The Foundations, by Ray Stedman – Ephesians 1:3-14

… Listen

In the epistle to the Ephesians we are still working together today with the great statement in Chapter 1 in which Paul is setting forth for us the great, fundamental facts of our faith in Jesus Christ. This letter to the Ephesians is really nothing more than a description of the riches that we have in Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul emphasized these riches a great deal. As he traveled about the Roman empire he came to colonies and to cities where people were spiritually and materially impoverished — they were poverty-stricken people. Many of them were slaves. They had nothing of this world’s goods. They were depressed, discouraged, beset with fears and anxieties, jealousies and hostilities. They were under the grip of superstition and filled with the dread of the future. They had no hope of life beyond death. And it was the apostle’s great joy to unfold to them the riches available to them in Jesus Christ — riches which, if accepted as facts, would free them, would transform them and make them over into wholly different people, would bring them into a sense of joy and love and faith and radiant experience. That happened again and again. So the apostle gloried in these exceeding great riches in Jesus Christ.

The epistle to the Ephesians ought to be a treasure store to which we go repeatedly anytime we get discouraged.

I remember reading years ago about an old Navajo Indian who had become rich because oil had been found on his property. He took all the money and put it in a bank. His banker became familiar with the habits of this old gentleman. Every once in a while the Indian would show up at the bank and say to the banker, “Grass all gone, sheep all sick, water holes dry.” The banker wouldn’t say a word — he knew what needed to be done. He’d bring the old man inside and seat him in the vault. Then he’d bring out several bags of silver dollars and say, “These are yours.” The old man would spend about an hour in there looking at his money, stacking up the dollars and counting them. Then he’d come out and say, “Grass all green, sheep all well, water holes all full.” He was simply reviewing his resources, that’s all. That is where encouragement is found — when you look at the resources which are yours, the riches, the facts which undergird your faith. As we go through this letter to the Ephesians I hope you will read it in that way. Last week we looked at the summary statement with which Paul gathers up the great themes of this letter:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places… (Ephesians 1:3 RSV)

Then we took a quick survey of the list of these great spiritual blessings which follows. We are going to spend more time with that in coming Sundays. If you want to keep the structure of this chapter in mind, remember that we have this summary statement, then the more detailed description of the blessings, Verses 4 through 14, and then, beginning with Verse 15, Paul’s great prayer that his hearers would understand what this is all about.

There is an unusual structure in this passage to which I’d like to call your attention. From Verse 3 through Verse 14 in the Greek text (not in the English) you have one complete, unbroken sentence filled with many adjectival phrases brought in to amplify and enrich it. If you want to get the effect of it, take a deep breath and try to read it through with one breath. You will see how much Paul has crammed into this great sentence. It’s almost as though he is taking a walk through a treasure chamber, like those of the Pharaohs of Egypt, describing what he sees. He starts out with the most immediate and evident fact and tells us what that is. Then something else comes into view and he puts that in. And glory flashes upon glory here until he has this tremendously complicated sentence which includes vast and almost indescribable riches.

That is Paul’s way of showing us how truth is interconnected, how you can never touch upon some of these great themes but that they lead to others, and soon you find yourself caught up with still others. That is how truth is, isn’t it? Truth in nature is like that also. You can’t study one subject in nature without touching upon a great many others. This is the way God builds truth. There is a rather simplifying division of this passage, however, such as is always present whenever the apostle states something like this. That is, these blessings gather about the Persons of the Trinity. There is the work of the Father, the work of the Son, and the work of the Holy Spirit. In Verses 3-6 you have the work of the Father:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:3-6 RSV)

Then, in Verses 7-12, you have that which relates to the Son:

In him [the Beloved] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us. For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him, according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to the counsel of his will, we who first hoped in Christ have been destined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:7-12 RSV)

How rich that language is concerning the Son, our relationship to him, and our present experience! Finally, in Verses 13 and 14, you have the work of the Holy Spirit:

In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. (Ephesians 1:13-14 RSV)

Remember that these are all available to us in the realm which Paul calls “the heavenlies.” As we saw last week, that is not heaven; it does not mean going to heaven when you die. We get such distorted concepts of heaven! I confess to you that heaven, as most people envision it, is not an attractive place to me — damp, rainy clouds, unstrung harps out of tune, white robes, and all that. A good travel folder could make West Texas look preferable to heaven. And yet most people think that this is what Paul is talking about when he speaks of the heavenlies.

No, “in the heavenlies” is a reference to the invisible realities of our life now. It reaches on into eternity, yes, but it is something to be experienced now, in the inner life. That is what he is talking about — your thought-life, your attitudes, your inner life where you live, where you feel conflict and pressure, struggle and disaster — that is part of the heavenlies. It is where we are exposed to the attack of the principalities and powers which are mentioned in Chapter 6, those dark spirits in high places who get to us, and depress us, and frighten us, and make us anxious or hostile or angry. The heavenlies is the realm of conflict, but also the realm where God can release us and deliver us, where the Spirit of God reaches us at the seat of our intellect and our emotions and our will. It is the realm of those deep, surging urges which rise within us and create either a restlessness or a sense of peace, depending on the source from which they come. So don’t read this as though it were something out in space somewhere. These blessings are yours in your inner experience, now, if you are in Jesus Christ.

Obviously, all of this, as we saw last week, comes to us in one great package “in Christ.” If you are not a Christian you cannot possibly claim these benefits. They are not yours, they don’t belong to you. You cannot buy them, you cannot discover them, you cannot sign up for a course about them in a university. You can’t send away ten dollars in the mail and get a pamphlet that will lead you to them. There is no way you can appropriate them unless you are in Christ. But if you are “in Christ” there is nothing to keep you from having all of them, every moment of every day. That is why it is so important that we discover what they are.

You see, these are much more than mere doctrinal ambiguities, mere theological ideas. They are facts, foundational truths which undergird us in every moment of our life. And, unless you understand those facts, you can’t utilize them, you can’t benefit from them. In that way they are like natural laws. The laws of nature operate regardless of how we feel — they are impersonal in that respect.

I’ve been doing a bit of electrical work in an addition to my home, and I’ve discovered that electricity follows a pattern of its own and takes no notice of how I feel at the moment. That can be a shocking experience! It is not in the slightest degree impressed with my position as a pastor of Peninsula Bible Church. It doesn’t hesitate to retaliate for any violation of its laws that I commit. It is up to me to discover how it works, and then to respect it, if I want to utilize it. The same thing is true of these great facts. They will do you not a particle of good if you don’t discover what they are and believe them enough to operate on the basis of them. That is why we are having this study together. We couldn’t possibly cover in one message all that is wrapped up in these great truths, and I don’t want to attempt it. We want to take our time going through this passage so that we might grasp these fundamental facts. So I would like to center this morning on the two great facts which are mentioned here concerning the work of the Father. Take this first statement:

…he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. (Ephesians 1:4 RSV)

Here we are dealing with what theologians call the doctrine of election, i.e., the fact that God chose us to become Christians and to be in Christ before the very foundation of the world. If you begin to try to understand that truth, your mind will boggle. That is a fantastic statement, isn’t it? We struggle with it, we question it, and therefore I submit to you that we really don’t believe it, because oftentimes it doesn’t show up in our actions, which is where the proof of our belief comes. We say, “How could this be? How could God choose us, and yet still offer a choice that we must make?” And thus we sense the struggle between the doctrines of the free will of man and the sovereign election of God. Many have wrestled with this great truth and have tried to explain it with various suggestions:

Some say, “Well, God can foresee the future, so he looks down and sees that we are going to make a choice, and on the basis of seeing what we will determine to do he then says, ‘All right, I’ll elect them to be part of my process.’” That sounds very simplistic, and it is, because it is not what the Scriptures say. Some say, “Well, God sees what we will be when we become Christians. He sees the value that we will have toward him, and so he chooses us on that basis.” Again, nothing could be more unscriptural than that idea! You see, it is true that we are chosen of God. In John 6, Jesus said so himself. He said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,” (John 6:44 RSV). That’s putting it plainly, isn’t it? You can’t come to Christ unless you are drawn by the Father. God has to initiate the activity. Ah, yes, but in Matthew 11 Jesus made his appeal directly to the will of the individual, saying, “Come unto me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” (Matthew 11:28 RSV). And that means it’s up to you. You can never become a Christian until you choose to come. So both of these facts are true.

