Colossians - Relationships That Demand Our Attention

God Centered Theology

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In his book, Better Dads, Stronger Sons, Rick Johnson recounts when

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Charles Francis Adams, son of President John Quincy Adams, and grandson of President John Adams, kept a diary.

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One day he entered, went fishing with my son today, a day wasted.

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Well, his son, Brooke Adams, also kept a diary, which is actually, to my knowledge, still in existence.

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On that same day, Brooke Adams made this entry, when fishing with my father, the most wonderful day of my life.

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The father thought he was wasting time while fishing with his son, but his son saw it as an investment of time.

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The only way to tell the difference between wasting and investing is to know one's ultimate purpose in life and to judge accordingly.

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Every single day, we invest time into relationships. And whether you may realize it or not, you do it intentionally.

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How you spend your time, what your priorities are, what is important to you, demonstrates which relationships you have deemed worthy of your investment.

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One of the oldest clichés that are around is people do what they want to do, and they go to what they want to go to.

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That's why I don't get too terribly upset over church attendance, things like that, because ultimately people are going to go to what they want to go to.

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It's the most truest thing in the world, because people go to and they do what they do based on what they have deemed worthy of the investment of their time.

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Now obviously our time in relationship with God should be our highest priority. The book of Mark talks about how the greatest commandment is that we love the

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Lord our God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves. That goes without saying.

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And it could certainly be the subject of many sermons for another day. Relationships that we prioritize in our life, we will see time spent on those as investments.

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Ones we do not prioritize, we will see time spent on them as wasted.

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So what's sad is that it seems, and at least appears for that matter, that at least for this one day, that father didn't see time with his son as being a good investment of his time.

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The Bible speaks about many different types of human relationship, and gives instruction and commandments on those relationships.

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We covered last week briefly, we didn't exhaustively look at marriage, but we covered in brief on marriage last week.

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We've also looked at things in terms of our relationship with government, relationships in the church, so on and so forth, and the husband's leadership in the home, and the wife's being in subjection to that leadership, and loving the wife as Christ loved the church, so on and so forth.

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And today we're going to turn our attention to what I hope we'll cover four. If we only get through two, that's perfectly fine.

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We can do the other two on Wednesday night, as I already discussed. But my goal will be to get through all four, but we're going to start with these first two.

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Relationship number one, child to parent. In Colossians chapter 3, in verse 20 it says, "'Children, be obedient to your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the

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Lord. Fathers do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.'"

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Now the difference between what God instructs in terms of the relationship in the church and in the home, is you have a subjection to leadership.

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When it comes to children, He specifically tells them that they have to be obedient. And there's a difference there, there's a difference between willingly putting yourself under the rank of a leadership, and then putting yourself in a position where you're actually commanded to be obedient.

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He instructs children to be obedient. He doesn't instruct the wife to be obedient to her husband,

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He instructs her to be in subjection to His leadership. But with children, they're commanded to be obedient. This word obey is a present tense imperative, meaning ongoing action is not a suggestion.

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It's not as I've always say it this way, it's not, well if you get around to it, it's no do this, obey, attend to, obey what is heard.

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What it is, you're acting under the authority of the one speaking. And this would include active and intentional listening and obedience.

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Why? Because it says it is pleasing, meaning this is acceptable and well pleasing to the

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Lord. Now the child's requirement to be obedient to their parents only lasts as long as they're under the roof and under the home of that parent.

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It's a continuous obedience that never ends while they're living at home. And now Paul does speak of the blessedness of singleness, so when one becomes an adult it doesn't necessarily mean they have to go and get married.

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But typically speaking, generally speaking, what will happen is a child will grow up, they'll either go to college or they'll get a job, they'll become an adult, they'll get married and they'll move out of their parent's home.

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And so specifically speaking, you look at something like we looked at last week with Genesis chapter 2 verse 24, it says for this reason a man will leave his mother and father and then go and be cleaved to, or be united with, or be glued to his wife.

