[Transcript represents full sermon's text]

       Today we come to the final chapter in our study of the book of Ephesians, Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. And what we're looking at today is verses 1 through 9 of chapter 6. We've got basically three areas that we're going to be talking about. It's going to be children relating to their parents, parents relating to their children, and then the bosses and employees relating to each other, basically. Those are our three areas. And let's go ahead and get into the text. We'll read verse one to get started. Paul says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (ESV).

       Pretty simplistic there, right? It's interesting how Paul directly addresses the children in the church at Ephesus. He's talking directly to them, giving them instruction as a spiritual leader, a spiritual minister, pastor, whatever you want to call Paul in this context. He’s instructing the children in Ephesus in the Christian church to be obedient to their parents. It's pretty simple, pretty common sense. Now, I think obviously children, and some people might laugh at this a little bit, but children automatically obey their parents in general, right? The younger they are, I think that's the natural inclination, at least in part, because we all do have that God image inside of us, where we're going to naturally obey our parents and follow our parents, because they're our leaders, our heads. Obviously, now, the older we get as we grow up and get maybe 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, it gets a little bit harder, and then you get to 12, and maybe it gets even harder from that point as you get into your teens. And so it's just the more knowledge we acquire, the more influence we have from friends, from the world, whatever it is, there's maybe that more temptation to think, “Eh, I don't know if my parents are really right on this matter, so I'm just going to do what my friends are doing or do what I want to do or whatever it is.” That, obviously, I think is experiential that as children get older, it becomes more difficult.

       Let's go ahead and go to verse 2, and we'll read verses 2 and 3. Paul continues, “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land” (ESV).

       Paul appeals to the Old Testament. He appeals to the Jewish tradition, which when I was thinking about this, I thought, “Man, that's kind of interesting for him to do that since he's talking to a Gentile church here.” The only thing I can think is he's just, from his past teaching, from his past religion. Really, he's just pulling that and bringing it forward because really, obviously, it still applies to this day in the vein that Paul is laying it out in the New Testament. And that comes from Exodus 20. And I have personally always interpreted this command as more than obedience, more of an honoring thing. Especially when you're between ages 1 and 17, maybe 3 and 17 for our conscious years, you're going to obey your parents, but you're also going to want to honor your parents. And that is just basically two things: thinking well of them inside your mind, but also speaking well of them with your friends, your teachers, whoever. You don't want to be bad-mouthed about your parents behind their back. I think that makes good sense.

       And even, I would say, even in adulthood, even when we become 18, become an adult, and so on and so forth from that point, we still want to honor our parents, right? We may not obey our parents and everything because at that point, we're old enough that we can make our own decisions. We decide this, that, and the other in how we're living. You know, maybe we think doing something a different way is better. Maybe we learned it at college. Maybe we just picked it up from a few friends. And we think, well, this way of going about this thing or even this issue or whatever it is, is a better way than what my parents taught me. And at that point, that's perfectly fine. That makes sense. But we still want to honor our parents and that we think well of them and speak well of them to others. Now, obviously, not all parents are the same towards us. We're going to get into that in a moment. But just in general, we want to try to do that as Christians, as believers in Jesus.

       The other thing is that God promised the Jewish people this general promise that if they did this, that basically they would live a long, good life. Now, obviously not everyone that honors their father and mother is going to automatically be guaranteed to live to 75, 80 years old. That's just not the way it works. And is this still relevant today? Maybe, maybe not. I would say to the Jewish people in particular, it might be still relevant. Because God always keeps his promises, right? He made the promise to them. So with them, I think you would say that in some way, shape, or form, whatever that is, God honors that. Again, it doesn't mean you're guaranteed to live a long time. But with the Gentile Christians, maybe not as much because that promise was for them. And I don't believe it transfers to Gentile Christians just because we're in a different dispensation now. But so that's just something to kind of chew around there. But practically speaking, it's going to give you a long life. If you had a good father, good mother that taught you good things, commonsensically, that's going to cause you to live a less problem-filled life, perhaps a longer life, by being obedient to those things because they taught you the right good thing. From a practical standpoint, it makes perfect sense, right?

