die physically, is sin.
And if God doesn't intervene in grace, A dead man can't do
anything, so if God doesn't intervene in grace and save us, we face
the second death, which is eternal condemnation due to our sin.
You see how heinous this sin was, this the offense was? So we can't by any means obey
any precept so as to be accepted of holy God by our obedience. We can't do it. See, even God's
saint who has a new holy man formed in you, you still have
a body of sin. And we know by our own experience
and we know by the word of God that sin is mixed with everything
we do. So we can't come to God by our
obedience to precepts. We can't be righteous or holy
by our obedience to precepts. So that's the first thing we
must know. We must know this, and this must be preached, this
must be considered when we look at any precept, lest we have
a totally wrong motive. Alright, secondly, let's see
how a man can be just with God. This is by the obedient son.
This is the obedient son. God the Father has only one obedient
son. And I'm not talking about, he's
got some saints that we are obedient in that we believe him and whatever. But he's got one perfectly obedient
son. Just one. And that's the Lord
Jesus Christ. He said, this is my beloved son
in whom I am well pleased. When holy God says he's well
pleased with somebody, that means they are as holy as God is. In
eternity, God gave his son something to do. He gave him a commandment. Just like Adam had a commandment,
God the Son had a commandment from eternity. God the Father
chose a people that he would save. But knowing, according
to his purpose, they're going to fall at Adam and be sinners,
he chose for Christ to come forth and redeem his people, to send
the gospel and regenerate his people, and to preserve us and
bring us to God, and to present us faultless before God in his
perfection. And the Lord Jesus is the reason
God did this. He did this to exalt His Son. He did this to give His Son the
preeminence as the firstborn Son among many brethren. Do you
see why this precept to obey Father is the first commandment
with promise? It's the first commandment that
was given before any commandment was ever given in the earth.
God the Father gave it to Christ His Son to obey Him. And Christ
willingly delighted to obey His Father. And He did it to exalt
His Son as the firstborn whom He did foreknow. He did predestinate
to be conformed to the image of His Son that Christ might
be the firstborn among many brethren. Sometimes you know a father who
has a lot of children, if he's going to die or go away or something,
he will put one of his children in charge of his house and he'll
choose his firstborn son. a lot of time and put him in
charge of the house. That's what God did in eternity.
He said, I will also make him my firstborn higher than the
kings of the earth. He said of the angels, he said,
which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my son, this
day have I begotten thee? Again, I will be to him a father
and he should be to me a son. You see, this relationship of
father and son is preeminently, this precept is preeminently
to glorify the relationship between God the Father and His Son. And
that's so with every precept in this book. You can preach
what I'm preaching right now from any precept in this book,
and that's how it ought to be preached, giving Christ all the
glory. The purpose of God in creating
this world was to glorify His Son. Now how is the firstborn
Son of God obedient to His Heavenly Father? Well, the work that the
father gave to his son was he would have to come and take our
nature and lay down his life in place of his people to declare
God just, to honor his law, to magnify his holy character, and
to justify his people by the shedding of blood. Without the
shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin. And you know
Hebrews 2, for as much as the children are protectors of flesh
and blood, he took part of the same. Obeying the Father. That through death, through death,
that's obedience even to the death of the cross. He obeyed
the Father even to death. And He might deliver them who
through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
He didn't take on Him the nature of angels. He took on Him the
nature of His elect, the seed of Abraham. He came that he might
be a faithful high priest, an obedient high priest. There was
never ever a high priest that was accepted of God by his obedience
in the office of a high priest. Nor is there a preacher accepted
because of his obedience as a preacher. Nor a king accepted because of
his obedience as a king. Christ is the perfect prophet,
priest, and king who's made every faithful prophet, priest, and
king faithful and holy and accepted. And He did all this so that He
knows the feeling of our infirmities. He was tempted in all points
as we are yet without sin so that He's able to succor and
comfort us. Even now from His throne in glory
as the mediator, saving His people, you He's already called, He's
still obedient to the Father to keep comforting us and drawing
us to Himself. You see, obedient in every way.
This is the obedient son. Made of a woman, made under the
law, behooved Him in all points to be made like His brethren.
Made under the law, made of a woman, made sin for His people, made
a curse for His people, made higher than the heavens and His
people in Him. He had to do this, brethren.
You take this one precept we're looking at. We broke the law. We've broken that one precept. Parents ever chasing you and
in your heart, as the little boy said, I'm sitting down on
the outside but I'm standing up on the inside. You ever had
that heart? That's disobedience. We haven't
kept this precept, but Christ did it perfectly. And he kept
the whole law of God perfectly for his people. He had to honor
God the Father by his obedience in righteousness on our behalf. He had to do it from a holy heart
with no sin whatsoever. Even when he went to the cross
and he bore the sin of his people and he's bearing the curse that
we deserved. He had to remain obedient in
his heart to the Father, trusting the Father to fulfill every promise
the Father made to him. And that's what he did. He said
when he walked this earth, I seek not mine own will, but the will
of the Father which has sent me. That ought to make every
man stop boasting about our will. That ought to make every sinner
stop saying, oh, I got a free will. Christ's will wasn't free. He came to do the will of His
Father. And there ain't a sinner in this world whose will is free.