And though we can’t reconcile them in our puny intellects, nevertheless we can accept them as facts and realize that it is true that we must choose. The good news is offered to us, but if we don’t respond we will never obtain the benefit of it. But if we do respond, if we come to Christ, if we believe in him, then we discover a great fact: God began the process, it was he who chose us, and we have been drawn to him by his Spirit at work in our spirit. That is amazing, isn’t it? But it is the first thing that Paul wants us to know.

And then we struggle with the timing of this: “before the foundation of the world.” Before we existed, before we ever took form seminally, let alone actually, we were chosen in him. Before there was an earth, no matter how far back in time you put it — billions of years, squillions of years into the past — yet the statement stands that you and I, as the very persons we are among the billions of people we could have been, were chosen in him. How could that be? Do you see how that boggles the mind? We must realize that we are dealing with an Eternal Being, one with whom there is not past or future, but only an eternal present, only one great now who therefore reads our future as clearly as he does the past, who determines all things by the counsel of his will, as the next verse has it, and brings them to pass so that they all work together to accomplish what he wants done. And we can only sit in amazed wonder and say, “Lord, how great thou art!”

“Chosen in him before the foundation of the world!” Do you see what that does for our sense of identity as Christians? We are not afterthoughts in God’s working. We are not accidental members of his body. There are no second class citizens in the church of Jesus Christ; we are all equal, chosen of the Father, selected to be members of his family, added to the new creation, the new order that God is producing in this world. What a fantastic privilege! It is not because of anything in us, as we’ll see in a moment, but because of everything in him. The purpose of all this is that we are to be holy and blameless. God says that he chose us for that reason, that we might be holy and blameless! Now, I’d like to ask a question: How many of you here are holy? Raise your hands, would you? Yes, we do have a few. Well, what’s the matter with the rest of you?

I submit to you that these great facts are so revolutionary, so radical, that we hesitate to believe them! We hesitate to apply them to ourselves despite the fact that they are true. The reason we hesitate is that we have such distorted ideas of what these words mean. We think that holiness is sanctimoniousness and that it results from a kind of theological de-worming process we must go through, and we don’t want to claim that for ourselves. But it is not that at all. As we have seen in our studies in Leviticus, holiness means “wholeness,” and wholeness means “to be restored to the originally intended functioning,” to be put to the proper use, that’s all. Physical wholeness prevails when the body works the way it was supposed to. And when your whole being functions the way it was intended to do, you are holy.

Now how many of you have had your whole being restored to proper functioning? You may not always function properly, but you have the capacity to do so. Ah, that’s better! There are even more holy people here than I thought! It is when we begin to understand these words that we can apply them and accept them. Now let’s look at the other one, blameless. Most people refuse to think of themselves as blameless because they know that they have done many things for which they ought properly to be blamed. That is, they have made choices, deliberately, against light, against knowledge of the results. They have purposely done that which they knew they ought not to have done. They could have done otherwise but didn’t. And who is not in that boat? Therefore they feel they are to be blamed. But they are confusing this word with another, because it is not sinless. Never having done anything wrong is sinlessness. But you can be sinful and still be blameless. Do you know how? By handling your sin in the right way.

If you did something that injured someone else, and the full result of it was not visible to you when you did it but afterward you saw how much you had hurt the person, and you acknowledged it, apologized to them, did what you could to restore it, then there would be nothing further you could do, would there? And from that point on you would be blameless. You would not be sinless — you still did it — but you also did all you could to handle it rightly.

The idea is the same with our offenses against God. What can you do about your sins, your evil? You can’t go back and straighten it all out, no, but you can accept his forgiveness. You can acknowledge your need. You can put it back into his capable hands to straighten out the results. And when you’ve done that, you’re blameless! How many blameless people are here today? Yes, that’s better. And that is what God has chosen us to do — to learn this wonderful process of being whole and blameless. Notice that these things are to be reckoned true even though we don’t feel that way. That is the way it is in nature also.

You get up in the morning and look at the sun and say, “The sun rose this morning.” It looks as though the sun were traveling around the earth. But you know better than that, don’t you? You look out across the landscape and it looks flat, and you say, “The earth must be flat.” No, you know better. Even though you can’t see that the earth is round and revolves around the sun, you have learned to accept these facts despite your feelings. That is exactly what we are called on to do here. Accept the fact that God chose you in Christ to make you holy and blameless. And as you walk before him in his prescribed way, that is what you are. And then rejoice in that great fact. Now look at the second great aspect which is recorded of the work of the Father, and which is related to the first,

He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:5-6 RSV)

Here is a partial explanation of how God takes care of all the past failures and the shame of our lives, in order to produce someone who is holy and blameless. It is by means of a change of family relationship. “He destined us to be sons,” or, literally, he “foreordained us to sonship standing,” or, as the Authorized Version puts it, to “adoption” as sons. We are familiar with the process of adoption. Adoption means leaving one family and joining another, leaving behind all that was involved in the first family and assuming the name, the characteristics, the resources, the history of another family. And this is the way Paul describes this relationship. We all belong initially to the family of Adam. We leave it, in Christ, and, thereafter, we belong to a new family, the family of Jesus Christ. We are no longer part of the family of Adam. Now that doesn’t mean that we are not human; it means that we no longer need to be possessed by fallen Adamic characteristics. We are still exposed to temptations to believe in them and to act that way, but we don’t have to — that’s the point. We’ve been transferred into a new family.

And, more than that, the emphasis is upon living as a full-grown, mature, responsible son. We are not put into this family as mere babes; we are put in as mature, grown-up children. As soon as we grasp the truth we can exercise it. In other words, to put it very simply, we are to live exactly as Jesus lived. He was a Son, the Son of the Father, and, as such, a certain way of life was his. And now we have it too, in him, living exactly as he did.

This is how Jesus described his own life: In John 6, he said, “I live by means of the Father,” (John 6:57). That is, “The Father is my resource, my wisdom, my strength, my power. The Father is the secret of how I act, and what I do, and where I go. The Father is living in me, and working in me. And in everything I do, it is not I; it is the Father.” He went on to say, “And as I live by means of the Father; so he who eats me [that is a beautiful figure for partaking of Christ, trusting in Christ] will live by means of me,” (John 6:57 RSV). That is the secret of the Christian life. What a beautiful way to live! By the same method that Jesus lived, in the same way that he arrested the attention of humanity — this is the way that we are called upon to live. We have been made sons in him, like him, so as to share his life. It is this, you see, that pleases the Father. Isn’t that amazing?

The rest of the statement deals with the why and how of this. Why should this be so? Most of us struggle with believing it because we say, “Why me? Why should he see anything in me which would motivate him to do that?” And, of course, that is our problem. It isn’t that he sees anything in us. We make a serious error when we think that there is something in us which God is after. No, it is not anything in us. The ground of his choice is the kind of God he is. There are three elements of it here: “He destined us in love to be his sons…” “According to the purpose of his will…” “To the praise of his glorious grace…” It is entirely God, isn’t it? His love began it, so he purposed it, literally, according to “the good pleasure” of his will, i.e., it gives him pleasure to do so, and all to the final end that it results in joy, in praising him, throughout all creation — “to the praise of the glory of his grace.”

I think I saw a taste of that at Explo ‘72 in Dallas a few weeks ago. The thing above all else that impressed everyone who came to Explo was the fact that all over the city there was an outburst of joy. It was infectious. There was a spirit of cheerful happiness no matter what happened. The young people, particularly, went all over the city and met everything and everyone with a smile or a “Praise the Lord!” Even the gruff old police of Dallas were impressed by this. One policeman said, “I’ve been treated like a human being for the first time in my career,” and he couldn’t get over the fact that it was young people who were treating him this way. Another, a guard at the Cotton Bowl, said, “I’ve been shoved 22,000 times this week, and everyone said ‘Excuse me’ when they did it.” Why? Because the joy was born of God. It was not coming from the circumstances — they were unpleasant, at times. Kids were living in tents, and sleeping on the ground, and often didn’t have enough to eat. I met some who hadn’t eaten for two or three meals, but their joy was undiminished. I watched the rain pour down upon thousands of them in the Cotton Bowl, and not one of them complained; they just enjoyed it thoroughly. That is what God is after — to increase joy.