       Now we're going to get into the more nooks and crannies of this. Let's go to verse 4. Paul says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (ESV).

       Paul flips the coin to the other side, and now we're looking at things from his perspective. He’s talking to the fathers. Now, could this include the mothers? Contextually, it seems as if it possibly could, because if we look at verse 1, he says, “ parents.” Verse 2 he says, he's quoting Exodus, “honor your father and mother.” So in verse 4 he switches to fathers, but contextually it seems as if Paul may have meant this to be fathers and mothers. But I think it's good for both, but it says “Fathers.” So obviously fathers, and we got to think about this long term, like as a continual action, as a continual way of parenting. Fathers do not want to provoke their children in such ways that they will respond with a type of anger. And it's the attitude then that fathers have in their child-rearing toward their children.

       And from my perspective with my understanding of psychology and whatnot, I believe in attachment theory. And what attachment theory is quickly is that children in their formative years develop what's called an attachment style. And of course, many of you are probably familiar with this, but there are basically four attachment styles. Three are the most prevalent. So you have secure attachment, which is normal, good attachment. It's where you have the proper developed bond with your parents. Then there's anxious attachment, and there's avoidant attachment, and then anxious avoidant, kind of like a mix of the two. The other three outside of secure are not the way God intended it to be. God himself would be secure in how he acts and he wants us to be secure. But if we were raised in an improper way, it can cause dysfunction, if you will, in attachment style. So like an anxious attachment would be like the parents gave mixed signals. Some days they acted one way; some days they acted another way. The child doesn't feel grounded secure. They feel anxious because it's unpredictable at home; they don't know what they're going to get today from mom or dad. So that's that.

       And then avoidance develops when the child was raised in a really strict environment. The parents were overly strict and perhaps even neglected the child at certain times so that the child had to become self-sufficient. So the child, and by neglect I mean, the parents didn't give that child enough emotional attention as they probably should have gotten, right? So then they themselves and their life will oftentimes develop strict rules that they feel everyone needs to follow and they even perhaps should commonsensically know, which everybody doesn’t know. Then later on in adulthood, you get into problems with when an avoidant and an anxious try to partner up; it becomes a problem because they're like polar opposites.

       But let me grab a book off my shelf here and I've recommended it several times . This is called ‘Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love.’ This is obviously an adult book that's for romantic relationships, and it’s written by Amir Levine and Rachel S.F. Heller. It basically describes the psychological findings of attachment theory and what those attachment styles are and how they relate to each other, and the good news with all of this is one can work to correct an attachment style that is outside of secure so it's not like you're anxious; you're avoidant; there's no hope. It's just what you are. You're going to be that way the rest of your life. No, it just means you have those tendencies. But like anything, through continual work towards acting in a secure way, one can get better and better over time. Now, it might take years to do that, but it's probably worth it, I would say for sure. But we're getting a little bit off track.

       I want to read and grab another book here, and that's going to be the King James Bible because I want to read this verse in the King James Version because I like the ring of it in the King James. Let’s pull it up because in ESV it sounds fine, but it sounds like it can sound a little bit strict too, I think. Let’s get a different perspective of it from the King James. Paul says, verse 4 again, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” So I don't know, that sounds a little bit more, not as, I don't know, it just sounds a little bit different, a little bit more appealing to me. But the idea is, is there discipline? Well, sure, yeah. I mean, good parents are going to discipline their children. Of course, many of us are pulling up the verse from Proverbs, and I'm going to pull it up . Proverbs chapter 13 and verse 24. Even secular folk know this one. “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” (ESV). Now, obviously, we're not going to advocate here physical discipline towards our children, I don't think. At least most of us are not going to go that route.