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Once a man and a woman have left their homes and have come into the marriage bond of Christian marriage and have established a new home, you are no longer required to obey your parents.

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You are now in authority, the man is in the authority and the headship of a new home. The wife is now in a new home in the subjection of the leadership of the husband.

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The husband is to be loving his wife as Christ loved the church. He's to be loving her as if it's his own body, as we covered last week.

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But they've established a new home. Now honoring your mother and father, respecting them, treating them well certainly goes without saying.

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But you're no longer required to obey them. There's a whole host of things I can get into, and I don't, maybe at some point down the road when we revisit this subject and get a little bit more detailed.

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But there's a whole host of things you can get into of the parent -child dynamic. You have parents that still want to withhold, or still have authority over, and still want to get obedience from their children even though they're grown.

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You've got children that still live with their parents, and they're well into their 30's and 40's, and for some reason can't go off and be their own person.

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You've got a whole host of things that can happen there that prevent this from happening. But the basic understanding is that once a child is left out from under that authority, and they now, even if whether they're single or married, they establish themselves on their own as an adult, they're no longer required to be in subjection or in submission to the authority of this verse, which tells them to obey their parents.

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Now just like we saw with the marriage relationship, it says, wives be subject to the leadership of your husband.

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The Bible spends far more time talking about what the person in authority, or the person that has the leadership, or what have you, it spends far more time talking about what they should be doing than it does about the ones that are in subjection to the leadership.

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Why? Because God hates dictators. Wives are not property.

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They're not your slaves. Children are not property. They're not your slaves. And we're going to look at why you should view them in just a minute.

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So, just as it comes with pastoral leadership, when it comes to leadership of the husband, so on and so forth, the

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Bible spends much more time talking about what those people should and should not be doing.

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So, we're going to see that now in relationship number two, parent to child. We see this once again in verse 21, it says, fathers.

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Now this word that's translated fathers, it's the same word you find in Hebrews 11, 23, and it's translated parents there.

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So, in my opinion, you could translate that word parents here as well.

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So, you could read the verse, parents, do not exasperate your children so that they will not lose heart.

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Do not provoke. Do not arouse anger. This will cause a child to lose heart, cause them to have a loss of hope.

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And see, since the parents are an authority, since the parents have the leadership in the home, God's going to say much more about what they should be doing.

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You see, it's the parents' job to model Christ in the home. Children need to be viewed as a mission field for God.

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They're not property. They're not someone, now it's good if you can teach children to do chores, but they're not someone there just to do chores for you.

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They're a mission field. They're someone that you should see as an investment of your time. Your first duty as a

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Christian in discipleship is in your home.

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That's why as a pastor I have to commonly remind people, my first ministry is my home. Anything I do at the church comes past that, beyond that.

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So, if there's ever a decision of my family needs me versus the church needs me, the family takes precedence.

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But that goes for every one of you as well. Whatever ministry you do in the church, whatever your job is, your ministry and your family is your first priority.

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That takes the precedence. That takes the priority. Because your first duty of discipleship, we're given the

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Great Commission, right? Go and make disciples. Your first duty of discipleship and the investment of your time is in your own home inside those four walls.

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Parents need to make sure that Christ is worshipped supremely, and that their children understand that their obedience is ultimately to the

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Lord, and to His Word. One thing that I'm trying to do better, and I'm still in the midst of working on this, so I largely still fail at this, but I'm working on it, is when

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I have to instruct or correct Hannah, I need to explain to her, Hannah the reason we don't do this is because God's Word says it.

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See, because if I make myself out to be the ultimate authority, I'm a sinner, I'm going to fail, and what trust is she going to have in me?

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You've pointed to the ultimate authority. You've pointed to Christ. This is why we do what we do, because God's Word said it.