We're either bound to our sin nature or we're bound to obey
our Father. And He said, I do always those
things that please Him. Christ did always those things
that pleased the Father. He's the only one that can make
that statement. You know, he was obedient to
his earthly parents, Joseph and Mary. Joseph wasn't his father,
but he was obedient to them as a perfect son. Try to imagine
how perfect a son he was to his parents. What it would have been
like to have him as a son. His parents, that would be an amazing thing.
But even more obedience to God was necessary. Everyone that
curses father or mother must die, God said. So he went and
he bore the curse for his people. He took all our sin of not obeying
our parents in perfection, as well as all our sin in breaking
all the law, the offense of Adam. And He bore it all in His body
on the tree, and He bore the condemnation we deserve. He bore
the wrath we deserve. Turn to Isaiah 53. This was a
blessing to me. I hope it was. I preached on
this yesterday to the men in the preacher school, trying to
show them these are the things we have to preach if we're going
to preach on these precepts. But this was a blessing to me,
and I hope it will be a blessing to you. You know, when a child
disobeys their father or their mother, a faithful father is
going to chasten them because he loves them. That's what Hebrews
12 tells us. If you endure chastening, God
deals with you as with a son for whom the father loveth, he
chasteneth. Well, where do you see his preeminent love for his
people? Where do you see the preeminent
chastening of the father For all our sin and disobeying God
our Father and breaking every commandment of God, where do
you see our chastisement most? Here's the love of God, verse
5. Christ was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.
The chastisement that ended in our peace was upon Him. and with his stripes were healed.
Christ so honored the Father by this. He so justified the
Father and fulfilled his law and magnified his holy character
and justified his people. God is so well pleased with him.
He exalted God to the highest and wherefore God also has highly
exalted him and given him a name above every name. I'll make my
firstborn higher than the kings of the earth. And that's what
he's done. And God raised us up in him. All His elect, it
says, all those for whom Christ died, all those for whom He accomplished
redemption, He raised us up together with Him. Made us sit together
with Him. We're in heavenly places in Him.
And He did it so that in the ages to come, God would show
to His people that Christ redeemed the riches of His grace. in His kindness toward us through
Christ Jesus. That's what God's doing through
the gospel. He's sending this gospel forth to teach us the
riches of His grace and His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.
The Spirit of God comes and these riches are He makes you be born
again of God so you can receive these spiritual things of God
and know things freely given to us of God. And He gives you
faith to behold Christ and to rest in what Christ has accomplished
on behalf of His people. He gives you the unsearchable
riches of Christ. Perfect righteousness, perfect
acceptance, holiness with God, peace with God, reconciliation
with God. And God makes you to know this,
in Christ, in Him alone, by His obedience alone, every elect
child of God has obeyed God in perfection. And we have no sin before God. That's the gospel. That's what faith beholds. That's
what faith rests in. We are perfect in Christ, Christ,
Christ, Christ is our acceptance. Now let's talk about obeying
the precept in our text. We've seen that we can't be made
righteous by any precept. We can't be made holy by any
precept. But if the Spirit of God has blessed that to your
heart to see you're still the sinner, And yet He's blessed
to your heart to see Christ is the obedient Son who made all
God's children obedient children. He made it so we fulfilled every
law of God perfectly by what He did for us. And if God blesses
that to your heart, your motive in your heart will be right now
to receive the precept. Now here it is. He said, Obey
your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father
and mother, which is the first commandment with the promise
that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long in
the earth. Now we got to always begin with God, and that's so
with any practical application of any precept. This first applies
to honoring and obeying God our Father. Christ declared, there's
one way you're going to honor the Father. There's one way you're
going to obey the Father. He said, the Father judgeth no
man. He's committed all judgment to
the Son. That all should honor the Son
even as they honor the Father. And he that honoreth not the
Son honoreth not the Father which is sent him. So I'm going to
have to honor God's firstborn son because He trusted the whole
house to Him. And that's how I'm going to honor
the Father. How do I honor the Son? How do I obey the Son? How do I obey the Father? Christ
said, this is the work of God that you believe on Him whom
He has sent. You see, I told you God looks
on the heart. You could take this precept right
here and you could make it your determination that you're going
to obey your parents the best you can. And maybe you do a fine
job and you are an outstanding child and your parents think
you are the best child that ever walked this earth. But without
faith, trusting Christ alone, it's all sin. It's all been vanity. Without faith, it's impossible
to please God. If the motive of the heart was
to simply be recognized by parents or the motive of the heart was
to try to indebt God to save me or get a reward from God, it's just a mercenary, legal
worshiping of ourselves, sin. Any other motive but faith in
