Alright, brethren, let's turn
in our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 6. I'm going to read the first three
verses. Ephesians chapter 6. Children, obey your parents in
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 thou mayest live long on the earth. Now when we study
these exhortations, I think you've noticed and I've tried to be
sure to do this in each one of these. I've taken them one at
a time because I wanted to do this in each of these exhortations.
The way that the Apostle Paul preached about a husband and
a wife, showing that Christ is the husband and that the church
is his bride. This is how every one of these
exhortations should be preached. Showing Christ's glory in the
exhortation. Showing how that this is fulfilled
by Christ for His people. And then we look at the exhortation
last. So that we're constrained by
His love for us to obey. Now, this is written to believing
children. Believing children. They're the
only ones that can do this in the Lord. Now, we're going to
focus our attention on just two sons this morning. Two sons. One son was a disobedient son. One son is an obedient son. First
of all, Adam was the disobedient child. He was the disobedient
son. Adam was the first son that God
the Father created. God was his father and Adam was
his son. God gave his child one command
in the garden. You're familiar with it, Genesis
2.16. The Lord God commanded the man,
saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.
And there was a lot of trees there to eat from. And he said,
You may eat of any of those trees. And he said, But of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. He said, Thou shalt not
eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest
thereof, thou shalt surely die. Now Adam was to obey God his
father. God was his father and he was
to obey him. Our text says, parents, children,
obey your parents. And he was to obey the father.
And by his obedience, Adam would have honored God the father.
It says here, children, honor your father. And by his obedience,
he would have honored God his father. He would have said, he's
the authority, he's the power, he's the head, I'm the child. I'm in submission to him. I'm
in subjection to him. He would have honored him. And
had Adam obeyed and honored God, it would have been well with
Adam. That's what the Scripture says. Children, obey your parents.
Honor your father and your mother. It shall be well with thee. It
would have been well with Adam. And all of his house, all of
those born of Adam, it would have been well for them. But he disobeyed God. And he
dishonored the Father. And so it was not well with Adam.
He died spiritually. that day. Just as God said He
would, He died spiritually that day. Now Leviticus 20 verse 9. Turn there with me. Leviticus
chapter 20 and verse 9. This was the law that God gave
later. But this shows us why Adam had
to die. This is God's law. This was God's
rule in the garden to Adam. He gave this law later to show
us just how holy and righteous God is. God gives no room for
any leeway whatsoever. If you want to come to God under
the law, this is what you have to be under right here. Leviticus
20 verse 9. Everyone that curseth his father
or his mother. That's what Adam did in the garden
when he disobeyed the commandment of God. If we disobey any commandment
of God just in our thoughts, we've cursed God our Father.
And this is what shall be for those that have cursed God the
Father. He says, Everyone that cursed 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.
Now that's true. That's how it is. If you want
to come to God in the law, you want to try to come to God by
your obedience to the law, If you've ever had one disobedient
thought toward God, one disobedient thought toward your parents,
God says you must die. God doesn't just sentence capital
punishment to murderers. He does it for those that are
disobedient to fathers and mothers. Now, Adam was a representative
head, and since Adam was a representative head, when he died, when he sinned
and disobeyed God, all those that were in him, all his children
were in him, and they disobeyed God in him. And so, death passed
upon all men. The scripture says in Romans
5.12, Wherefore, as by one man, one man, sin entered into the
world. And death by sin, and so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sin. That's the case
with you, that's the case with me. So the first disobedience
to a father, the very first disobedience to a father resulted in sin and
death entering the world. And you and I were conceived
in sin because of it. So that we came forth from the
womb, disobeying God in our heart, dishonoring God our Father in
our heart. And subsequently we did the same
to our earthly parents. That's what we came forth doing.
No, I've said this to you before, no parent here taught your child
to disobey you. You didn't have to. They knew
how to do that already. And so we came forth disobeying
as disobedient sons and daughters of God by nature. And there's
no way we can come to God by our obedience to the law. We
can't even... Who would like to take this one law? If this
was the only law there was, honor your father and your mother,
obey your parents, who would like to try to come to God by
their obedience to that one law? He'd be a fool if He said He
wanted to. We've broken it. We can't come to God in the law.