       But the point is that we do want to give discipline towards our children, if we ever have any or currently have them, to give them the proper, for lack of a better term, punishment when they do wrong, whether that be through being grounded, sent to one's room, a toy taken away, whatever that is, for disobedience because we want them to learn. We want them to learn that if you don't follow the rules, if you don't do what we say, that's obviously good, then there's going to be consequences in a negative form from that. And that helps the child, obviously, when they get into college, when they get into the professional workforce, whatever they're doing, because then they can obey the company. They can be timely. They can get things done on time, whatever it is, because they had that discipline growing up, right? And they don't have the habit of fighting against, of talking back against the company, right? And of course, I said, we're going to get into the employee relations with Paul's companies in a second, well, a little bit. And this all is training in righteousness, remember, as Paul would tell Timothy. This is a training in righteousness to be doing things God's way, be doing things the proper, correct way. This is good stuff for children to be following.

       Now, obviously, there comes the point where we need to recognize that not all parents are the best parents, and I know I'm stating the obvious. But if somebody becomes a Christian, say, in their teens, and their father and mother are not Christian. Well, well, that can be problematic, right? Children never want to do anything that their parents tell them to do that's against the Lord, that's against the Bible, just like employees don't want to do that when they're working for their companies, right? So same idea, but again, stating the obvious, but it just needs to be said that children should never follow parents when they're doing something that's against God or want them to do something that's against God or what God says in his word. And obviously in this day and age, especially in the United States, there can be a lot of dysfunction when it comes to all this. We're aware of that. Sometimes one parent is a Christian, the other parent is not. So there can be conflict.

       And when the children are split, if the parents are divorced and they're with dad part of the time and mom part of the time, and again, if one is Christian and the other is not, it's obviously going to cause conflict. And these are things that the Christian parent just has to work through on a one-by-one case basis. But God's Word is always that foundation that we live by. Parents who are in that situation, they have to do the best they can, right? They can't control the divorced spouse. They obviously can't do that. But obviously prayer is going to become important in that kind of situation and patience. We do want to bring that to the surface and acknowledge that because that is the case in various families today. It's not all Christian families are not just a mom and dad that are Christian with Christian kids, right? So those families look different in different ways, especially in today's day and age. But regardless, let's move out of this section.

       Let's go to verses 5 and 6 now. Let's just go ahead and read it, and then I'll start talking. Paul says, “Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (ESV).

       Obviously, contextually, what Paul is talking about is the slavery that was going on in the first century. Back then, 2,000 years ago, there would have been enslaved people in Ephesus. And perhaps there were people in the church that were either enslaved but coming to church, or they were the enslavers. They were the masters who owned the people. The slave people did not have full rights. They didn't have any rights, really. And so obviously this isn't something we have in the United States anymore, thankfully. But it was an issue back then, 2,000 years ago, just like it would have been an issue here in the United States 250 years ago and thereabouts. What we're going to do is talk about this from an employer, employee standpoint, just because we don't want to let this section go to waste. Let's get something out of it.

       Paul told the bond servants basically not to have a haughty attitude. Not to have an attitude of not taking their master seriously. And so it would be with employees relating to managers, bosses, whatever you want to call them. So standard employees of the company, which many of us are, we’re not to just blow off our bosses and act like what they say doesn't really matter. We're supposed to have a degree of seriousness within our work ethic. And Paul says that we're to try to do a good job at our job from the heart. It's not something that we're not just working when the bosses or the managers are around, right? We're trying to do a sincere job. Even when they're gone for the day and we're still at work, we're trying to do the job as a good quality job that they'll hopefully be proud of.

       And obviously not all bosses are just. They're not all ethical, right? At least ethical to the Christian standard. But we still want to try to do a good job. Anyway, it doesn't matter per se whether that boss is ethical or not. I've worked for different bosses in my day in the secular world, and I can think of one particular boss that I didn't feel was super fair. But I still tried to do a good job at my job. Did it bother me? Yeah, it bothered me at times. And I think it made the job harder because it put me on edge. I was watching every little move I made and whatnot, but it does make it hurt when the boss is unethical, when they're not really acting how they should be in accordance with good Christian principle, and just being unfair or whatever it is, or being overly demanding, overly harsh. And of course, sometimes bosses do that to try to get the employee to move on, right? That's a passive-aggressive tactic sometimes. But sometimes the bosses are just doing that because they do that too. That's just the way they are. They've got some type of internal conflict from the past. I think it's particularly hard when that kind of boss favors one employee but doesn't favor others, and you just so happen to be in the group they don't favor. That can be hard when they show that favoritism. But the bottom line is when we're relating to how we work in our careers, we want to remember God's word. We want to keep it central.

