Sit, Walk, Stand -5
Sit, Walk, and Stand
Ephesians # 5
6/15/2002 and 6/16/2002
Ephesians 5
21 ¶ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour.
24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 After all, no-one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church--
30 for we are members of his body.
31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."
32 This is a profound mystery--but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Chapter 6
1 ¶ Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
2 "Honour your father and mother" --which is the first commandment with a promise--
3 "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."
4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
1 Corinthians 16:13
13 ¶ Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.
14 Do everything in love.
Review:
We have been talking about the book of Ephesians. This is our 5th sermon on that book. The subtitle is SIT/WALK/STAND. Paul talks about the great revelation of who we are in Christ. He then moves to therefore in chapter 4 and tells us how we are to live in light of who we are. In other words, we should walk worthy of the calling we have received.
I am going to use this opportunity because of Father’s day to land on the responsibility of men in relationships.
-I really wanted to wait to do this until I could get the clip from John Q. Denzel Washington is about to give his son his heart and so he is telling him the most important things in life in the short version. He is saying to treat women like princesses and be a person of integrity etc.
-I want to pull the Scriptures out of that passage talking about husbands and fathers and lump them together. I want to talk about:
BE A MAN
MANHOOD-DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT
1. WHAT IS BIBLICAL MANHOOD?
EXAMPLE
Sam Rayburn, a politician left home and said goodbye to his father on the platform of a railroad station. His dad gave him $25 that he had scrimped together somehow and said-Sam, be a man. That stuck with him his whole life and influenced his decisions.
-That presents a problem…what does “BE A MAN” mean?
-You are a male by birth; you are a man by choice.
-Being a male doesn’t make you a man.
-Our culture has defined manhood as a Rambo, Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood or some other macho guy.
-The true picture of manhood is Jesus Christ.
-We have to challenge the culture with the Biblical model.
-We often don’t know where we are going in our quest to grow up and be a man.
-We often don’t know what to teach our little boys.
-Manhood is under attack in America.
-We often find ourselves responding to feminism and the pressures of society instead of responding to the Bible.
-True manhood will not harm your family or the culture. It will in fact be a blessing to it.
-Biblical manhood is in a nutshell-IMITATING JESUS CHRIST.
-You don’t have to worry about a true Biblical man pushing his wife around or beating or sexually abusing his children. He won’t be insecure just because he is under attack from the world.
EXAMPLE
After a man opened a door for a woman she said, you didn’t do that because I am a woman did you? He said, no, I did it because I am a gentleman.
YOUR SON, YOUR APPRENTICE
"Consider your son to be your apprentice in life. That’s the way it used to be. The son was always with the father, either in the shop or in the field. So he learned from a very early age what being a man and a father was all about. Now we place more emphasis on our standard of living--having a nice house and two cars--than we do on training our sons. And that’s starting to hurt our society."
SOURCE: Thomas Kemp, 53, Retired Corporate Manager, Vietnam Veteran, Author, and Father to three. As quoted in Wisdom of Our Fathers by Joe Kita. Emmaus Pennsylvania: Daybreak Books, 1999.
-One of the meanings of family is the extent of a father’s leadership or influence.
-Our culture suffers tremendously from the lack of a father figure.
-I heard recently that over half of the men in America aren’t able to have an engaging conversation with their fathers.
-Our culture has neutered the male influence.
-There have been legitimate abuses by men. Some men are little boys and have caused great harm.
-At the same time, the Biblical mandate is to be a man, a godly man.
2. BIBLICAL MANHOOD IS MARKED BY LOVE
-Another way to put that is sacrifice.
1 Corinthians 16:13
13 ¶ Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage; be strong.
14 Do everything in love.
-Notice that Paul says to LOVE YOUR WIFE.
-That means to sacrifice your life for someone else’s.
-Paul says it is the same as loving your own body.
-You never intentionally hurt your own body-you pamper it and take care of it.
-Paul said we should use the example of Jesus loving the church as we relate to our wives.
1 Corinthians 13
8 ¶ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,
10 but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
-This all has to do with LOVE.
-The main function of a man of God is to LOVE.
-God is our example as Father. God so loved that He gave.
-Walking in love isn’t feminine.
-True Biblical manhood is to be a person of love and sacrifice.
3. DON’T CREATE RAGE
Ephesians 6
4 Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. – NIV
4 And, you fathers, do not make your children angry: but give them training in the teaching and fear of the Lord. (BBE)
4 And, fathers, do not provoke your children to anger; but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (NASB)
4 And you fathers, do not irritate your children, but bring them up in the nature and admonition of the Lord. (MNT)
4 And fathers, do not irritate your children, but bring them up with Christian discipline and instruction. (TCNT)
Colossians 3
21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.
-Exasperate means-to excite or inflame the anger of/to cause irritation or annoyance/it has to do with putting them in an angry mood.
-I read about a study that said in an average home there are 10 negative statements for every positive one.
-I also read that there is a direct link between sexual promiscuity and fatherly affection in a girl’s childhood between her and her father.
-What is the great theological conclusion?
BE NICE. Don’t humiliate them to prove you are the boss because you are insecure.
-Respect them because they are God’s creation. Believe in them and God’s purpose for them.
THE TOP TEN THINGS YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR FATHER
10.When he was your age, kids had to walk six miles to school
in the snow and rain . . . uphill both ways.
9. If he had acted like you, his father would have knocked
him into the middle of next week.
8. When he was your age, kids had to make their own fun.
7. You weren’t born in a barn.
6. When he was your age, he had to work for what he got.
5. You don’t wanna make Dad stop the car.
4. “Because I said so” is a reason that makes perfect sense to an
adult.
3. You’d better stop crying or he’ll give you a reason to cry (like
you didn’t already have one).
2. You’d lose your head if it wasn’t attached.
And the #1 thing you learned from your father . . .
1. Money doesn’t grow on trees!
SOURCE: Submitted by Bob Hostetler, Cobblestone Community Church, Oxford, Ohio.
4. FIND YOUR ROLE MODELS IN SCRIPTURE
-Jesus is the perfect example.
-He was not a girly man. He wasn’t a macho man. He was a Godly man.
-David was a man after God’s own heart who was a warrior. He danced before the Lord and worshipped.
-Paul was a man captured by a passion for the will of God. He was able to lay down his selfish ambition and follow God completely.
-Don’t be conformed to the world’s model but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
From Proverbs-Things to teach your sons
1-Teach them to stand alone-Proverbs 1:10-19/4:14-19
(Don’t follow the crown into sin. Have the courage to be God’s man.)
2-Teach him to listen to God-3:11-12
3-Teach him to deal with temptation-5:1-5
(Watch out for what Proverbs calls “the strange woman”.)
Psalm 1
1 ¶ Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
4 ¶ Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
Psalm 128
1 ¶ [A song of ascents.] Blessed are all who fear the LORD, who walk in his ways.
2 You will eat the fruit of your labour; blessings and prosperity will be yours.
3 Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots round your table.
4 Thus is the man blessed who fears the LORD.
5 May the LORD bless you from Zion all the days of your life; may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem,
6 and may you live to see your children's children. Peace be upon Israel.
PRAYER FOR MEN