But thank God there's another Son. And this Son is the obedient
Son. In Matthew 17, verse 5, God the
Father said this, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased. Hear ye Him. He's speaking of
the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father sent His Son to
represent a people. And he sent him to uphold God's
law. I want you to turn to Isaiah
42 just a minute. Isaiah chapter 42. He speaks here in verse 1 of
the Lord Jesus, Behold my servant whom I uphold, mine elect in
whom my soul delighteth. I have put My Spirit upon him,
he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He is speaking
of the Son of God. He came and He took part of the
flesh of His brethren to uphold God's law for His people, to
satisfy judgment, to set judgment in the earth, on the cross, and
to set judgment in the hearts of His people. Look down now
at verse 21. The Lord is well pleased for
His righteousness sake. He will magnify the law. Make
it honorable. This is speaking of his son.
And that's why he said, you hear my son. Hear what my son says. Christ said, I didn't come to
abolish the law. I didn't come to set the law
aside. I came to fulfill the law. To fulfill it. And so he came forth to uphold
God's law. Including this one set before
us. He came to magnify, to make it honorable by his perfect obedience. to the Father. He came to declare
God just. That is, He came to satisfy the
justice of God for His people. The only way God could show mercy
to a sinner who's broken His law is for that law to be executed
upon that sinner in full. That law had to be carried out
in full upon everybody that He saves. And the only way that
could happen And God still showed mercy to you and me. If He would
have poured it out on us, we'd still be suffering now. We'd
be suffering for eternity and not satisfied. But the eternal
Son of God came and in human flesh went to the cross and He
satisfied justice. So that He declared God just
in what He did. And He came to declare that God
is the justifier. We don't justify ourselves. Our
faith does not justify us. Our faith looks to Him who does
justify us. And God was in Christ justifying
His people. He's the justifier of His people. He gets all the glory and salvation. And then He came to save all
God's children that God gave to Him. The elect of God, chosen
of God and precious, given to the Son. Christ did not come
forth to lay down His life for nobody in particular. He came
forth knowing who He was laying down His life for. He said their
names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life from the foundation
of the world. He knew exactly who He came forth
to lay down His life for. He told the Pharisees one day,
I'll lay down my life for the sheep and you're not the sheep. He came to lay down His life
for a particular people. And the Son of God, now He's
equal with God. There are no He thought it out
robbery to be equal with God. He is equal with God. But when
he came forth to do this work, he took the form of a servant.
He took the form of a child in his father's house, obeying his
father's will and honoring his father in all that he did. Look
at John 5 in verse 30 and hold your place in John 5. I'll come
back here. Now, this is spoken of as the
servant of God. As God, He can do what He will,
but this is as the mediator, as the servant of God, fulfilling
the will of His Father for His people. Look at what He says,
John 5, verse 30. I can of mine own self do nothing. Why? He's under the rule of His
Father. He's obeying His Father. He's
honoring His Father. He said, I can of mine own self
do nothing. As I hear, I judge. And my judgment
is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the
Father which hath sent me. You see, he's coming to obey
the will of his Father. The law is the will of God who
sent him. The law is the will of his Father
who sent him. He said, Thy law is in my heart.
I came to do Thy will, O God. He came. He took away that first
curse that was upon His people with all the ordinances that
were against us and contrary to us. He took that out of the
way and established the will of His Father. That is, He established
the law of God for His people by the which will we're sanctified
through the offering, through His offering once, that one offering. The law said, honor thy father
and thy mother. Christ honored God His Father.
In everything He was doing when He walked this earth, He was
honoring God His Father. Christ honored Joseph, even though
Joseph was not His true Father. He honored Him. He took His place
under His rule. Imagine that. God the Son taking
His place under the rule of a man. Look into that man as His Father.
And He did the same to Mary as His mother. And he did so in
absolute perfection. Parents, have you ever thought
about what it would be like to have the Lord Jesus Christ as
your child? It wouldn't be any of the things
that our parents faced with us and none of the things that we
face with our children. You're talking about a perfect
child who only did that which was right all the time. Can you
imagine? Can you imagine? That's what
he did all the time. Well, his people had not honored
God. Even though he honored God the
Father throughout his life in perfection, his people had not
honored God the Father. We disobeyed God in Adam and
in our own transgression. And we broke the law. And the
law said, everyone that curses his father or his mother shall
surely be put to death. He's cursed his father or his
mother. His blood shall be upon him.
