This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Ephesians 5-6” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 3, 1996.

This morning our scripture reading begins in Matthew 21. We are reading from verse 12. This is God’s word. Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple. and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers and the seat of them that sold dogs, and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. And when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David, they were sore displeased, and said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? Jesus saith unto them, Yea, have ye never read? Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise. And he left them, and went out to the city of Bethany, and he lodged there.”

Then turning over to Ephesians chapter 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. I want to suggest to you this morning that what you have in front of you in Ephesians 6, verses 1 through 3, is a piece of apostolic brilliance, a gem calculated and generated by the Holy Spirit to be a most glorious blessing to the Church of Jesus Christ until he comes again.

So brilliant is it that its light reaches out to the previous section in Paul’s letter, the section dealing with wives and husbands. This section will help them to illuminate that previous section and also the following section in which Paul deals with slaves and masters.

But unfortunately, few passages are looked at so often and in such a lackluster pedestrian fashion as this one. Few passages are treated as this one is. Few passages are treated pedantically as this passage is, generating a bit of somnolent rather than responsible exegesis.

First of all, we must realize the force of the address. Paul is speaking to the children of the Church. This, then, is a public letter. It is to be read in the Church. It wasn’t coming to the Church as just another piece of correspondence to be filed away by the pastor of the congregation, or even as a missionary communique, as welcome as that might be.

Instead, this is in a letter from the Apostle Paul, and it comes with the authority all the authority of his office. Have you thought recently about what it meant for the apostle Paul to be so described, for him to bear that title? The word apostle means one who is sent, one who is commissioned. It is even used with respect to Jesus Christ himself in Hebrews 3 verse 1, where Jesus Christ is called the apostle of our confession. It has the general sense of an ambassador, an envoy, an emissary.

Specifically in its New Testament sense, it has in view those who carry the office within the Church, Those who had seen, yes, seen, the risen Christ, and had been directly commissioned by him for service. Therefore, not all preachers and teachers in the New Testament are apostles. There is everyone who saw the risen Christ an apostle. Mary Magdalene saw the risen Christ. She is not an apostle. But notice the environment out of which the term apostle rises.

I remind you of the words that I mentioned earlier—ambassador, envoy, emissary. Those words suggest a governmental background, a regal and a royal setting, as the king sends out his emissary to deliver his message. And that is the dimension so often missed by messages on this text.

Paul is delivering a message from the king, the great king, the glorious ruler of the universe and his exalted son to those who are the privileged subjects of his realm. And in this case, Who might those subjects be? They are the children. Think of it. The apostle of God the Father, the ambassador of Jesus Christ, comes with a message from the throne, a message to children. The children themselves. are addressed. But now I want you to consider once more where they are addressed.

To be sure, what they are called may well be judged appropriate for a domestic setting and for their domestic relations. Those that they sustain in their own homes. Children of their parents. However, the place in which they hear this command is not in their homes, but in the church. What do you think? As nice as that would have been, that each of these children in the congregation at Ephesus received their own personalized letter from the Apostle Paul. Maybe they could get it by e-mail. Well, of course not.

They heard Paul’s message in church. They came to church, and there they received the apostles’ message. These children were in church where the apostolic word coming from the throne of the king was delivered. They were able to comprehend what was being said.

Children, obey your parents. And they were in church, not in some junior church or some children’s church, God forbid. You actually think that the Apostle Paul went around on his missionary circuit organizing children’s churches in those congregations that he formed. I plead with you for a little sanity. In fact, there may well be some connection between the command that children obey their parents and the place. Could it be that some of the children in the Ephesian church were giving their parents a hard time about going to church? Therefore, the command, children, obey your parents and stop giving your parents a difficult time about being where both they and you know you ought to be.

At the same time, be aware of how the setting of the Church heightens the glory of the entire matter. You see, the Church has already in this letter been described as Christ’s body. It has been described as the fullness of Him who fills all in all. You can check that out in the first chapter, verses 22 and 23. The Church has already been described in this letter as God’s household, chapter 2, verse 19. A holy temple in the Lord, verse 21 of that second chapter. A dwelling of God in the Spirit, chapter 2, verse 22. And in chapter 3, verse 21, God’s glory is inseparably connected to the Church and to Christ’s very own person, the implication being that the two cannot be separated when it comes to the manifestation of God’s glory. And in chapter 5, verses 25 through 33, Paul has already described the Church as Christ’s bride. the extension of himself.

It would seem that the message from the apostles, from this ambassador, doesn’t simply come from the throne, there is that sense in which it comes to the throne. In fact, The Spirit, together with the Word itself, have effected this monumental reversal. The place in which the King’s words are heard is the place to which the King, by his Word, has come. And the presence of the King makes of the setting a throne room, no, even more, a holy sanctuary, a royal and a holy place. Thus the Church.

This is why the current habit of so many in interpreting this text trivializes this text. This is why the current habit of so many in interpreting this text is so misguided and so utterly common, the heights and the glory are never seen. All we have here, so we are told, is Paul’s use of contemporary domestic household curves, to which he adds a couple of catchphrases like, in the Lord, some gospel allusions, and a few Old Testament quotations.

