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 17, 1996.

And we are reading from verse 41. Luke 2, verse 41. This is the Word of God. Now, his parents went up to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and Joseph and his mother knew not of it.

But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey, and they saw him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed.

And his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? Know ye not that I must be about my father’s business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them. But his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

And then turning over to Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1. Ephesians 6, verse 1. 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.

Pray with me now. Oh God, deal with our hearts Indeed, O Father, we pray, we who are of faith, that our faith would be active and exercised in and by your Word. And we have come, O God, to your Word, that we might be built up in this, our most precious faith. And Father, we would also ask on behalf of those who struggle with the faith, or as yet find themselves outside the faith. Again, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Lord, may you be gracious and grant faith today, here and in many places. for Jesus’ sake.

Amen. despite their simple, direct, and practical tone, Paul’s words to children in Ephesians 6, 1 through 3, should never be allowed to slip from their grand, exalted, doctrinal, theologically vital heights. By this I mean, these words should never descend to the barren, sterile level of moralistic instruction. We must not suppose that we have touched in these words the bedrock of, or the promise for, all future health, wealth, and long life. accrued to us because of our behavior and because of our moral effort. These words are not meant to be a mere reminder of common-sense family values.

True in and of themselves, and quite capable of functioning for us, relatively free of the powerfully expressed gospel that is laid throughout the entirety of this letter from Paul to the Ephesians. Paul, therefore, does not mean Ephesians 6, 1 through 3 to be any less severely or profoundly theological. that he does, for instance, Ephesians 2 verses 8-10, a passage which many of you have committed to memory, where Paul speaks about salvation through faith, that salvation being a gift of God communicated exclusively according to God’s grace. Or Ephesians 2 verses 14 through 16, where Paul speaks about the creation of one new man, beyond Jew and Gentile, through the cross of Jesus Christ. This means then that we cannot fall into the usual partitioning of the letter to the Ephesians, by which we are told that the first three chapters deal with doctrine and the last with the ordinary, more practical matters of Christian life. You should be aware that Paul’s position is not even doctrine leads to life, as sound and as orthodox as that may seem. Rather, Paul’s position is this.

Doctrine is life. and life is doctrine. Doctrine is life, and life is doctrine. Let me ask you, is this doctrine or life? There is one body and one spirit. just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

Given the ordinary division of the letter to the Ephesians, since these lines which I’ve just read to you come from chapter 4, verses 4 through 6, then they must be about life and not about doctrine. So goes the ordinary interpretation. Or how are these words to be taken? Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Doctrine or life? Well, since I just read to you Ephesians 5, verse 25, from the latter part of Ephesians, these words, according to the common interpretation, must be about life, not about doctrine. Or what about finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might, put on the full honor of God, that ye may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Doctrine or life?

Well, naturally, life, since these verses and lines which I’ve read to you come from Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 and 11. I’m being facetious, as you know. Each of these quotations is no less doctrinal than practical in orientation, no more concerned with the life situation of God’s people than with their doctrinal integrity.

But sadly, we have encouraged the doctrinally ignorant the doctrinally indifferent, and the doctrinally lazy, with an all-too-willing, all-too-easy surrender to the superficial division of the epistle to the Ephesians. And in this we have encouraged those whose hearts and heads are telling them, you know, you really have no doctrinal aptitude. You have no real doctrinal interest. You have no doctrinal predisposition.

Therefore, you should dispense with all this cumbersome, intellectualistic, heavy, boring doctrine and get on with some more practical directives, the action items for real Christian living. Don’t delay long, then, in what you judge to be doctrinal sections of Scripture. Hurry on to practical advice. Now, I hope I’m not being too harsh. But such an attitude of heart and mind doesn’t come from God. So you tell me, from whence does it come? All of this only reveals a deep and basic misunderstanding of the apostles’ ministry and message.