So how then can God save His people? How can He save those
that He determined before the foundation of the world that
He would save? The law's got to be honored. The law's got
to be upheld. It's got to be magnified. So
Christ our Lord, as the child of God His Father, obeyed his
father by taking all the sins of his people upon him. He was made a curse for us. The
law said cursed is the man who disobeys his father. He was made
a curse for us. Now you think about that. There
he is, this obedient son, and he goes before the father whom
he loved, the father whom he honored, the father whom he obeyed.
And he bore the curse that his father hated. And yet, while he bore that curse
his father hated, to satisfy the penalty of the law, he was
obeying his father and fulfilling the precept of it. All at the
same time. Holy, harmless, undefiled, while
as yet he bore our sins in his own body on the tree. and He
bore our stripes. In doing so, He highly exalted
God. He satisfied the justice of His
law and He fulfilled all righteousness, fulfilling the precept of His
law. In doing so, He obeyed and He honored God to the highest
honor. God's law also said to the child
who is obedient, it said that thy days may be long upon the
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. So what's God the Father
going to do for this obedient son? God the Father was so well
pleased with His Son that He gave Him a land. He gave Him and made His days
to be long in the land which God gave Him. Look at Philippians
2. Philippians 2. I said to you, He highly exalted
God. Look at Philippians 2.9. Wherefore
God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which
is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bow. The word should there is shall.
At his name every knee shall bow. When his name is pronounced
in the court of your conscience, and his blood sprinkles your
conscience, you will bow to him in faith. Or, if you meet him
rebelling against God when you hear His name in the day of judgment,
your knees shall bow. Either way, every knee shall
bow. That at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow of things
in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and
that every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
the glory of God the Father. Why is it to the glory of God
the Father? Because this is His obedient Son. This is His glory. This is His Son who honored Him
and was obedient to Him. This is to the glory of the Father. And it says, Wherefore, my beloved,
as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now
much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear
and trembling. He's saying, whatever you do
as the church of God, Do it in obedience to your everlasting
Father. Do it honoring your everlasting
Father because of what He's done for you. The Lord said, I'll
declare the decree. This is Psalm 27. The Lord Jesus,
after He's risen and He's seated at the right hand of the Father,
and God has set His King in His holy heel, He said, I'll declare
the decree. The Lord hath said unto me, Thou
art my Son. This day have I begotten thee.
Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance,
and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." Because
he's the obedient son, God the Father will give to his son,
his only begotten son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that risen God-man
mediator, the advocate with the Father for his people. God the
Father will give his son whatever his son asks for. Whatever he
asks for. There's one Son that obeyed the
Father, just one. You and I are disobeying God
if we claim we've obeyed Him. We're disobeying God, we're dishonoring
God, calling God a liar if we say, oh, I haven't disobeyed
Him, I've obeyed Him. No, no, no. There's one Son that's
obeyed Him. And one Son alone gets the glory
for obeying Him. And He did it in perfection.
But what about you and me? The only way we can come into
the presence of holy God is if we're holy. The only way we can
come into the presence of the righteous God is if we're righteous.
We have to fulfill the whole law. We've got to dot every I
and cross every T. We can leave nothing undone.
Every one of us that comes into His presence has got to have
fully, perfectly fulfilled the law. And we've got to have no
sin on our record whatsoever. How then can we come into God's
presence? How can we obey the Father? How can we do that? The
law says, honor thy father. And this is the good news of
the gospel. The Son of God honored God the Father for every child
of God. I can say that unequivocally.
He honored the Father for every child of God. Every child of
God are those that God gave His Son. Those He shall call. Those who shall be saved. And
every one of them, Christ honored the Father for them. And He declares
to His child, when He gives you a new heart, and He gives you
ears to hear, and He quickens you to life, He declares to you
and me that the way that you honor the Father, that's what
the law said, you have to honor your Father, obey your Father,
honor your Father. And He comes to us through this
Gospel and teaches us the way you obey God the Father, the
way you honor God the Father, is you believe on His Son. Look
at John 5 again. John chapter 5. Verse 22. This is part of that
resurrection glory, that privilege given to the Son, to the obedient
Son. He says, The Father judgeth no man. but hath committed all
judgment unto the Son, that all men should honor the Son, even
as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son
honoreth not the Father which is sinning. Verily, verily."