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And God says you need to be in obedience to me, but I need to make sure I'm leading you correctly. Because just as it is in every level and function of authority that the

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Bible talks about, the only time it's OK to disregard or disobey any authority or leadership is they tell you something contrary to Scripture.

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So, governmental authority, we're to be in submission to our governments, if they tell us to do something contrary to Scripture, that's the only time we should rebel and say, no,

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I'm not going to do that. Same thing for children. The only limit the

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Word of God would put on the obedience of the child to the parent is if the parent is having them do something contrary to Scripture.

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What parents say and do affects their children. You may not think about it, but it really does.

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Even if you're at the stage where your children are grown and gone, what you say and do can still affect your children, so never lose sight of that.

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The amount of time that you invest in them will matter one way or the other. If you spend time with them correctly, that will matter.

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If you spend no time with them, it will matter. What parents say and do about church and about God's Word will take root in a child.

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A parent that can't be bothered to attend church is saying a lot to their child about how much church matters.

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A parent that can't be bothered to study God's Word, to pray, to be in submission to God's Word is teaching their children how much

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God's Word actually matters. A parent that doesn't see church as good enough to be there, or spend their time, or be in service to other

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Christians, what they're saying is that church and God's Word is ultimately worthy of their time. And then a lot of times they're surprised that when their children get grown, they stop going to church, or they don't see church as important.

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Now, with everything in life, especially with people that I've known that have had alcoholic fathers, or some other sin in the family, it is possible through the power of the

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Holy Spirit to do what we call, break the cycle. Because someone has to break that cycle, or you'll have it generation, after generation, after generation.

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And sometimes even in the midst of a bad situation, a child can rise up, and grow up, and break that cycle, and establish a new pattern.

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But it's very difficult. So, it's very important for us as parents to model

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Christ, make sure they understand that the assembling of ourselves together in a local body is important.

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You need that fellowship. You need to be under the sound preaching of the Word of God. You need to be under the care and watch care of all

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Christians, because spiritual care is all Christians. It's not just something the pastor does.

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It's instructed of all Christians to care for one another. They need to be in that environment. They need to be discipled.

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They need to be discipled. We also need to teach them how to disciple. And it goes right back to the fact that your first duty of discipleship is in your home.

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No matter how many you have, one, two, three, ten, twenty -one kids and counting,

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I don't care. They all deserve your discipleship. They all need it. Now, this will be a sermon for another day, but I want to briefly mention that you need to avoid the legalistic approach as well.

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We need to emphasize things like God's Word, and Jesus Christ, and living a Christian life.

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We want to be preaching the Gospel to our children. We want to make sure they understand church is important, and so on and so forth.

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But you need to avoid the legalistic fundamentals approach, because that can produce rebellion in a child as well.

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Fortunately for me, it didn't happen. But a lot of people I know, they grow up and become almost the far opposite extreme, because they are in complete rebellion, because they have been forced to do something, as opposed to teaching them why we do something.

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And that balance you walk is apparent of, do I push here, or do I need to back off and just let them have a couple minutes?

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This happens at our home. Sometimes Hannah gets, yeah, I know it's hard to believe because she is such an angel here, but she has her moments.

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And sometimes she wants to go running off and stomping into a room, and I want to go chasing after her and lay down the law.

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And Gina is like, just give her a minute. So, I'm like, alright, whatever. Go back and do what I'm doing. Sometimes she just needs a minute.

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She just needs to get that emotion out of her. I'm like, alright, well, whatever she needs.

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It's not necessarily something that needs to be corrected, because remember, parents, we do not punish our children.

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We correct behavior. You never punish your children. You correct behavior.

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According to J .A. Peterson, when the 10 -year -olds at Mrs., I'm going to butcher this name,

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I -M -O -G -E -N -E, Imogeny, Imogeny Frost. Imogeny Frost, if you happen to listen to this sermon online one day,

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I apologize to you. Imogeny Frost class at Brookside, New Jersey, Community Sunday School.

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They expressed their views of what's wrong with grown -ups.