He intends no separation between doctrine and life, between theory and practice, between intellectual theology and application. For him, doctrine is life, and life is doctrine. While both are expressive, not of a division, of ideas in the brain on the one hand, and moral actions on the other, but of a unified existence of the whole, the entire person, and that because of the intrusive, gracious, gloriously breathtaking work of God in Jesus Christ. That’s the foundation of it all. The Apostle is not idea-centered, he’s not even morality-centered. He is event-centered. God has done something. And all ideas and all moral attitudes and estimations flow forth from that.

This means, then, that for Paul, as he writes Ephesians 6, 1 through 3, He is giving us testimony supercharged with witness concerning the intrusive, gracious, gloriously breathtaking work of God in Jesus Christ. Yes, Paul’s instruction to children are filled with theology. Paul’s instruction to children preaches, proclaims gospel. And I might point out in this regard, in speaking this way to the children, Paul expects fully to be understood by them.

He expects fully to be understood by them, not by their parents, but by them. Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Paul therefore will have none of this parental or ecclesiastical intervention from those claiming to be wiser than God. He will have none of this protective coddling but suggests our children must be shielded from the doctrinal level of religious living, because these matters are too confusing and beyond.

Better that we simply tell our children that they should obey us, we their parents, and be done with it. And if they challenge us and ask us why, we should convince them. that this is best for the better working of the family unit, in which everyone has his proper place. And if God enters the discussion at all, as well he might to shore up our case as parents, we should say that God likes nice children, and most certainly will reward obedient children.

Do I need to ask you to imagine the consequences of generation after generation raised on such drivel? Tragically, you don’t have to imagine at all, do you? Because you see the consequences everywhere around you. In a culture, supposedly one-time Christian, that first decided not to speak to its children about the gospel, but increasingly can’t even speak to its children about God.

We are living in a macrocosmic Mr. Rogers neighborhood. I’m tempted to say it. Oh, why not? Our nation, as far as children are concerned, are going to U.P. Sunday School. mainline church Sunday school. We are now faced with a broad-based church and a society informed by that church which can no longer present its children with the biblical environment and constraint for their moral actions.

I’m reminded in this context of my brother Jim’s experience while he was a graduate student years ago in Cleveland at Western Reserve University. His lab partner in an anatomy class was a professed Christian, a young lady who confessed to him and then constantly bugged him about the fact that she couldn’t make up her mind whether to sleep with her boyfriend. This went on for days and weeks. Finally, Jim shut her up by asking her, why don’t you? Jim later said that he never saw anything so tragic and desperate as the vacant look on that young woman’s face. Indeed, Why didn’t she? She had no answer.

We are now faced with a broad-based church and a society informed by that church which can no longer present its children with the gospel environment and constraint for their moral actions. The past stands contrary to all of this, and to us as well, if somehow we, in all of our conservative refinement and orthodox self-assurance, have allowed the gospel’s doctrinal vibrancy and living theology to be read out, to be dismissed from our appropriation of texts like Ephesians 6, 1 through 3. Shame on us! Shame on us if, while we are wrapping ourselves in our orthodoxy, we have reduced this passage to a bare principle, a law for guaranteed God-sanctioned domestic success and tranquility. That this might not happen to us. But it might not happen to you children who are addressed directly by this text.

It is of greatest importance that you be alert to the doctrinal vibrancy and the living theology of Paul’s words. And to this end, you must know what Paul means by his words in the Lord. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. First of all, you must know to whom these words refer.

Yes, we all call God, in the totality of his person, the Lord. We find this title used concerning God throughout the whole of Scripture, Old and New Testaments. However, more often than not, Paul uses this title, Lord, and specifically this phrase, In the Lord, to describe Jesus Christ. In chapter 3, verse 11 of this very epistle, Paul speaks about God’s eternal purpose which he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord. There’s the phrase, there’s the explication of it. And that’s Paul’s meaning here. He is referring to Jesus Christ as Lord. But secondly, you must know, if you are to grasp the vibrant doctrinal significance of Paul’s words, you must grasp what these words in the Lord describe.

Do they describe the children? Do they describe the parents or someone or something else? Well, of course, now Paul is assuming the children in this text, those whom he is addressing, he is assuming that they are in the Lord. That’s the basis upon which he addresses them.