When you see verily, verily, it means pay pay undivided attention
to this because this is vital. This is vital. Verily, verily,
I say unto you, he that heareth my word, he that heareth this
word he's declaring right now, the word where he said, he that
honors the son honors the father, he that heareth this word, and
believeth on him that sent me. Now understand what he's saying
here. You believe on God that sent
Him by believing Christ's Word and believing on Christ. God
the Father sent Him with this Word to say, You want to honor
me? Honor my Son. You want to obey
me? Obey my Son. You want to honor?
Believe on my Son. And He says, And he that does
this hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation,
but is passed from death unto life. You mean all that The vast
law that was there, that I couldn't keep because I was a sinner when
God gave it. That's right. Oh, God wouldn't
give a law we couldn't keep. Yes, He did. He did. We died
in Adam. Read the Scriptures. We died
in Adam. Death reigned from Adam to Moses,
even over those that hadn't sinned after the similitude of Adam.
Babies died. Why? Because sin had entered
into the world, and death by sin. We were all sinners from
our mother's womb. We couldn't keep the law. Why
did he give the law then? Look at Romans chapter 3. Look at verse 19. We know that
what things to whoever 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. Therefore by the deeds of the
law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. Look now. For by
the law is the knowledge of sin. That's why He gave the law. He
gave the law so you and I could have a knowledge of sin. So we
could understand what sin is. What sin is. Look at Galatians
chapter 3 and verse 21. Galatians 3, 21. Is the law then against the promise
of God? God forbid. For if there had
been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness
should have been by the law." Do you see that? You see that? What he's saying there is, he's
saying when God gave the law on Mount Sinai, we were already
all dead and unable to keep it. There's no way it could have
given us life. If you read what Paul told Timothy, he said the
law's administration of death. The law's given to declare you
dead, guilty before God. That's what the law's for. The
law is given to say you have never obeyed God and never have
honored God at all. That's what the law is given
for. But the scripture has concluded all under sin that the promise
by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, by the work of Jesus
Christ alone, might be given to them that believe on Christ. You see, the Lord Jesus Christ
fulfilled that whole law for His people. He fulfilled everything
the law said for His people. And the obedient son worked the
works of God the Father. And now the obedient son says
to those he creates anew by His grace, this is the work of God,
that you believe on Him whom He hath sent. You and I can never
come to God by our obedience to the law. We sin and come short
of the glory of God. Period. But through faith in
Christ, we establish the whole law of God. That doesn't mean
I believe on God and then on Christ and then I go out and
establish the law myself. No. I believe on Christ and believing
on Christ, I've established the whole law because Christ did.
That's Romans 3. That's the end of Romans 3. That's
why boasting is excluded by the law of faith because I've got
no room to boast. I didn't do anything to establish
it. He did it. Faith just rests in Him to have
done it for me. You understand that? And this
is God's promise to all that honor the Father, all who obey
the Father, by honoring the Son, by believing on the Son. This
is God's promise to you and I. He says that it may be well with
thee. How well? How well? Paul said
in Colossians, you are complete in Him. You are complete in Him. I was preaching in Mexico this
week, and I saw something I'd never seen before, right in the
middle of preaching. I pointed out to you before that
the verse right before that, Colossians 2 says, says, Christ
is the fullness of the Godhead in a body. And the next verse
says, and you're complete in Him. And the word complete and
the word fullness are the same word. And it says, you're complete,
you're the fullness of Him that is the head. Just as Christ is
the body of the Godhead and the fullness of the Godhead in a
body, His people are the fullness of Christ our Head in His body. And you're complete in Him. You're
complete in Him. He says, this is what He gives
those that honor the Father, that thou mayest live long on
the earth. What earth? This earth? He can make you live long on
this earth, but if you read Genesis, you're going to find out, and
then they died. This one lived 900 and so and
so years, and he died. This one lived 800 years, and
he died. This one lived so and so years, and he died. Oh, no. He can make you live long in
that new heaven, in that new earth wherein dwells righteousness,
where everything is the creation of Christ Jesus, the God-man
mediator. He says, Verily, verily, I say
unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that
sent me, hath everlasting life. everlasting life. He shall not
come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life.