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Okay, Toes, you ready? Number one, this is what 10 -year -olds said about grown -ups.

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Grown -ups make promises, then they forget all about them, or else they say it wasn't really a promise.

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It was just a maybe. Translation, and this is me.

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Keep your word with your children, and be honest with them when you can't do something and tell them why.

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But don't make the habit of, I can't do that. Because kids will, they know things.

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And they'll know when you're essentially telling them that what you want to do doesn't matter, because they're always saying, I can't do that.

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But there will be times when you just tell them. But keep your word. Number two, they say grown -ups don't do the things they're always telling the children to do, like pick up their things, be neat, tell the truth.

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Don't be a hypocrite to your children. Number three, grown -ups never really listen to what the children have to say.

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They always decide ahead of time what they're going to answer. Listen to your children. What they have to say is important to them.

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And if it's important to them, it should be important enough to listen, and not just listening to respond. There is a difference. Grown -ups make mistakes, but they won't admit them.

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They always pretend that they weren't really mistakes, or that someone else made them.

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We talked about deflecting blame in Sunday school class. Well, yeah, that happens. Tell your children when you did wrong.

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Point them back to God's Word, and to Christ, and to why we should have bit while we're wrong. That's something

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I can say I do well. If I get angry and yell, or don't treat

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Hannah correctly, I always make an effort to go back in there and apologize to her later, and tell her, Daddy was wrong.

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I should not have spoke to you that way. I should not have acted that way. So I can at least say, at least on that one, I can check that box.

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I'm doing that one pretty good. Grown -ups never understand how much children want a certain thing.

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Certain color, certain shape, certain size. If it's something that they don't admire, even if the children have spent their own money, they always say something like,

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I can't imagine you'd want something like that. What is important to your children needs to be important to you, even if you don't like it.

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I don't have that problem in my house. My child loves Spider -Man. She loves Green Goblin. She loves

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Superman. She loves Batman. She does love horses. I'm not a big fan of horses. I mean, I'm okay, but I'm just not a horse guy.

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But you know what? It's important to her. So when she wants to go see horses, guess where I take her to go?

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We go and see horses. The other day, it was Friday. I pick her up from school, and Gina hadn't come home, and she wants to play horses.

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So we went under to the kitchen room table. She's got all her horses laid out, and I played horses.

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Bored out of my mind. But you know what? My child wanted to play horses, and if I act like it's important to me because it's important to her, that has a better impact than if I say, that's stupid.

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I don't play horses. Who wants to play horses? Now what if I just told my child if I do that? I just told her that what matters to her doesn't matter.

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You know how children translate that? That I don't matter. That's how kids see it.

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If you tell them what they like don't matter, you're telling them that they don't matter. Two more.

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Number six. Sometimes grown -ups punish children unfairly. If it isn't right, if you've done just a little thing wrong, and grown -ups take away something that means an awful lot to you, other times you can do something really bad, and they say they're going to punish you, and then they don't.

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You never know. You ought to know. Children need consistent correction.

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As I've always said, you don't punish children in correct behavior. Your correction needs to be consistent, so that your child is learning from the correction and not being hurt by it.

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Your child needs to be learning from the correction and not hurt by it. And the last thing they cover, they say grown -ups are always talking about what they did and what they knew when they were 10 years old, but they never try to think what it's like to be 10 years old right now.

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We all do it. I've heard it. I hated it when I heard it. And I don't know that I've done this to Hannah yet.

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I might have, but I hope I don't do it to her. God help that child. Put yourself in your child's shoes.

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Validate them. Build their self -esteem. There's going to be a lot of similar things, but it's different because it's their world and not yours.

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Your world when you were 10 is different than their world. Why? Because you are you, and they are them.

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I really hope that was correct grammar. I don't have Grammarly on my speech to check to make sure. I've got this wonderful contraption on my computer called

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Grammarly. And when I'm writing, it tells me when I get everything wrong. When I'm actually speaking, I don't ever know if I've said something wrong or not until later.