       Continuing on in verses 7 and 8, Paul says, “rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free” (ESV).

       There it is—what we do. It’s not just what we do in church or what we do in our regular outside-of-church, outside-of-work lives. It's what we even do when we're working in our careers that is ultimately for God. To some degree, of course, we're benefiting our employer, but we're also doing what we're supposed to have access to, with an attitude as if we were working for Jesus himself. And that can, I understand, in some situations, kind of make the burden seem even heavier if you're in a bad situation work-wise. And of course, prayer is necessary in that type of situation. And if there’s an opportunity to get out of that or get in a different position when that opportunity comes, it might be wise to take hold of that. Sometimes we have to suffer longer than we want to, and we have to learn how to deal with that suffering as positively as we can. I've been there. I've done that. I know what that's like.

       But Paul's saying that when we do good for our employer, that we're going to get rewards for that in heaven, like Jesus talked about in Matthew chapter 5. And let's pull that up. Most of us probably have it memorized, but let's pull it up anyway, just for you to drive it home. So it was actually chapter 6. Jesus says in verse 19, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (ESV). The point is that what we're doing in this life doesn't just count for this life. Yeah, we can get our money from doing a good job at work, but anything we buy in this world, it ain't coming with us, right? We don't get to transfer these physical goods to heaven. But the good things that we do for our employer, that's accumulating us rewards in some way, shape, or form. We really don't know much beyond that in the heavenly realm so that when we do pass away and we go to heaven, if we did a good job at our job and treated our managers right and treated fellow employees right, we're gonna actually have a more bigger grander set of rewards up in heaven. It’s pretty cool stuff. I mean when you really stop and you think about it and you contemplate it, you're like, “Wow, you know, I didn't realize that all that stuff I'm doing at work trying to do a good job that's actually getting something in the unseen realm.” It's pretty, pretty cool stuff.

       Back in Ephesians chapter 6, let's go ahead and read verse nine to finish us off. Paul says, “Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him” (ESV).

       Obviously, with God, there is no favoritism. And it's interesting because I was just watching the movie with Daniel Day-Lewis called ‘Lincoln,' where he played President Abraham Lincoln, and I think this was back in 2012. And this was, I think, the fourth time I've seen the movie. I have a copy of it. And it's just, it was amazing how the Congress was working to abolish slavery by getting the 13th Amendment passed. And they wanted to get enough yes votes on it so that it was passed and could be ratified by the states. It was just amazing because that shift, that shift of consciousness where they, and not all of them, obviously, but they were working to make what should have been that way all along, make white folks with African American folks co-equal in everything. God had created all men equal, right? As Jefferson told us in the Declaration of Independence. But they were working to bring the law into proper correlation or proper standing with God. With what God says, that which is self-evident and that which is in accord with godly truth. And they did it, right? President Lincoln did that. You got him and the Secretary of State. They rallied enough folks to vote for the amendment and the yay so that it would pass. And it was just an amazing thing to have that slavery abolished.

       The thing of it is, Paul says at the beginning of verse 9 that just as employees should be respectful to their bosses, so managers also need to be respectful to their employees. Now, there are a lot of Christian managers out there, right? Christian folk that are in leadership positions in their company from the top, middle, toward the bottom, whatever it is. They want to be fair, righteous, just with those employees that are working under them, even the ones who are not believers. So even the managers need to hear that, “Yeah, you need to follow what God says in his Word and do the best you can.” If you work for a secular company, you do the best you can. And following that most always probably quietly, you try to do what would be pleasing in God's sight. And that also is going to incur rewards later on. So Paul says in the context of slavery, no threatening. Obviously, I don't think most managers in our current time threaten their employees, but maybe more passively aggressively, right? More in unspoken ways or doing secret punishments for an employee not behaving or being obedient in a certain area that maybe just benefits them, but it's not what the employer really needs to be spending their time on, whatever it is.