He does this in order to draw upon the common practical wisdom of the Greco-Roman society concerning daily living, in order to not offend his culture, but at the same time provide a Christian flavoring to all that he has to say. Now, if you pick up commentaries on this text, I suggest to you that that is what you are going to find invariably. that nothing could be further from the Apostle’s intention and from the truth of the passage. Paul may very well take the pattern of the domestic and household codes of the Greco-Roman world, but not so as to leave them at that level. Rather, he translates them, he transforms them by his apostolic service into the royal, sacred setting of the Church. You learn how to be an obedient child, first of all, at church, not at home.

What am I saying? Why, I have just uttered heresy. For everyone knows that the basic social unit for all civilization is the home. Let me tell you what the heresy is. I have just outed it. The basic social unit of human civilization is not the home. It is the church. The family of God. In fact.

You may be forced to make decisions against your home in the interests of the church, which comes first. There are many of you here without your parents. Some of you are here without your children. Because you have had to make those choices. He who does not hate father and mother, brother and sister. Cannot be my disciple. I didn’t say that. Jesus did.

The whole discussion then is elevated, is exalted into the presence of God, and these children find themselves in the most exalted, earthly setting imaginable. Even while here in this world, our environment, our children’s environment, has been permeated by the heavenly light. Our children enjoy access to that. We have some marvelous pictures of this very truth in the Gospels, don’t we? In the Gospel of Matthew, which we have read this morning, we have the account of Jesus’ triumphal entry, and we find this marvelous accounting of things.

Verse 15, And the children were crying out in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David. And the chief priests and the scribes were indignant. What is alarming about this passage and shocking to the Jewish leaders was the fact that the children had stormed the temple. They came right inside the temple. By Jewish law, they weren’t allowed to do that. They were always kept at a distance from the temple, but here they are right inside the temple, and whom are they praising? Surely it is a picture, is it not, as Matthew telegraphs it to the Church? It is a picture of the coming Church, wherein the new temple of God, the voices of the children who draw near to Christ, are heard in praise of Him.

Jesus will teach us this very same truth when He blesses the children even as he links, through children, heaven and its glory to the earthly gathering of those who congregate before him. Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for as such is the kingdom of heaven.” The Old Testament had its own appeals to children. Psalm 34, verse 11, finds David saying, “‘Come, you children, listen to me, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord,’ as the Book of Proverbs has been interpreted as an extended appeal to children. Still, these appeals only anticipate a greater day to come. since they are uttered in an era in which the children are still kept at bay, kept from the royal sanctuary of God.

But now, in this new day of access, in this new day of their access, what about in and through Jesus Christ, whose ministry, death, resurrection, opens the doors for them? They are present in the new royal sanctuary of God. there to hear directly for themselves the message of their glorious God and King, Jesus Christ.

Children, obey your parents. That’s what the King says. The environment of this new royal sanctuary of God is therefore not simply for adults, As the Jews and even Jesus’ disciples said, thought, imagined, prosecuted the case for, that it is also for children and all those who are like them, for such is the kingdom of heaven. Such children who receive the command and by grace act upon it. Children, here, I ask you. Do you see where you have been positioned by the grace of God? In a sanctuary, in a holy place, in a royal dwelling, before the face of the King. But there is one more thing we have to say before we close this message.

The command itself, children obey your parents, is a reminder to you children, not just of your glorious new privilege, but that you are sinners. The teaching of the Bible is not that you are a special class of people. in yourselves, innocent of corruption and sin, you, too, need a Savior. And having been brought to the one true Savior from sin, you must fight like your parents against the sin that pursues you. One very important way in which you fight against that sin is by giving yourself to this biblical passage. Children, obey your parents.

The strength to do this does not come from yourself, but in keeping with the gospel, which I hope you cherish and understand more and more, your strength to obey comes from the Lord, for your obedience is in the Lord. In fact, before the Lord Jesus Christ calls you as members of His Church to obey, He has obeyed for you and on your behalf, being the perfect child of His parents and the perfect son of His Father. If you want to know how you ought to behave as a child, And what obedience looks like, I plead with you children to look to Jesus unto his obedience, which is more than example to you, it is saving grace and power. But I will be saying more about this in the coming messages. and I trust that you children will be here, aware of your sin and your need of a Savior, willingly obeying your parents as they bring you to church, delighting in your privilege to enter into this royal sanctuary, the royal sanctuary of your great God and King, the throne room where Jesus Christ, in whom all perfect obedience resides, sits enthroned at his Father’s right hand.

Our God, though we be small and young, yet you have given to us ears, and you have blessed us in this covenant relationship that we sustain with you, with our parents, an opportunity to sit under your word and to profit from the message that comes from the throne. even as you transform our humble surroundings into a royal dwelling, a holy sanctuary. Lord, we who are small and yet young ask of you that you will work in our souls, that we will see the glory of the surroundings in the church more perfectly, even as those surroundings and that glory are joined to what is above. where Christ sits, yes, that one who is your obedient son, at your right hand.

Bless us, O God, in this day of privilege that is ours. If we had been kept at a distance formerly, now we walk right into the sanctuary, and we bless you for this privilege. But, Father, we plead with you that you will keep us from sin. Lord help us to obey our parents.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.