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And someone says, you know, when you said that, I'm like, yes, I did. All right, relationship number three.

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We are going to get all four today. This is good. Now, it's going to be a slightly different subject, so you're going to have to shift your thinking here a little bit.

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But relationship number three is employee to employer. Verse 22,

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Now, a word about this because the Greek word doulos is the word slave. And it does mean absolute ownership of something.

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So, largely people will say, well, the Bible doesn't say anything about slavery. I say slavery is evil. Look, it's not the point of the

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Bible. So, I found out some good things about it. In his commentary on Titus chapter 2, verses 9 -10,

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MacArthur says the following about slavery. So, I want to start with this. The Roman Empire depended on bond slaves for most of its labor.

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This is true. They were an essential part of society and the economy. While some were treated poorly and even killed, many were given great responsibility and would manage an entire household at times.

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So, you see this word stewardship. You'll see this word dispensation. A lot of times in the

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Bible it's a word that means an economy. It's a managing of something. Stewardship is a managing of something.

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A lot of times slaves would be put in a position to manage an entire household. They were even often educated and allowed to marry, and even given land by their owners to grow crops to feed their families and income.

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So, the relationship in view when we're looking culturally speaking at slaves in the

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Bible, yes there were some of what we would understand as slavery in American history, but we don't need to look through the prism of American history, and then superimpose that back on the

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Bible. It's not the same thing. It occurred, but Christianity's influence of defining how those relationships should look like within a slave and master were largely one of the biggest reasons that slavery had the downfall along with the

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Roman Empire when it ended. So, we can't look through our own cultural context when we're doing an interpretation of the

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Bible, and then superimpose that back on the culture in which it was originally written. One of the questions we have to ask in interpretation is, what was the cultural context of what this was written?

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You see, Paul does not address the condition of slavery. He offers no judgment about its basic fairness or morality.

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He just simply recognizes that it exists, and deals with the attitude that Christian bond slaves, the attitude that they should have towards their own masters, whether or not those masters were believers or unbelievers.

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See, social strata, recognized even designed by God for man's good, some people will be served, and some will serve others.

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This is just the nature of human society. Now, how they treat each other is what concerns

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God. You see, you hear it all the time from liberals, you know, the

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Bible doesn't condemn slavery, so therefore it must support it. No. Look, the Bible condemns and forbids murder, and man still murders.

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The whole point that we're under grace and under law is because if the law could save, you'd have no need for a

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Savior. Everyone that could perfectly follow the law, they could usher them into the Kingdom, and that would be that. You could have a law and a rule for every single thing you could possibly think of.

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The Bible could say, thou shall not have slaves. And you know what? People still have slaves, because people are sinners, and they have hatred in their hearts, first for God, and then for their fellow man.

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Why do you think it says in the book of Mark, I believe it is chapter 12, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength?

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Because we don't. And then why do you think it follows it up by saying, love your neighbor as yourself? Because we don't.

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Here it is, you have an inspired scripture, love the Lord your God with everything you are, and your neighbor as yourself, and we don't even do that.

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And you think the Bible is going to talk about whether or not slavery should exist or not? God's going to cut to the heart of the matter, because of the heart of the matter, it's the matter of the heart.

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The reason you have issues like slavery, the reason you have issues like hatred, and all these things is because of the condition of man's heart.

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Man's problem is not political, it's not social, it's not economical, it's a matter of the heart.

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But you see where Christ's love is lived in the power of the Holy Spirit, unjust barriers in relationships like slavery are inevitably broken down.

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We won't do it today, but you could do a study in the book of Philemon, with Onesimus the slave, and see how that turned out.

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Great example. The New Testament teaching does not focus on reforming or restructuring human systems, because at the root, it's the heart of man.