       Obviously, as we talked about, the employees are supposed to try to act the best they can towards their bosses, even when they're unjust, as Paul talked about elsewhere. He talked about that in Colossians. The bosses, though, the managers, are not supposed to be doing those shady things as folks being in charge. Obviously, for the Christian, they want to be the best boss they can in accordance with God's word. You obviously don't want to be too friendly with the standard employees. You want to keep that structure in place because you don't want to break down that structure, if you will, but you get the point, I think. But the boss does not want to show favor to some and not performance, of course. Now if one employee performs better than another, the boss might have the better performing employee doing certain more important tasks, which is common sense, right? But the boss just doesn't want to show favoritism based off superficial things, things that don't matter, whatever it is. And that's because, as Paul says, God does not show favor to us. He doesn't show partiality. I think as American Christian evangelicals, this can be something that's difficult for us to get through our heads.

       There's a lot of Christian teaching out there that teaches that we were intricately designed by God and therefore were just so intricately special. And that's true, we were designed intricately by God. But remember, Paul talked about at the beginning of this epistle to the Ephesians in chapter 1. He talked about how God predestined a group of people to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ—Christians. And it wasn't that God predestined individual persons, that this person is going to believe this person isn't. I like this person. I don't like this person. That is, in my opinion, that is not the way it went or even goes now. So God predestined the group. Anybody can join in on that group from their free will. And that just ties into this verse that there is no partiality with God. God is not up there arbitrarily choosing certain folks and not choosing others. We need to get that out of our heads as evangelicals because it's not reality. It's not the way it works. It's really a good thing because it means God is righteous. God is just. He can be trusted 100%. He's not up there making these decisions based on that he just likes this one person and doesn't like that person over there. It's in my mind that makes God more trustworthy.

       But obviously in different areas of teaching children, there's been this emphasis on how special we are. I raised my hand because I remember things growing up that basically popped me back. Well, yeah, we're all special to a degree because we're created in God's image. But we're not special in a prideful way where I'm better than all these people over here. Or because I'm a Christian at six years old, I'm better than everybody who's not a Christian. Or God favors me. Look what he's done. We have these good things. So God likes us more than other people. That's not the way it works, and that's not how we should be thinking. And this is something to contemplate over and perhaps private meditation, private setting time aside to really think deeply about these kinds of things and kind of do a little bit of a pride check. Am I thinking that I'm better than everybody? Am I thinking that God holds me in an extra special way better than a bunch of other people? Got to be very careful with that. Because the Bible says God shows no favoritism.

       And I know it can be rooted even in theological things. Just like I talked about, there are ministers, Bible teachers who will teach that in Ephesians 1, when God predestined, he predestined certain individuals for this, that, and the other, and didn't predestinate others. It's called election, right? And they call it election, that's what they call election. But we got to be very, very careful with that. And unfortunately for a lot of us, it's been ingrained into us. And we got to de-ingrain. We got to disenfranchise ourselves from it. Kind of got to pull those weeds out. And it can be a little unpleasant, a little uncomfortable at first. But like I said, in my mind, it makes God more trustworthy. But anyway, I think that's going to do it for today.

       And as I just talked about with the group that God predestined, I just want to say that anyone out there who doesn't know God, who doesn't identify as a Christian, can come into that group and become part of God's family by their free will choice. Nobody has to do that. But if that's something you think you would like today, God sent Jesus to the earth. He died for our sins. All the wrongs we've ever done in our lives. He rose from the dead. And if we trust in what Christ accomplished, we can have all of our sins wiped away. And we too can experience bodily resurrection someday after we're gone, or if the rapture of the church happens in our lifetime. We too can experience that. So anyone who wants to believe in Jesus today, I encourage that person to go to God in prayer and tell him you want that and listen to what he says and he will guide you to the right way, the right path. Of course, reading his word is important and that's an easy place to start, right? To try to get to know the God of the universe better and more clearly and how he really is and what he really thinks. It's just amazing stuff.

- Daniel Litton