DM 620446

Alright, if you want to follow along in your Bible, turn to Ephesians 6. We're continuing with our lesson through the fifth commandment, honor your father and your mother. And in doing that, and actually looking at that, we're looking at a number of other passages that give us more detail about this command. so Ephesians 6 verses 1 through 4 reads as such this is the legacy standard bible sorry I was about to say ESV children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with a promise so that it may be well with you and that you may live long in the land fathers do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

You may be seated. May God bless the reading of His Word and the preaching of His Word. I do appreciate Elijah's prayer before the service, or at the beginning of the service, so much, because as Reformed believers, we believe that God blesses the preaching of His Word. if we thought he didn't we could get up here and we could just read the scripture every week for 45 minutes or however long and we could just expect that to have a positive effect which it would and ultimately speaking there's no sermon given by a non man I mean Apostle Peter preached a couple inspired ones there but there no sermon by a non man that actually infallible And so every sermon that a man gives up, gets up to preach on a Sunday is going to have some mixture of error in it.

Even if the error is only in his own heart, you can't detect it in the words that come out. and so it'd be easy to say well let's just read scripture scripture is always better right but god has chosen through the foolishness of preaching to actually have his spirit come and work in the hearts of the people in the congregation alternatively speaking you could say well we can just log in every week and listen to a really good preacher at another church you like in California or Texas or some better place. But God has chosen to ordain the local church with the live, in-person preaching of the Word as the means by which the Spirit of God is going to take the Word of God and affect the hearers of those things. And so we're here, and we have preaching that's going to happen, and what is expected as the result, not because of me, me, not because of my preparation or my quality or however many improvements I may have made as a preacher.

We're here because the Spirit of God can work in your heart. And so when Elijah prays that we would repent of sin that is exposed, we take that very seriously and we actually, in a sense, expect it and look forward to it. and I guess if I could tell you how much more that happens to me on a personal level in the preparation you be happy with how little you end up with in a sense It very difficult sometimes for me to face all of the music all week And then what you hear from me in a brief period on Sunday that may sting you a little, I just want you to know it stung me harder. That doesn't mean it doesn't sting, but I don't want you to think I get up here and I just think, well, you know, there's Jesus and me and then there's all of you.

Like, I'm with all of you being a sinner and I need forgiveness and I need to grow. I just get an advance copy of the sermon over what you guys receive. So I had more time to think about it. But so when we talk about the children obeying their parents, we went through a whole sermon on that. And I assume by now you kids have memorized all of the advice that I've given.

And I'm sure you've posted it on the wall of your home and things like that. but part of the fifth commandment being expansive is the understanding that as parents you have a responsibility toward your children to help them to obey it and as in particular Baptist parents who in fact do not believe our children are part of the covenant community until they themselves are personally baptized by the Holy Spirit into Christ We recognize our children to be sinners who are desperately in need of salvation and who are led by the passions of their own flesh. And so for a parent to read the fifth commandment to their child and simply expect their child to wake up every day and obey that is utter foolishness. Now, we do expect our children to obey it.

What I saying is for you to expect them to just hear that that the rule and obeyed his foolishness In fact the Bible tells us in Romans 7 that the law of God is actually the outward agent that incites the sinfulness inside us It sounds kind of contradictory. You have to read the book of Romans, in particular Romans 7, to understand the flow of logic of this. But it's God's law that tells people what's right and wrong, which gets their inner hatred and enmity towards God actually a little bit riled up.

And the more you know about what God expects of you while you are in your unregenerate state, the more you can actually indulge in the flesh and sin against him. So they say ignorance is bliss, right? That's the old saying. In a sense, there's some truth to that. The more ignorant you are of God's laws, the more you may even accidentally just obey them.

But once you know that God has said not to do something or God has said to do something, now all of a sudden you have one more thing that you can violate that actually feeds your flesh. So as parents, you have a responsibility to help your children. And so once again, we're preaching about the fifth commandment And the entire sermon is going to be effectively a practical application to parents of how you are to be living out this commandment, not only yourself toward your children, but in order to help your children to be able to understand it.

One of the goals I can conceive of the fifth commandment is that the law of God bears on little children's lives in such a way that they ought to tremble before him and the fear of hell that they might flee to a savior at a very young age. If the only commandments were don't murder and don't commit.