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And he tells them to, so bottom line to this is that, for many

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Christians today, as throughout Church history, and the context that this text is primarily looking at, is it's really about the employer -employee relationship.

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And that does fit today. And what you need to understand is that for Christians, the most important and fertile field for evangelism, outside of your own home, is where you work.

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And you're to obey your employer. Not with eye service, he says.

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Not with external service, or just when they're watching. But even when they're not there, when they're not watching.

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Because you're doing it, notice, as for the Lord, verse 23, whatever you do, do your work heartily.

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As for the Lord, rather than for man. Knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance.

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God is sovereign. He has you where He has you for a specific reason.

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Whether you're at one job, or you're at a new job, or you're in between jobs, wherever you're at,

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God has you there for a reason. You need to look at your job as a mission field.

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And even if your earthly boss does not compensate you correctly, reward you correctly, recognize your work, promote somebody else instead of you, these things happen.

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It doesn't change the fact that you are to submit and obey your boss, knowing that the

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God who owns everything, will one day reward you correctly.

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And notice in verse 25 it says, for he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality.

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One who does not obey, and we talked about this in Sunday School, we have all the excuses in the world.

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We justify sin, we justify everything six ways from Sunday. But that person will receive consequences.

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You will reap what you sow. And this is something I dealt with the food line a lot, you need to be careful of,

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Christians. Just because you have an unsaved boss, doesn't mean you can disobey them.

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In fact, your obedience to your boss can be one of the greatest tools you have to evangelize them for Christ.

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And then lastly, relationship number four, employer to employee.

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Now, chapter and verse divisions are a modern thing, they were not in the original text, so this is one of those cases where it kind of creates a clunky thing.

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Chapter 4 verse 1 actually goes with the ending of chapter 3. So chapter 4 verse 1 it says,

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Masters, grant to your slaves justice and fairness, knowing that you too have a

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Master in Heaven. If you are in a position of employer, and some of you are, you better treat your employees, whether they are saved or not, with fairness and justice.

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Because God will hold you accountable. It says you better do it because you too have a

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Master in Heaven. Just because you are an employer, or if you are a CEO, or whatever you are, it does not give you the right to treat your employees harshly, or unfairly, or have favorites, or yada, yada, yada, yada.

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And God will hold you accountable. He may not do it in this life, but you will stand in front of Him one day.

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Now, obviously for a Christian your eternal standing is not at stake, but rewards, and so on and so forth.

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And God's Word says that He will chastise His people, and correct their behavior, so there is that in play as well.

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But if you have saved employees, and then this is another key here, if you have saved employees, while you should see them as equal to you spiritually, because they are.

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We covered this last week with Galatians 3 .28. Remember there is no Jew, no Greek, no free man, no slave.

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Christ is all in all. We are all spiritually equal. And while that is true, you do have a responsibility to get the job done.

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You need to exercise your authority if you are the boss. But you need to rule and oversee with equity.

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Because there is a relationship there. Now, some of you may have just a few employees. Some of you may have a lot.

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At one time I had somewhere between 80 and 100 under me at one time. There was one time

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I did payroll for a whole district. So, I had other store managers that had to answer to me. I've been in all kinds of levels. I've been on the lowest of the low, where everybody was above me.

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There are so many different relationships. And everyone has their dynamic.

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There are some people in authority, and some people there are not. There are some people that serve, and some people that are served. Regardless, the point

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Scripture is making is that you walk in righteousness no matter the relationship.

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If you are someone's employee, you obey and serve them and let God work through your obedience to win them.

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If you work for a saved employer, no different. If you have saved employees, unsaved employees, no different.

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Because if you are an employer and you have an unsaved employee, you might can help evangelize and win them to Christ by how they see you, treat them just as fairly as someone that may be saved.

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Because they'll know. Every single day, we invest time into relationships.

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And whether you realize it or not, you're doing it intentionally. How you spend your time, what your priorities are, what is important to you demonstrates which relationships you deem worthy of your investment.