A few days ago one of the women of this church came to me. It was an ordeal for her to come because she is in pain constantly. She told me of some of the struggle this has meant in her own life, of how she has cried out, “Why?” and has been assaulted with temptations to bitterness and resentment because she can’t do what she’d like to do. She told how this all reached a crisis about a year ago when she finally said, “Lord, I can’t take this! It’s too much for me! But, Lord, you seem to expect me to take it. No matter how much I pray, nothing seems to happen. But I just can’t do it. So I give it back to you, Lord. If I’m even going to be able to exist, you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to uphold me, and somehow you’ve got to make me able to obey you and to reflect what you want me to be.” And she said that there was born in her heart a sense of joy she couldn’t explain. But for over a year now (and that is an adequate test, isn’t it?) that joy has remained. And the radiance on her face as she told me about this was sufficient evidence that she was not trying to pull my leg. Joy, unbroken joy — the praise of God’s glorious grace — in the midst of pain and suffering, disappointment and frustration. That is what God is after. That is what he is training us for. He has destined us to be that kind of sons, because that is the kind his Son Jesus Christ is, according to the purpose of his will.

Finally, there is just one word on how, and this introduces the next section which we will take up in our next time together. How did this come to us? It was “freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.” God “engraced” us, is the word. He came to us in Christ, he poured it all out in Christ. Jesus was sent of the Father. That is the mark of his love. He came to be poor, he came to be misunderstood, to be opposed and hated, to be spat upon, to be cruelly beaten and finally crucified, so that we might be rich. Remember how Paul puts it in Second Corinthians 8:

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9 RSV)

Now, my question is: Are you enjoying your inheritance? Do you wake in the morning and remind yourself at the beginning of the day, “I’m a child of the Father.” “I’ve been chosen by him to be a member of his family.” “He imparts to me all the richness of his life.” “His peace, his joy, his love are my legacy, my inheritance from which I can draw every moment of life. And have them no matter what my circumstances may be.”

Do you reckon on these unseen things which are real and true? — because, if you do, when you trust in God’s grace to be your present experience, you can know of yourself what the Father said three times about his Son Jesus. God the Father, looking down at you can say, “This fellow here, this girl there, this man, this woman — this is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” That is our inheritance.

Prayer

Our heavenly Father, we thank you for these vast truths. We pray that our understanding may be made equal to them. We can’t grasp them properly apart from the work of your Spirit, and we pray that you will open our eyes and help us to see that these things are true indeed, that they undergird our lives. And as we venture out upon them, as we dare to apply them to ourselves, you will take them and make them lead us into the liberty of the children of God, so that we will be free men and women, free despite the circumstances under which we live, and despite the people with whom we have to work. We are a free people. We thank you in Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Title: The Foundations
By: Ray C. Stedman
Series: Riches in Christ
Scripture: Ephesians 1:3-14
Message No: 2
Catalog No: 3002
Date: July 30, 1972

Used by Permission :  Copyright © 2009 by Elaine Stedman — This material is the sole property of Ray Stedman Ministries. It may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies and/or of this data file must contain this copyright notice. This data file may not be copied in part, edited, revised, copied for resale or incorporated in any commercial publications, recordings, broadcasts, performances, displays, or other products offered for sale without the written permission of Ray Stedman Ministries. This material is from the Official Ray C. Stedman Library web site at http://www.RayStedman.org. Requests for permission to use this material or excerpts thereof should be directed to webmaster@RayStedman.org. This Copyright notice supercedes all other Copyright notices.

Copies of any message or sermon translations must be furnished to webmaster@RayStedman.org in PDF format, with contact information and qualifications concerning the translator(s) provided separately in English.

Alive To Live, by Ray Stedman – Ephesians 2:4-7

. . Listen

In the second chapter of Ephesians, we are examining the great facts the Apostle Paul sets forth for us which explain who we are in Jesus Christ. Any psychologist will tell you that the basic solution to any mental problem is one of identity. The basic crisis of our day is an identity crisis. If we are going to solve the problems of our lives, we must know who we are. So the apostle is very careful to set forth exactly who we are in Christ. One of the worst struggles most of us have with our Christian faith is that we try to work out our problems without beginning at this foundation, without realizing who we are in Jesus Christ.

We have already seen, in previous studies, the depths of depravity and darkness from which the Lord Jesus lifts us — the human dilemma, the condition of fallen man, which would be utterly without any prospect of change for the better were it not for the grace of God operating in our lives. Then we saw, beginning in Verse 4, the fantastic change which was introduced by the words “But God…” And there is where we want to start again:

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7 RSV)

You will notice that, when he is talking about who we are as Christians, the apostle makes it very clear that he is tracing through an exact parallel of the experience of the Lord himself. He identifies us with what Jesus has gone through. We died with him, we learn in Romans 6. Now we are made alive together with him. We are “raised up with him, and made to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” These are symbols that the apostle is employing. This beautiful hyperbole is designed to teach us something about ourselves and who we are as Christians. It is necessary, therefore, that we understand what these symbols actually mean in terms of our experience. Otherwise we will have no basis from which to handle the problems life can throw at us. In our last study we tried to see what it meant to be alive in Christ, to be made alive together with him:

First of all, it means that we are no longer dead, that the condition into which we were born has been changed: We are no longer alienated and afraid of God. One of the very first marks of the change which occurs when a person comes to Jesus Christ is right at this point. He is no longer afraid of death. He is no longer afraid to confront God, to come before his presence. God is not seen any longer as his enemy, as a terrible judge, an avenger. Rather, he is seen as a friend, as a father, with a father’s love, a father’s arms, and a father’s heart.

Further, we saw that this means we are joined to Christ. Somehow we have been identified with him. His life has become our life, and our new identity is Christ. He is our life. “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” (1 Corinthians 6:17). So from then on we must never think of ourselves as what we once were in Adam. No longer are we that. We are in Christ. We belong to him. He has welded himself to us so that an unbreakable union has been established, and we are his and he is ours. “You in me and I in you” (John 14:20b RSV) — these are his own words. Nothing can break this relationship.

This means, of course, that we are changed right to the very depths of our being. Something happened to us when we came to Jesus Christ which alters everything we are from that moment on. We are absolutely different. We are changed at the very root-level of our life. Fundamentally and foundationally, something has come in which has altered what we are, and it will begin to manifest itself from then on, and in many ways — a different outlook, different attitudes, a different approach to situations. It can create rather startling and dramatic changes right away.

Not long ago we received a package in the mail here at the church. We opened it, and to our amazement and bewilderment we found that it was a package of birth control pills. Who would send birth control pills to a church? We opened the card which came with the package and read:

Dear PBC: The prescription for these pills dates to October. They are still good. Use them if you like. I no longer need them, as I am reformed, though not married. Praise the Lord! He is holding me up.

It was signed “The little toe of the Body.” We didn’t ask for that, didn’t know it was coming. But there is a sign of a basic change in a person because she was made alive in Jesus Christ.

Beginning at that point, we want to go on and see what happens as this new life begins to work itself out in terms of our experience. The apostle adds two other factors which are fundamental to this new relationship we have in Christ: We are raised up with him, and made to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

Again, this is following the parallel of what happened to Jesus. What happened to him is what happened to us. What happened to him? He died. And when they took his body down from the cross, it gave every evidence, it had all the marks, of death. Rigor mortis had set in. It was cold and stiff. A painting I once saw of the Descent from the Cross showed in stark and grisly detail the terrible fact of the death of Jesus. The mouth was open, the teeth were protruding, the eyes were glazed. It was obvious that this was a dead body. And that dead body was laid in the tomb. You remember how the utter, stark reality of that death cast a pall of gloom over the apostles. It dashed their hopes and was the end of all their dreams. The Lord was dead. But, on the third morning, God the Father infused into that dead body new life, and Jesus was made alive.

