Jesus is Greater Than Your Relationships
Notes
Transcript
This is our final week of the series Jesus is Greater. I hope that I have shown you areas of your life where Jesus is greater. Today we want to continue with this thought. I want to look at your relationships.
All of us have relationships. The people that are in our life and important to us. We don’t always get along with them but they are important to us. We want to make these relationships work for us in every way possible.
Think about the relationships that you have right now. You have a relationship with a parent. You have a relationship with a spouse. You have a relationship with a child. You have a relationship with a co-worker. You have a relationship with a boss or an employee. All of us have relationships. These are relationships that we work with every single day.
Relationships during Paul’s day were no different. They had relationships that they had to deal with. Of course, women, children, and slaves were to submit to the head of the family. Slaves submitted until they were freed. The male children were to submit until they grew up. And women and girls for their whole lives.
In Galatians 3:28 Paul emphasized the equality of all believers in Christ. He said...
28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
However, the Roman society had runs and Paul was going to suggest overthrowing the Roman society to achieve it. But he did counsel all believers to submit to authority by choice. And he gave rules for three set of household relationships. Let’s take a look at our text today and see what Paul says. Colossians 3:18-4:1
18 Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,
24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
25 Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favoritism.
1 Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
Paul mentions three sets of relationships in this passage. Let’s break each of them down this morning.
1. Husbands and Wives
1. Husbands and Wives
There was a lecture taking place at a woman’s club and the speaker was talking about marriage. She asked the audience, “how many of you want to “mother” your husbands?” One of the ladies in the very back row raised her hand. The speaker asked to clarify, “you do want to mother your husband?” The woman that raised her hand said, “Mother? I thought you said smother.”
I’m sure if we were to poll an audience we would find that many times you ladies want to smother your husbands, but you can’t. Paul tells wives to submit to their husbands. And he adds, “as is fitting to the Lord.” But he doesn’t end there. In verse 19 he says...
18 Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
19 Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.
Real spiritual leadership involves service. Our greatest example of being a servant is Jesus. Jesus served the disciples, even to the point of washing their feet, so the husband is to serve his wife. This means putting aside his own interests in order to care for his wife. If you are a wise man and a Christ-honoring husband you will not abuse your leadership role.
And if you are a wise woman and a Christ-honoring wife you will not try to undermine your husband’s leadership. There must be a mutual love and respect.
The roles have been this way since the beginning. God orchestrated the husband and wife union back in Genesis. He created man first as the leader of the household to provide care and leadership to the woman and family. Then He created woman to be the helpmate of man.
But man and woman abandoned their God-given roles in the Garden of Eden. Eve, by acting independently of her husband, ate the forbidden fruit. Adam, by neglecting his responsibility of leadership under God, consented to Eve’s disobedience. As a result, he too disobeyed God and brought sin and death into the human race.
Each of us has an important role to play and we are to be the person that God has called us to be. This union was formed in the beginning and we are to continue to live accordingly.
2. Parents and Children
2. Parents and Children
Just like the first relationship that we talked about this relationship has been here since the beginning of time. If you have children, you want the best for them. If you don’t have kids, then other peoples children can get on your nerves. We love children and they are a blessing from God. Paul speaks to the relationship here in verse 20.
20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
As children, when we obey our parents, we are understanding the authority that God has given our parents and that can carry over into understanding God’s authority and all believers’ responsibility to obey Him. When we obey our parents as children, we are pleasing the Lord.
Children are to obey their parents, but that does not give parents a license for harsh treatment. Children must be handled with care. They need firm discipline administered in love. We must not discourage our children by nagging. When we belittle our children or show them that they are unimportant to us, this hurts them and makes them feel less important. We must discipline but not to the point of destroying their self-respect. This can cause children to quit trying.
We discipline our children in hopes of helping them grow. We do not want to provoke them to anger or discouragement.
Does anyone here think parenting is easy? And when our children disobey us it can make us angry. But we are to discipline in love. And we are to discipline in a Christ-like manner.
3. Master and Servant
3. Master and Servant
During Paul’s day, slaves had a variety of tasks. They would run errands, care for the children, clean, prepare meals, or they would do odd jobs. But Paul gave their jobs a new dignity because these slaves would do their work for the Lord, serving Jesus Christ.
Slaves had very little opportunity to get out of slavery and they would receive very little if any compensation for what they would do. They had no inheritance in this world and so Paul would remind them they would ultimately be rewarded by Christ with their eternal reward.
In some ways, you could look at this relationship with the same lens as an employer employee relationship. And Paul tells us how we should handle this relationship in verse 23.
23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,
There is that word whatever again that we talked about last week. Whatever means everything. Look at what Paul tells us. “Work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.”
So, when you go to work and you are working for the man. And your boss is on you for something you did or didn’t do. Remember, you are only working for them on this earth. You have a greater mission and that is working for the Lord. So, make sure that you are the best employee that your company has seen.
As Christians, we should be the best at everything we do. We should be the best worker. We should be the most honest. We should be the first to work and the last to leave. Our Employer should never have any problems with us. We should lie cheat or steal to get to the top. We should let our work speak for itself.
When I worked for a company that I worked for before coming here. We would have sales contest. If you were the top salesman in the company, you could win prizes, bonuses, you would receive recognition and all kinds of things for incentives. We had salesmen that would figure out how to cheat the system. They would use the system to their advantage and they would technically cheat in order to win the contests. They would all eventually lose their jobs.
As believers, we need to work with integrity. We need to be honest and trustworthy in everything we do. Do your best and if the job isn’t working out for you, go to God in prayer and ask where He would want you to go. God has you in your place of employment for a reason. Make the most of it. And sometimes things don’t work out and so if you get fired or you leave on your own will, leave with honor. Don’t bad mouth the company or run your co-workers down. If you are falsely accused of something, I promise God will take care of you.
And that brings me to the last verse verse of our text, chapter four verse one.
1 Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
Do you notice a theme here?
In verse 18...
18 Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.
When Paul is giving instructions to wives he concludes with, “as is fitting in the Lord.”
In verse 20...
20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.
When Paul is speaking to children he says, “for this pleases the Lord.
In verse 23
23 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,
When he is talking to servants, “as working for the Lord.”
And in chapter four verse one he says...
1 Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.
Paul tells the masters that they have a master in heaven.
There is one common factor amongst every relationship that is spoken of here in this passage. That common factor is Jesus. Jesus should be at the center of our relationships.
There will be times that we won’t get along with each other. There will be times that we can’t stand each other and we don’t want to be around each other. There will be times that you will want that person to just go away and leave you alone. Even here at the church there will be times that someone will make you made or you will get upset or you will be mad at me the preacher because I didn’t shake your hand. And if that happens the most important thing for you to remember is that Jesus is at the center of everything that we do. We are all humans and we all make mistakes. We need to get better at serving one another and we need to get better at making a difference in each other’s life.
But as long as we can remember that Jesus is at the center of everything we do then we can learn to adjust when things do go the way we want them to. We can learn to get along better with one another. Make Jesus first and Jesus is greater in everything you do.
I want our worship team to come this morning. Can we all stand? I want to ask everyone that is here this morning to come down to the front and I want us to sing What a Beautiful Name It Is. Jesus is greater than anything. I could have put many more options after that statement. But I want you to know this morning that if you are struggling with any relationships Jesus can restore those relationships and bring you back together with that person or persons.
But lets just come and worship Jesus this morning. Let’s all come.