Believer, if you believe Christ right now, by His grace, and
He's all your hope, and the only hope you have at all, that means
you are passed from death to life. You have everlasting life
right now. The doctor could come in today
and say, you got a year to live. And you could say, no sir, that's
not true. I got all eternity to live. That's right. everlasting life, eternal life. He said in Exodus, this is the
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. You just think about it. There was nothing good in us,
anything. But God chose His people freely
without a cause in you and me. There was no righteousness that
we can do. Righteousness is free. Christ
Jesus the Lord has made us the righteousness of God in Him.
And He did it freely, not by anything we did. This is the
land God gives thee. And He says eternal life is the
gift of God to the believer because it's God honoring His obedient
Son in Christ Jesus and He even gives you the faith to believe
on Him and gives you eternal life in Him. Whom to know is
life eternal. It's all a gift, brethren. Now
lastly, let's hear the exhortation now. Look back at Ephesians 6
and verse 1. Children, And he's speaking here
to true children, God's children. It don't matter how old you are.
It don't matter if you're young or old. He's talking to God's
children. Children, obey your parents, your earthly parents
in the Lord, for this is right. Constrained by Christ's love
for us, children of God, obey your parents in the Lord. The
born-again child of God is the only one who can obey their parents
in the Lord. The only one that can do that.
We do it through faith in Christ. And our gracious God says, this
is right. It's right because God says it's
right. And happiness is doing what God says is right. Obey
your parents. And then he says, and constrained
by the love of Christ who fulfilled the law for us and who's the
end of the law, who is our perfect righteousness, he says in verse
2, honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment
with promise, that it may be well with thee and thou mayest
live long on the earth. When God our Father makes His
child, when He makes us born again, when He gives birth to
us, our Father, when He does that, He makes us see that our
heavenly Father's love is from everlasting to everlasting. That means it has no beginning
and it has no end. We're just in a little capsule
called time. And He's going to bust that bubble
one day and there won't be anything but eternity. And we're going
to see God's love never had a beginning and it never had an end. And
when He makes you to see that, if you have a father or a mother
that doesn't know this good news, He makes you want to teach them. He makes you want to declare
it to them. And be patient with them and show them. And show
them the Word according to God's Word. and pray to God to bless
it to their hearts and wait on God to do it. He makes you honor
them by giving them the gospel. And if you have a father or mother
who taught you this good news, oh, it makes you just love them
because they were honest with you and truthful with you and
taught you the truth of the gospel. And you want to honor them as
unto the Lord, in the Lord, because of what the Lord's done for you.
And here's one last word. If you're a child who's yet in
unbelief, if you're a child and you're in unbelief, you don't
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, obey your parents and honor your
parents by listening to them teach you the gospel. By coming to hear the word preached, And in everything they command
you, so long as it is in the Lord, obey them. Because your
parents are just earthen vessels. That's all they are. But God's
going to use His earthen vessels filled with this treasure that
He's put in them, Christ Jesus, the unspeakable gift. He's going
to use earthen vessels to teach those that He's yet to gather,
that must be gathered. He's going to teach them and
He's going to Call them to Christ and make them obedient, God-honoring
children by His grace working in them. It might just be that
God uses your parents to bring you under the gospel where Christ
calls you by His grace. Obey your parents. Obey your
parents. Honor your mother and your father.
God says this is right. Amen. Let's stand together, brethren.
We'll have about a 10-minute break, and then we'll come back
at 11. Our Heavenly Father, oh, our
great, gracious, merciful, good Father, we thank you, Lord, that
you, in grace, sovereign and free, have made us to be your
obedient children. We see nothing but sin in us.
We see nothing but disobedience and dishonor in us. But Lord,
the way you say it is, is how it is. And by your honorable
Son, you've made us honorable children. And we pray, Father,
that you would make us obey and honor our earthly parents, that
you would use us to speak the truth to our children, that you
would draw those that you've everlastingly loved through this
gospel. Lord, give Christ all the honor,
all the glory. Bring every knee to bow and every
tongue to confess that he is your honorable son, your God-honoring,
obedient child, to your praise and your glory. Lord, we ask
that you forgive us our sins. In Christ's name we pray, amen.