“And that,” says the Apostle Paul, “is an exact parallel to what happened to us when we were made alive in Christ. Into the death of our fallen humanity there came a new life, and new Spirit.” Of course, the body of Jesus was not left alive in the tomb. This is the next point the apostle makes. He didn’t remain there holding counseling sessions with people who came to visit him. No — he was raised up and put back into business. He was put back into life to operate once again, but on a different basis, with a different power. He was thrust back into the experiences of men, but with an entirely different basis upon which to reckon and to live. This is what the apostle says happened to us when we were made alive in Christ. So it is important for us to see this. We are called to go back into the same circumstances, into the same situation, but to reckon on a new power, to demonstrate a new power upon which to draw — resurrection life.

And this means that the Christian then is able to do what he never could do by himself. He is able to act in a way which is impossible to those who are without Jesus Christ. For example, he is able to love the unlovable, to endure the unendurable, to achieve the unachievable, and to forgive the unforgivable.

I don’t need to go outside the PBC congregation to illustrate this. There are those who have given every evidence, after they became Christians, of being able to love those who were absolutely unlovable to them before. Many a husband has told me that he had reached such a state of estrangement in his marriage that he literally hated his wife, couldn’t stand the sight of her, couldn’t abide her presence. But after he became a Christian a new relationship was born. He was able, despite struggles, to begin to look at his wife in a new way, and actually begin to love her. Many wives have said the same thing about their husbands. Young people have told me how they hated their parents, had come to the place where they couldn’t stand them a moment longer — everything their parents did turned them off. They regarded them as nothing but rivals and obstacles to everything they wanted to do. But after coming to Christ, they found it possible to come to a new sense of appreciation and understanding, and love for their parents began to bloom again. With pity and compassion they saw them as people like themselves, struggling with difficult problems they too were unable to handle. All this was possible because they were raised up and set back into life again, to handle the same problems, but with a different outlook.

Some here have learned to endure the unendurable. Not long ago I shared with you the experience of a woman in this congregation who has learned to struggle against unending pain, and yet to find in the midst of it a joy she cannot explain — joy in the midst of increasing pain. Another woman in this congregation has for thirteen years been unable to move about normally. She has gone through terrible struggles with depression, discouragement, and defeat. But the Lord has sustained her and kept her through this time. Gradually she has been able to come to a place of rest and contentment. And, although she has been close to it, she has never taken the way out which her mind suggested to her from time to time — a bottle of pills, or some other method of suicide. She has been able to endure because of the power released in her by a risen Lord.

There are some who have been able to achieve the unachievable. I rejoiced in talking to Paul Winslow not long ago about the Job Therapy program. He was reporting what had been accomplished in California prisons by means of this. In certain prisons, when they first went in, the wardens were very suspicious and didn’t feel it would ever accomplish anything. But as they explained that it was a means by which prisoners could be put in touch with Christian families who would visit them, make friends with them, and be available to meet whatever needs they might have when they got out, the wardens were willing to give it a chance. And Paul was telling me that recently some of these wardens have testified that the program has begun to change the atmosphere in their prisons. Perhaps you do not realize that many of the prisons in this country are in a condition almost as dire as that which produced the Attica revolt in New York state — seething with revolt and discontent, and ready to erupt in violence at any moment. But a new hope has begun to spread. “Salt” has been introduced. And change for the better is beginning. This is the power of a resurrected Lord. This is what “raised up with him” means — to come to life again with a new approach and a new power.

It means the ability to forgive the unforgivable. This weekend John Fischer is in Southern California visiting a Christian college. A few years ago he sang in the chapel of this college. With his guitar he sang some of the songs he has written which we know so well. Afterward, one of the professors of the school wrote a letter to the school paper attacking him very sarcastically, bitterly, and scurrilously — called it “musical garbage,” said it was worthless. When John read the paper he was upset and angry. He was tempted to write this man off as obviously having no musical judgment whatsoever, and to feel resentful toward him for taking such a position. But then the Lord began to speak to him, said, “It isn’t right for you to feel that way. This man shared how he felt in all honesty. You may not agree with him, but nevertheless you have no right to be resentful toward him.” So John determined to take a Christian approach. The next time he was in the area he looked this man up and took him out to dinner. They sat down together in a rather strained atmosphere, at first, as you can imagine. The man didn’t know what John wanted. But John asked him something about his background, and it wasn’t very long before they found a mutual interest and began to explore it. This led to other topics. The upshot was that after two hours they felt as close to one another as though they were brothers. They enjoyed a wonderful time together, and the subject of the letter never once came up. They simply appreciated each other. Later on this man heard that John was giving a concert some distance away. To John’s surprise he showed up and listened to him play. He came to him afterward and told him how much his son appreciated John’s music! The healing had started, you see.

That is the power of resurrection life. It is for situations like that. It is designed to confound the calculations of men, to transform the demoralized, and not to solve, but to dissolve the problems of life. Resurrection power works differently. It means that we come at life with a different attitude which often baffles and bewilders people. They can’t figure it out, but recognize that it does wonderful things. That is what it is for. That is what it means to be raised up together with him. The third factor involved in our basic relationship with Christ — part of our true identity — is not only that we have been made alive and raised up with him, but we have been made to sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. What does that mean? Well, several places in Scripture, Christ is said to have been raised up and made to sit at the right hand of God. In the first chapter of Hebrews the writer says that no angel can ever compare with Christ because, as he puts it,

But to what angel has he ever said,
“Sit at my right hand,
till I make thy enemies
a stool for thy feet”? (Hebrews 1:13 RSV)

In the tenth chapter of the same book there is another reference:

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet. (Hebrews10:12-13 RSV)

Why is Christ said to have “sat down” when he came to the right hand of the Father after his ascension? Well, it doesn’t mean that he sits up there somewhere in a chair, waiting. It is obviously a picture, a symbol of something. Well, of what? What does sitting symbolize? It symbolizes cessation of effort, doesn’t it? Sitting means the end of work and of strain. It is a beautiful picture of what the Scriptures call “rest.” We often sing:

Jesus, I am resting, resting
In the joy of what Thou art;
I am finding out the greatness
Of Thy loving heart.

It means dependence upon the work of another. If you were working away digging a hole — sweating and straining and tired and exhausted — and I came along and said, “Look, why don’t you rest? I’ll take over,” what would you expect me to do? Would you expect me to exhort you to try harder, get a sharper shovel, dig deeper? No. If I meant what I said, I would want you to get out of the hole and let me take the shovel while you sat down and relaxed. I would do the work. And this is the picture drawn for us of what a Christian is to do. He is to live as seated with Christ in the heavenlies. The heavenlies, of course, is not some far-distant spot in space where heaven is. It is the invisible realm of reality — the inner life, the place where we feel tension and pressure and anxiety and hostility. We are to rest there. Having done what Jesus asks us to do, we are to sit down and rest, relax, and let him bear the pressure and the problems.

It is amazing how difficult this is for Christians to grasp. This past week I have been with a very successful businessman who is a Christian. But he has never been taught very much in this realm. He has naturally applied much of his business practice to his Christian life, and much of it can be applied. He has learned the necessity of planning goals and of moving toward them with smooth organization, thus bringing about the desired results. But he confessed himself to be utterly baffled by the way we operate around here. He said he was fascinated but mystified, because it looks as if we are so loose, and yet it is amazing how everything works out. He said, “I have been counting the mistakes you made. And every one of those mistakes was the turning point to produce the good results which followed. I can’t understand it!” He is learning the great fact that it isn’t up to us to maneuver and manipulate to obtain the proper results. We are dealing with a God who has announced that he has ways of working which go beyond what we are able to do. He has told us that he is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think. So it is no good trying to sit down and reason out what he is going to do, because you can’t ask or think what it is. He has announced through Isaiah:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways…
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways,
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9 RSV)

We have to cry out with Paul,

Oh, the depths of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! Romans 11:33)

Do you see what this does to life? It turns it into an adventure, doesn’t it? You never know what any situation is going to result in. A creative God, beginning to work in the most ordinary circumstances, can suddenly make them break wide open, and you have something on your hands which staggers you, which you never dreamed could happen, and which even alarms you, so vast are its possibilities. This is the kind of God we have, and this is what it means to sit — to expect him to do this, and to rest, and not be anxious and struggling and straining and striving and frantic.