They are in the church. They are baptized, they are receiving the instruction of the ministry of the Word, and they are expected to respond to it. So, yes, Paul assumes that these children are in the Lord, they are of the Church, they belong in the Church, they are members of the Church.

And more than likely, their parents also are in the Lord. Their parents have brought them. So yes, the children are in the Lord, the parents are in the Lord, but Paul in this context, in this instance, doesn’t mean his words in the Lord to describe either the children or the parents.

Instead, he means his words to describe the obedience. of the children. Their obedience is in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, you might be taken aback. You might be asking yourself, what could he possibly mean by this? In order to answer that question, we must decide what Paul specifically means by the connection, the connection of the children’s obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. Does he mean, for instance, to call attention to the limits which children owe to their parents when it comes to obedience? Well, yes.

There is certainly something of that in what Paul is saying. You children are not obliged to obey your parents when they command you to sin, when they command you to commit a crime, when they command you to do something that is heinously wicked or just plain wicked. But hopefully neither you nor these children to whom Paul writes were often faced or ever faced with such a situation as that. Well then, if Paul is not primarily interested in the limits of obedience, what is his concern?

Does he have in mind an obedience that is in the Lord because it is an obedience that is as unto the Lord? This too might be a helpful way of looking at the matter. For surely there is that relationship between the Lord, even the Lord Jesus Christ, and our parents, in which we are to see the pattern and the authority of the Lord himself in the figures of our parents. And we should love and honor and respect and even fear our parents as we do the Lord. But as proper as this is, Paul’s thought runs in a different direction.

You see, this obedience that is in the Lord is the obedience that is found in the Lord himself. And it is at this point we are brought home in the text. and all the marvels of the gospel began to spill out. And you begin to become amazed afresh at the full provision of grace in God and his salvation for us. The obedience that is in the Lord is the obedience found in the Lord himself, who according to the gospel not only obeyed perfectly his earthly parents, and while on earth is heavenly Father, for us, for us, that obedience was for us.

But this one who is now called the Lord is alive, raised from the dead, forever living, obediently in his Father’s glorious presence. And it is this which is placed at your disposal. Hear them. The Bibles of the Gospel are read out of the text, and you begin to see just how much even matters as ordinary and as common as obedience to parents. cannot be disassociated from the glorious, vital theology and doctrine that emanates from the gospel.

You cannot do it. You cannot lose the gospel when you come to these texts, because if you lose the gospel, you lose the power. You lose the effectiveness. And all of your efforts are empty. And in the end, they are utterly vain. The gospel then is found for you, you children, in this command. Even as you consider your inability even as you consider your failure, even as you consider your sin and your disobedience against your earthly parents and against your Heavenly Father.

But the obedience you say, to which you have been called, and into which you have entered, is the already perfect obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ, who, because he is living now, continues to be one, into whom you may enter by faith, through whom and by whose gospel his obedience avails for you.

And you are impelled, because you are in him, to obey as he obeys. You love him, don’t you? You love your Lord, don’t you? Out of this love and the effectual union that you sustain with him, your obedience flows. But at the end of the day, you know It is really His obedience that is at work in you.

So it is all of Him. Ephesians 6, 1-3 preaches high doctrine. It is filled with theological vibrancy. He declares to you the gospel environment and constraint upon your moral action in all respects. And that gospel environment and that constraint is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Himself.

Amen. Our God, we who are older, and parents, We who are adults, beyond the years of our childhood, may look back upon our childhood with even a measure of shame and a deep sense of disgrace. And Father, we who are presently children not yet adults, are those also who may look upon our situation and condition and be struck in the heart because of our sin. Yet Lord, how gracious you are, for Jesus has come He has lived through the whole of our life, from childhood to adulthood.

And He is without sin. And not only so, He lives now in your presence. In such righteousness that is His, He is able to dispense. And He gives it to us. And we in delight, O God, live for him. Our sins are covered, and our obedience is invigorated. And we thank you for that, even as we obey our parents in the Lord, knowing that this is right. through Christ, your Son, who is at your right hand, who serves obediently even now. Amen. In conclusion, we are singing 656. Okay. Yeah. you

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.