Christ, constrained by the love of Christ, is sin. Now back to Ephesians 4, look
there with me in verse 32. If you're born of the Spirit,
and you're given faith, and the love of Christ has been shed
abroad in your heart, here's the motive. Verse 32, Be ye kind
one to another, Tenderhearted, forgiving one another. Here's
the motive. Even as God for Christ's sake
hath forgiven you. I'm talking about obeying the
Father now. This is obedience to the Father. This is keeping
that precept toward our Heavenly Father. Be ye therefore followers
of God as dear children and walk in love. Here's the motive, as
Christ also hath loved us and hath given himself for us an
offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. Those
who honor and obey God the Father by believing on his Son, trusting
him to be all our acceptance with God, our righteousness,
our holiness. Our text says it shall be well
with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth. You're going
to live long on the new earth. only by Christ's obedience, trusting
Him. 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. You get what I'm saying? The
first thing this is, is obeying God the Father. And the way you
do that is by confessing, I can't obey this so as to be accepted
of God. I have to trust Christ to be
my obedience to this precept and every precept. Now I am going
to try to do what God says for me to do, but I am not doing
it from the motive of law. I am doing it because God has
forgiven me for Christ's sake. I am doing it because Christ
loved me and gave himself for me. You see that? You see what
I am saying? And then concerning our earthly
parents, now this right here is the only thing that would
be preached by a false preacher. They would just start with earthly
parents and it would be all carnal. But concerning our earthly parents,
it says, obey your parents in the Lord. Now, all should obey
their parents, but before God, the only ones who obey their
parents and are accepted of God are those that do it in the Lord,
those that believe Christ and do it from this motive of love.
If there's a child here that has believing parents, you young
children here, listen to your father and your mother. Your
parents know the gospel and they're teaching you the gospel. You
heed what they're telling you and believe them and believe
Christ. But when God's grace makes us
see we're the sinner, the motive of our new heart is faith in
Christ and we're constrained by His love, that's when we'll
truly seek to honor God our Father. That's when we'll truly seek
to honor our earthly father and mother. When we see we're the
sinner, and we see we're perfect in Christ, and we see His love
for us, that's when we'll have a heart to obey this precept.
We're not going to obey it perfectly. Our parents always had a chasteness,
didn't they? Well, if our earthly parents had a chasteness because
we couldn't do what they said, do you think we're doing what
God said to do? If we believe on Christ and our
parents don't, there's no greater love, no greater honor you can
show to your mother and your father than try to bring them
to hear the gospel preached. Pray for them. Wait on the Lord
to bless it. and honor them and obey them
in the Lord. So long as they don't tell you
to do something outside of the Lord that's against the Lord,
contrary to the word of God, so long as they don't try to
tell you you can't go hear the gospel preached, then obey them
and honor them. in the Lord. And this is the
truth, when the Lord has given you this heart to believe Christ
and to be doing what you do from the motive of love for Christ,
those parents that God used to bring you to hear the gospel
and that he used to teach you the scriptures and that he used
in this way and as his vessels through which he taught you the
gospel, That bond between father and mother and a believing child,
there's none like it. It makes obeying your father
and your mother easier, and it makes it easier on them to deal
with their child. It's just better all the way
around. So, do you see what we must consider when we consider
these precepts? This is so of any precept. Number one, I'm a sinner. I can't
be made righteous or holy by it. Number two, my righteousness, my holiness in every precept
is Christ. And the way I know this is He's
my holiness and my heart. He's turned me to Him to see
He's my only righteousness. I've only kept any precept in
Him. Always consider that when you
look at any precept. And especially consider it if
your brethren don't appear to be keeping a precept as you think
they ought. You can't see their heart. God does. And He'll make them
stand. You honor your Heavenly Father
by speaking the Word of Christ to them, praying for them, and
then waiting on the Lord to work in them and do whatever good
thing you can do for them. And then thirdly, the motive
God receives is faith in His Son that works by love. Do what
you do out of gratitude to Christ. That's it. All right, brethren. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
You for this Word. We thank You for Your blessings.
Lord, thank You for being a faithful Heavenly Father to us in all
things. Thank You for Your faithful correction.
Thank You for keeping us. Thank You, Lord, that You trusted
this whole work to Your firstborn son. How grateful and thankful
we are. He's our everlasting Father.
our Savior, our Redeemer, our all. Lord, make us to be obedient
children. Help our children to hear this
Word. Help your children everywhere
to hear it. And forgive us, Lord, for going to these precepts and
having this vain motive of thinking we're righteous or better than
somebody else because of what we've done. Forgive us, Lord. We need your forgiveness. Forgive us for Christ's sake.
How we do praise you, how we glorify you in Christ, we thank
you so much for saving us and keeping us. In Christ's name
we pray, amen.