There is one other factor involved in rest. Those verses in Hebrewstell us that, when he sat down at the right hand of the Father, our Lord was waiting for something. What? Well, “till his enemies were made his footstool” — waiting until God the Father, working with the principles involved in the cross and the resurrection, shall produce harmony and peace once again in creation, and every force opposed to the authority of Jesus Christ shall be subdued, and every knee shall bow and confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. In other words, an absolutely certain result.

Now, it won’t come quickly, and that is our problem. But what this figure of sitting involves is the expectation of a certain result, yet one we must wait for, with patience. Here is where we struggle, isn’t it? Perhaps the most difficult struggle in the Christian life is with the slowness of God. Have you found that out? How absolutely incredibly slow he is at times! Do you get as impatient with him as I do? Why, there are times when I can see as clear as daylight how he ought to act! I can outline the steps for him — and I do! I tell him just what to do. And it would all work out if he would just take those steps. But he utterly ignores me and goes on doing nothing until I want to rise up and say, “Look, you’ve got to get off your throne and do something!” I struggle at this point. But God goes ahead, and, before I know it, what I had hoped — and more than I’d ever hoped — has happened. And I don’t even know how it came about, at times. Some things I am still waiting for.

But this is the point. The Lord tells us that his work is like a farmer going out to sow his seed. The farmer scatters his seed, and then what? Jesus says he goes home and goes to bed — rests, just relaxes and lets the seed grow, because that is the nature of seed. The farmer knows that if he sows the seed and lets it rest — it must go through a certain process involving time; no seed merely drops into the ground and springs up suddenly; no, you must allow it to decay, to deteriorate, to fall apart, and then out of that comes a new life — it will grow slowly and steadily into the air until finally the whole plant is before you. God announces that this is his way of working. And he urges us to understand that the result is certain, and that we can rest patiently, knowing that he is working out his purposes. We are seated with him in the heavenly places. I would like to make three concluding observations:

First, this is true Christianity. Anything else is a fraud and a sham. Any effort to try to be “religious” or “Christian” which doesn’t stem from this threefold relationship of being made alive in Christ, raised with new power, and put back into life to rest in his activity and the certainty of his accomplishing his work, is a basic counterfeit of the Christian life. It is “godliness” without God, “Christianity” without Christ, “spirituality” without the Spirit. And it can never accomplish anything except to turn people away. What Paul has outlined for us here, and this alone, is true Christianity. Anything else is wrong.

Second, these three great facts are already true of every regenerated Christian. They aren’t something you try to make true — they are already true. They are not something which is going to happen when you are further advanced and have another great experience with God, when you “speak with tongues” or something like that. They are already true. There is nothing more you can add. They are not something which needs to be augmented. They are the ultimate. There is no further you can go. And they have already happened. Now, they may not be your experience yet, because of two factors: First, ignorance. You might not have begun to experience this because you were unaware of this relationship. Most of us don’t have much understanding of it. We don’t approach our problems this way. So we need to know more about it.

And, second, it may not be true in your experience because you love the pleasures the flesh can give you more than those of the Spirit. We all love the twisted, perverted pleasure of acting in the flesh, in the old way — the self-effort, the self-pleasing, self-indulgent life. We love that. So we choose it at times. But when we do, we ought to remember that we have not lost this threefold relationship. We can always return to it. It is not something temporary. It is a permanent fixture in our lives. And when we acknowledge the evil — the flesh to which we have submitted — we can return to this relationship.

The third observation is: We discover that this relationship becomes observable and actual by faith, i.e., by actually living and acting on this basis, by trusting these facts as true and acting accordingly. That is faith. It means that we must employ them in the actual conditions of life. This is no mere armchair theology. There are no easy choices here. We are called on to obey these facts when the flesh within us is screaming for revenge, or when the heart faints with discouragement and despair and we are ready to give up, or when the temptation to be lustful or bitter or sarcastic sweeps over us in waves and we can only claim this relationship for moments at a time and must renew it again and again until at last we enter into some degree of calm and quiet.

It is a battle, but it is possible to win. Each time, we are to remind ourselves,

“I am alive in Christ. I am not the same person. I am no longer what I once was. I may not be what I ought to be, but thank God I am not what I was! I am alive in Christ and I am raised with him. I have a new power at my disposal — the power of his life in me. Therefore I can rest. I can step out and say and do the right thing, and expect him to accomplish the results. I can relax. I don’t have to strain. I can leave the problem of solving the difficult situations in his hands, and I will wait for the ultimate and certain result.”

When I do this, I have learned to let God be God in me. This is the way God works. This is the way the life of God is released in the human situation. What a tremendous basis for living! This is our identity from now on. It is who you are. Start every day on this basis, and meet every situation on this basis.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20 KJV)

Prayer:

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this marvelous picture which is true of us; just as certainly as you see life as it really is, so this is true of us. We pray that you will enable us to grasp it, to understand it, and to begin to handle the problems now before us in the light of this basis of living. We pray in Christ’s name, Amen.

---

Title: Alive to Live
By: Ray C. Stedman
Scripture: Ephesians 2:4-7
Date: October 29, 1972
Series: Riches in Christ
Message No: 10
Catalog No: 3010

Used By Permission: Copyright © 2009 by Elaine Stedman — This material is the sole property of Ray Stedman Ministries. It may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies and/or of this data file must contain this copyright notice. This data file may not be copied in part, edited, revised, copied for resale or incorporated in any commercial publications, recordings, broadcasts, performances, displays, or other products offered for sale without the written permission of Ray Stedman Ministries. This material is from the Official Ray C. Stedman Library web site at http://www.RayStedman.org. Requests for permission to use this material or excerpts thereof should be directed to webmaster@RayStedman.org. This Copyright notice supercedes all other Copyright notices.

Copies of any message or sermon translations must be furnished to webmaster@RayStedman.org in PDF format, with contact information and qualifications concerning the translator(s) provided separately in English.

Mp3 Sermons of A.W. Tozer from Ephesians

Click on the sermon titles to listen.

Gifts of the Spirit
Text: Ephesians 4:8-14
Date Preached: 11/18/56

Dangers of Idleness and Busyness
Text: Ephesians 5:15
Date Preached: 5/1/55

Dangers of Bondage and Libert
Text: Ephesians 5:15
Date Preached: 5/15/55

Resisting the Worlds Propaganda
Text: Ephesians 5:15
Date Preached: 5/22/55

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Related Content

• The Pursuit of God, by A.W. Tozer (complete text)
• A.W. Tozer on Making The Right Choice
• A.W. Tozer – Select Quotes

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John Piper’s Sermons From Ephesians

Chapter One

Predestined for Adoption to the Praise of His Glory
- – Reflections on Being Adopted by God and Adopting Children
Ephesians 1:1-6

God Predestined Us unto Sonship Through Jesus Christ
Ephesians 1:3-6

God Has Chosen Us in Him Before the Foundation of the Earth
Ephesians 1:4

Sealed by the Spirit to the Day of Redemption
Ephesians 1:11-14

His Body: The Fullness of Him Who Fills All in All
Ephesians 1:15-23

Chapter Two

But God…
Ephesians 2:1-9

Why Do We Need to Be Born Again?
Ephesians 2:1-10

Why We Need a Savior: Captive to an Alien Power, by Nature Children of Wrath
Ephesians 2:1-3

Why We Need a Savior: Dead in Sins
Ephesians 2:1

Israel and Us Reconciled in One Body
Ephesians 2:11-22

Race and Cross
- – Racial Harmony Sunday
Ephesians 2:11-22

Remember That You Were Hopeless
Ephesians 2:11-12

Chapter Three

The Unfathomable Riches of Christ, for All Peoples, Above All Powers, through the Church
- – Missions Week
Ephesians 3:1-13

The Cosmic Church
Ephesians 3:10

Far More Than You Think
Ephesians 3:14-21

How Can We Be Clothed with Power?
- – Missions Week
Ephesians 3:14-21

Chapter Four

Maintain the Unity of the Spirit
Ephesians 4:1-6

One Lord, One Spirit, One Body for All Time and All Peoples
Ephesians 4:1-6

How Christ Enables the Church to Upbuild Itself in Love
Ephesians 4:4-16

How the Saints Minister to the Body
Ephesians 4:7-16

Why the Saints Minister to the Body
Ephesians 4:7-16

Alone in a Big Church
- – A Call to Small Togetherness
Ephesians 4:11-12

Escape from Futility
Ephesians 4:17-21

Put on the New Person
Ephesians 4:22-24

Satan Seeks a Gap Called Grudge
Ephesians 4:22-27

Speak Truth with Your Neighbor
Ephesians 4:25

Don’t Steal, Work and Give!
Ephesians 4:28

Make Your Mouth a Means of Grace
Ephesians 4:29-30

Be Kind to One Another
Ephesians 4:31-5:2

Forgive Just as God in Christ Also Has Forgiven You
- – Palm Sunday
Ephesians 4:32-5:2

The Depth of Christ’s Love: Its Cost
Ephesians 4:32-5:2

Chapter Five

The Darkness of Abortion and the Light of Truth
- – Sanctity of Life Sunday
Ephesians 5:1-16

The Enthronement of Desire
Ephesians 5:3-6

Exposing the Dark Work of Abortion
- – Sanctity of Life Sunday
Ephesians 5:11

Urgency and Gratitude
Ephesians 5:15-20

When Is Abortion Racism?
Ephesians 5:16-17

Singing And Making Melody To The Lord
Ephesians 5:17-20

Be Filled with the Spirit
Ephesians 5:18

Adam, Where Are You?
- – Father’s Day
Ephesians 5:21-28

Husbands Who Love Like Christ and the Wives Who Submit to Them
Ephesians 5:21-23; 1 Peter 3:1-7

Jesus Is Precious as the Foundation of the Family
Ephesians 5:21-6:9

Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head, Part 1
Ephesians 5:21-33

Lionhearted and Lamblike: The Christian Husband as Head, Part 2
- – What Does It Mean to Lead
Ephesians 5:21-33

Marriage: A Matrix of Christian Hedonism
Ephesians 5:21-33

Marriage: Pursuing Conformity to Christ in the Covenant
Ephesians 5:21-33

Beautifying the Body of Christ
Ephesians 5:22-32

Chapter 6

Fathers, Bring Them Up in the Discipline & Instruction of the Lord
- – A Tribute to My Father, William Solomon Hottle Piper
Ephesians 6:1-4

Marriage Is Meant for Making Children…Disciples of Jesus, Part 1
Ephesians 6:1-4

Marriage Is Meant for Making Children…Disciples of Jesus, Part 2
- – A Father’s Conquest of Anger in Himself and in His Children
Ephesians 6:1-4

Raising Children Who Hope in the Triumph of God
Ephesians 6:4

Ready to Move with the Gospel of Peace
Ephesians 6:10-20

Spiritual Warfare and Prayer
Ephesians 6:10-20

The Weapon Serves the Wielding Power
Ephesians 6:17-20

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The Weapon Serves the Wielding Power

by John Piper – Listen |   Download

Ephesians 6:17-20

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, 19 and also for me, that utterance may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, 20 for which I am an ambassador in chains; that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

Prayer is a Wartime Walkie-Talkie

As I have done my yearly survey of the Biblical teaching on prayer in preparation for prayer week, I have been impressed more than ever before that God has given us prayer not as an intercom for increased convenience in our secluded cottages, but as a walkie-talkie connecting the general’s headquarters with the transportation line and the field hospital and the front line artillery. Prayer is not a bell to call the servants to satisfy some desire we happen to feel, it is a battlefield transmitter for staying in touch with the general.

I think that is obvious in the text. Paul says (in verse 12) that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces. Then he calls us to take up arms (in verses 13-17). Then he says, “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance….” That is clearly combat talk. Keep alert! Persevere!

But then I started seeing evidence for this everywhere I looked. For example, in John 15:16 Jesus says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”

Notice: Why is the Father going to give the disciples what they ask in Jesus’ name? Answer: Because they have been sent to bear fruit. The reason the Father gives the disciples the gift of prayer is because Jesus has given them a mission. In fact the grammar of John 15:16 implies that the reason Jesus gives them their mission is so that they will be able to enjoy the power of prayer. “I send you to bear fruit…so that whatever you ask the Father…he may give it.”

Is it not plain then that the purpose of prayer is to accomplish a mission? It is as though the field commander (Jesus) called in the troops, gave them a crucial mission (go bear fruit), handed each one of them a personal transmitter coded to the frequency of the general’s headquarters, and said, “Comrades, the general has a mission for you. He aims to see it accomplished. And to that end he has authorized me to give each of you personal access to him through these transmitters. If you stay true to his mission and seek his victory first, he will always be as close as your transmitter, to give tactical advice and to send in air cover when you need it.”

What has become clearer to me in recent days is that many of our problems with prayer and much of our weakness in prayer comes from the fact that we are not all on active duty, and yet we still try to use the transmitter. We have taken a wartime walkie-talkie and tried to turn it into a civilian intercom.

Take another example from Scripture. In Luke 21:34-36 Jesus warns his disciples that times of great distress and opposition were coming. Then he said, “But watch at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man.” In other words, following Jesus will inevitably lead us into severe conflict with evil. It will surround us and attack us and threaten to destroy our faith. But God has given us a transmitter. If we go to sleep it will do us no good. But if we are alert and call for help in the conflict, the reinforcements will come and the general will not let his faithful soldiers be denied their crown of victory before the Son of man.

What About Praying for Peace?

1 Timothy 2:1-4 looks like it might be an exception to this battlefield image of prayer. Paul says that he wants us to pray for kings and for all who are in high positions “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way.” Now that sounds very domestic and civilian and peaceful.

But read on. The reason for praying this way is highly strategic. Verses 3-4 say, “This [praying for peace] is good, and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” God aims to save people from every tribe and people and tongue and nation. But one of the great obstacles to victory is when people are swept up into political and militaristic conflicts that draw away their attention and their creativity and their strength from the real battle of the universe.

Satan’s aim is that nobody be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. And one of his key strategies is to start battles in the world which draw our attention away from the real battle for the salvation of the lost and the perseverance of the saints. He knows that the real battle, as Paul says, “is not against flesh and blood.” So the more wars and conflicts and revolutions of flesh and blood he can start the better, as far as he is concerned.

So when Paul tells us to pray for peace because God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, he is not picturing prayer as a kind of harmless domestic intercom for increasing our civilian conveniences. He is picturing it as an urgent message to headquarters asking that the enemy not be allowed to draw away any fire power onto decoy conflicts of flesh and blood.

So I am more convinced than ever as we begin 1985 that God has given us prayer because Jesus has given us a mission. We are on this earth to press back the forces of darkness, and we are given access to headquarters by prayer to advance this cause–that’s all. When we try to turn it into a civilian intercom to increase our conveniences, it stops working, and our faith begins to falter.

Prayer is for the Kingdom

In a recent issue of World Christian magazine David Bryant tells about a young Hindu social worker who came to America and stayed at his house. He and his wife took her one evening to dinner at a friend’s home. On they way the Hindu woman “witnessed” to David Bryant and his wife Robyne. She showed them a picture of a guru who had died 45 years ago. She and her family now worship him and pray to him.

When Bryant blurted out, “But he’s dead!” she disagreed and said that in response to her prayers he has given her a very good life and surrounded her with many blessings.

When they got to the home where they would eat dinner David Bryant hoped that his Christian friend would help bear a credible witness to this Hindu woman. But he was dismayed when at the dinner table his host said, “Great house, isn’t it? I know I put a lot more into it than I can ever hope to get out of it. But I don’t mind. We plan to be here the next 45 years anyway, God willing. We’re so thankful. The Lord has blessed us in so many ways. I don’t know what we’d do without him.”

Bryant sat in his back yard the next morning asking himself: Is that the point of prayer–to treat God like Coke? Some say things go better with Coke. Some say things go better with Christ. Some say things go better with a guru. A bird splashed into a nearby birdbath and sent Bryant’s mind to Matthew 6. Yes we are supposed to be as free and peaceful as the birds. But why? To seek first the Kingdom!

The power of prayer was not given to the church to win comforts but to wield a weapon.

The theme of our Prayer Advance 1985 is “The Weapon and the Wielding Power.” The weapon we have in mind is the one in Ephesians 6:17–the sword of the Spirit, namely, the word of God. And the power we have in mind–the power that wields the weapon–is prayer. In the original Greek Ephesians 6:18 does not begin a new sentence. It connects with verse 17 like this: “Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying through all prayer and supplication on every occasion…” Take the sword…praying. Prayer is the power that wields the weapon of the word. And by the word of God we do battle against sin and unbelief in our own lives and in the world.

That is the truth that has gripped me most firmly over the past weeks of reflection about prayer. We will talk about how prayer empowers the word next week under the title “The Power That Wields the Weapon.”

But here at the beginning of prayer week we need to focus on a more basic truth about the relationship between prayer and the weapon of the word. Not only does prayer wield the weapon of the word, but the weapon serves the wielding power. That is the title of today’s message. Today I want us to focus our attention on the several ways that the word helps us pray.

The word of God is a living and active weapon. When the hand of prayer reaches out to pick it up, it is not dead weight in the hand. It sends its own impulses up the arm of prayer. That’s what we want to think about in the time we have left this morning. How does the weapon serve the wielding power? How does the word serve prayer?

I’ll mention five ways.

Five Ways That the Word of God Serves Our Prayers

1. The word reveals a God who delights in the prayers of his people.

The most basic encouragement for our praying this week is the truth that our God delights in our prayer. Proverbs 15:8 says, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is his delight.” In the book of Revelation John describes golden bowls full of incense filling the throne room of God with pleasing aroma. And the bowls of incense are the prayers of the saints.

Wouldn’t it encourage you to spend time in prayer this week if you really believed that every time you bowed your head in prayer the Master of the universe enjoyed it? It’s as though he has a favorite food. And when you pray he can smell the aroma from the kitchen as you prepare his favorite dish.

The best thing of all is that the food God loves most is to answer prayer. When God gets hungry for some special satisfaction, he seeks out a prayer to answer. Our prayer is the sweet aroma from the kitchen ascending up into the King’s chambers making him hungry for the meal. But the actual enjoyment of the meal is his own work to answer our prayer. The food of God is to answer our prayers.

The most wonderful thing about the Bible is that it reveals a God who can only satisfy his appetite for joy by answering prayers. He has not deficiency in himself that he needs to fill up, so he gets all his satisfaction by filling up the deficiencies of people who pray.

“Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” says the Lord. No. Therefore “offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving…and call upon him in the day of trouble, and he will deliver you.” (Psalm 50:13-15). An answered prayer is the meal of God. So if you want to feed him with the only kind of joy he is capable of, hold up the cup of prayer and let him fill it.

So the first way that the word of God serves the weapon of prayer is by revealing a God who delights in the prayers of his people. (See also Romans 8:26 where God loves our prayers so much that he commissions his Spirit to pray through us when we are hindered in our praying.)

2. The word serves prayer by commanding it.

The most basic command of the Bible is that we be people of prayer–that we be people who look away from ourselves and our own resources to God. God wants to be God for us. He wants to be our treasure and reward and defense and hope and peace and joy. And when he commands prayer he simply is saying, “be the kind of people who want me to be all of that for you, instead of looking to the world for your treasure and reward and hope and defense and joy.”

“Pray without ceasing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:17)

“Continue steadfastly in prayer.” (Colossians 4:2)

“In everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God.” (Philippians 4:6)

“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near.” (Isaiah 55:6)

The commandments to pray abound throughout Scripture. God has strewn the pages of the Bible with invitations to share in his favorite meal–answered prayer. Let the commandments to pray move you this week to devote new time to mixing your golden bowl of prayer with God’s favorite dish.

3. The word serves the wielding power of prayer by offering promises to make us hopeful in our praying.

Just take a sampling for your encouragement during prayer week.

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

“The LORD is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. 19 He fulfils the desire of all who fear him, he also hears their cry, and saves them.” (Psalm 145:18-19)

“For I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. 13 You will seek me and find me; when you seek me with all your heart, 14 I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” (Jeremiah 29:11-14)

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.” (John 15:7)

“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened…” (Matthew 7:7-8)

In other words, since God is the kind of God who delights in prayer and who feeds himself by answering prayer, he gives it not only the force of commandment but also the incentive of promise. Amazing promises–to stir us up to pray this week with all our heart.

But that’s not all. He also gives us a history book of answered prayer.

4. The weapon of the word serves the wielding power of prayer by encouraging it with stories of tremendous successes in prayer.

It tells of Jesus praying all night before he made the decision about who would serve as the twelve apostles of his church (Luke 6:12). Then he chose them and they changed the course of world history beyond imagination.

It tells of Solomon praying for understanding so that he could rule well (1 Kings 3:9). Then God answers and gives him so much insight that people came from around the world to hear the wisdom of Solomon.

It tells of Elijah praying that no rain fall for three years. And no rain fell. And then the prayer for fire on Mt. Carmel to defeat the priests of Baal. And finally the prayer for rain as he bowed before the Lord alone on the mountain. And there was a great rain. (1 Kings 17:1; 18:1, 42-45)

The word is a history of God working in answer to prayer. And the stories are written to make us hopeful in our praying (Romans 15:4).

5. Finally, the word helps us in our praying by giving us the content of our prayers.

1 John 5:14 says, “And this is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. 15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him.” We must pray according to his will. And what better way to pray according to his will than to pray his very words?

The weapon of the word of God serves the wielding power of prayer by giving words to prayer. And now you can see, as we draw things to a close, that the power that wields the sword of the Spirit is not really our power. Prayer, when it is full of power is full of the word of God. The sword of the Spirit is wielded by the power of the Spirit. The sword is full of the electricity of God. When we touch it with prayer the current of divine power runs up our arm. And the wielding power becomes the very power of God.

Make this first full week of 1985 a week of prayer.

Let the word reveal a God who loves the aroma of prayer and satisfies his longings by answering prayer.

Open yourself to the commandments of the word to pray without ceasing.

Be encouraged to pray by the amazing promises made to those who call on God with all their heart.

Imagine yourself in one of the great Bible stories of answered prayer.

And then fill your prayer with the very words of Scripture.

I believe with all my heart that if we devote ourselves to the word and prayer like this through the week, it will be a week that changes the world.

__________

Used by permission: John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

Spiritual Warfare and Prayer

by John Piper – Listen |   Download

Ready to Move with the Gospel of Peace

by John Piper – Listen |   Download

Ephesians 6:10-20

Beginning a Series on Evangelism

This morning we begin a four week series on evangelism. My decision to focus our attention on evangelism comes from a growing and deepening desire to see God convert more unbelievers through our ministry.

Virtually Everyone Is Burdened in This Area

Virtually every earnest Christian is grieved by his weakness in this area. Did you know that? There is not a zealous Christian in this room who feels content with his effectiveness in personal evangelism. We feel guilt for our timidity and regret for missed opportunities, phony because of our lack of compassion for the lost and fear that some program of evangelism is going to be pushed on us against our wills.

One of the most freeing things is to simply get this out on the table and admit it. And then to notice that it is the universal experience even of the most devoted servants of Christ.

For example, James Ussher was an evangelical teacher and preacher in the early 1600s. Horatius Bonar says that he was busy continually redeeming the time for Christ. He was a painstaking, laborious preacher of the Word for 55 years. The very day that he took ill with his last sickness he got up from his writing and went out to visit a sick woman and spoke to her with great earnestness about heaven. But when Ussher came to his deathbed, the last words he was heard to utter at one o’clock in the afternoon, March 21, 1656, were these, “But, Lord, in special forgive me my sins of omission.”

Here is a man that to everyone else was eminently useful in the ministry and blessed by God, and in his dying moment he was oppressed with a sense of his omissions! When I read stories like that, and when I look into my own heart, and when I talk to people like you, I conclude that virtually every earnest Christian is burdened by a sense of weakness or neglect or failure in this area of evangelism. We want to be used by God to win others from unbelief to belief, but have little success, and the result is often an oppressive feeling that seeks to avoid the issue and recoils in self-defense from sermons on evangelism.

Not a Rod but a Dream

Well if it helps any, I feel that way too. These messages are not easy for me to preach. I don’t come with a rod. I come with a longing and with a dream. The longing is that I would be changed by these messages and become more fruitful in God’s hands, and that whatever in my life may hinder the saving work of God would be removed. I want there to be a new touch of power not only on my preaching but also on my personal contact with unbelievers. I want fresh guidance from the Lord concerning the scope and focus of my pastoral labor to know if I am spending my time in a way that would maximize my life for Christ’s glory. That’s my longing.

My dream is that we as a church would be freed from the paralyzing effects of guilt in regard to personal evangelism. That all of us would find some natural outlet for love toward the lost people in this city. That there would develop an array of bridges into Bethlehem from many pockets of unbelief. That our personal sense of the reality of Christ would be so deep and confident and satisfying that we could scarcely keep from commending him to others. And that the power of Christ would rest upon us with unusual effectiveness.

So I don’t come with a rod this morning; I come with a deep longing for myself and with a happy dream of what it might be like if God would make us a healthy, happy, free, authentic, loving, powerful, evangelistic, outreaching, soul-saving church. If you share this longing for me and perhaps for yourself, and if you have a similar dream for Bethlehem, would you devote regular, earnest time to prayer over the next four weeks that God would make this longing and this dream a reality? I believe he will do it if we seek it with all our hearts.

To begin our series I want us to focus on Ephesians 6:15. “Having shod your feet with the READINESS OF THE GOSPEL OF PEACE.”

“The Gospel of Peace”

Before we focus on the word “readiness” and its place in the armor of God, I want to say just a word about the gospel of peace. The gospel that we have for the world—for our lost dad or sister or neighbor or classmate of colleague or unreached people group—the gospel that we have is the good news that God purchased peace by the death of his Son and offers it to sinners who believe in Jesus.

We have the good news that God’s omnipotent wrath against sinners has been taken away through the death of Jesus for sin. And everyone who believes is reconciled to him freely by grace. And in the place of enmity comes peace. And there is nothing sweeter in all the world than to be at peace with God.

Strange to Find “Peace” in Ephesians 6?

Sometimes commentators point out how strange it is that Paul should mention a gospel of peace right in the middle of a passage dealing with spiritual warfare and conflict and armor. But it isn’t strange is it? The aim of our warfare is that people would accept the terms of peace that God holds out, namely, faith in Jesus. And the only reason there is any conflict at all is because the power of sin and the powers of Satan are dead set against making peace with God.

Look at Ephesians 2:13 to see Paul develop the gospel of peace for us.

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. 14) For he is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility . . . 16) and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby bringing the hostility to an end. 17) And he came and preached peace to you who were far off [Gentiles!] and peace to those who were near [Jews!]; 18) for through him we have access in one Spirit to the Father.

The good news of peace is that when Christ died and shed his blood for sin, two kinds of enmity were overcome. The enmity between God and repentant sinners was brought to an end. And the enmity between races and factions in Christ was brought to an end. So Christ became our peace. That is the gospel of peace.

Putting on the Whole Armor of God

We have heard it by the grace of God. We have believed it by the grace of God. And we have been saved through it by the grace of God. And now Paul says in Ephesians 6:15 that the readiness of this gospel of peace is to be put on like shoes as part of our spiritual armor. ” . . . and having shod your feet with the readiness of the gospel of peace.”

So let’s think for a few minutes about this readiness as part of the whole armor of God. Verses 11–12 say, “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

The Context of Having Our Feet Shod

Four things that we learn from those two verses:

1. All Life Is War

From the cradle to the grave, life is war. Your soul, your mind, your body, your family, your career are fields of conflict. Until Satan is finally thrown into the lake of fire, our peace with God will have to be a vigilant peace. Because Satan will certainly give us no peace if we are at peace with God.

2. The War Is Against Supernatural Evil Powers

The war we are in is not a war with flesh and blood but with supernatural evil powers. What amazes me about Paul’s words here is not what he affirms but what he denies. I’m not surprised to hear him say that we wrestle with evil angelic, demonic, supernatural powers. What surprises me is that he says (in v. 12) we do NOT wrestle with flesh and blood.

I want to say to Paul, “You’ve been stoned and beaten and imprisoned and run out of town and shipwrecked. Your flesh has been torn and your blood has been spilt and that has hindered your ministry again and again. The flesh of others has torn your flesh and the blood of others has boiled against your blood. What do you mean you don’t wrestle against flesh and blood? It’s people with their hands and their stones and rods and chains that have cost you dearly and tested your faith almost to the limit.”

I think Paul would answer. “You’re right. Flesh and blood is real and it can be very evil. But what I mean is this. Whenever someone’s flesh attacks me, or someone’s blood boils against me, or my way is hindered by man, something else is also going on, something deeper, bigger, more terrible, more sinister, more destructive than meets the eye. I don’t mean that flesh and blood can’t hurt or hinder the cause of Christ. I mean that the prince of the power of the air is more dangerous than any of his subjects and that he must be overcome in every instance of conflict, or the battle is lost.”

Consider Ephesians 2:1–2. “And you he made alive when you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.”

Sure, the sons of disobedience (in their flesh and blood reality) can oppose us in our spiritual warfare; but it’s more decisive to defeat the spirit that works in them and the prince of the power of the air that they follow, than simply to wrestle as though all you are dealing with is human nature.

So the first thing we see in verses 11–12 is that life is war, and the second thing we see is that the conflict, if it is going to be successful, will be fought with supernatural, demonic forces. If they are not engaged, the victory is superficial.

3. There Is Danger of Falling in This Battle

The third thing we see is that there is danger of falling in this battle. Three times Paul tells us to take pains to stand, that is, not to fall. We’ve just spent several weeks on this issue of perseverance in the book of Hebrews so we need not dwell on it here.

4. God Has Made Provision for Us to Stand

The fourth thing we see in these verses is that God has made provision for us so that we can stand and not fall. And that provision is armor. God is able to keep us from falling, Jude says, and the way he keeps us from falling is by fitting us for successful spiritual combat. So if your aim is to persevere in the Christian life and not be defeated by the wiles of the devil, then you must put on the armor described in these verses. This is how God means to keep us safe unto the day of salvation.

Having Our Feet Shod with “Readiness”

That’s the context in which we read about having our feet shod with the readiness of the gospel of peace (verse 15). Notice that we are not shod with the gospel. The gospel is the word of God and the word of God is our sword according to verse 17. We are not shod with the gospel. What we are shod with is the READINESS of the gospel. Now what does that mean?

Ready to Move with the Gospel

I think it means, “Let your feet be ready to move with the gospel.” Feet are for moving from one place to another. If you put on shoes of readiness, then the idea would seem to be readiness to do what feet are for, namely, moving. And if the readiness is readiness of the gospel it probably means ready to move with the gospel—move with gospel power and for gospel purposes.

Let me show you two or three reasons why I think this is the right interpretation.

The Background of Isaiah 52:7

It’s almost certain that Paul has in mind here the words of Isaiah 52:7,

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Here we have a picture of the feet of people who are running to bring good news, and the good news is good news of peace. Surely this is where Paul got his imagery. And if so, then the “readiness of the gospel of peace” is surely a readiness to move with the gospel, a readiness to tell the good news, and publish peace and say “God reigns!”

The Structure of Colossians 3–4

Here’s another reason I think this is what Paul has in mind, and this is really interesting. Notice in Ephesians 6 that the passage on spiritual warfare comes right after the passage on husbands and wives, children and parents, and masters and slaves. Well, if you turn to Colossians 3, near the end you see that the same three pairs are dealt with—wives and husbands (3:18–19), children and parents (3:20–21), and masters and slaves (3:22–4:1). But then instead of a paragraph on spiritual armor Paul calls for vigilant prayer (4:2–4), and look what he says in verses 5–6,

Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every one.

Here in a context much like the one in Ephesians is an exhortation to be alert to how you can be the salt of the earth, to answer unbelievers’ questions, and to make the most of the time for the sake of Christ. This is what I think Paul means by the readiness of the gospel of peace. Being prepared and being alert and ready to talk about the gospel.

A Parallel in 1 Peter 3:15

One last confirmation: In 1 Peter 3:15 the very word “ready” is used in the same kind of exhortation. “Always be ready to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

Experiencing the Power of the Gospel

So, coming back to Ephesians 6:15 I have one last observation. The armor of God is given to us believers to help us stand against the devil. It is introduced as defensive armor. Verse 13: “Take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” How to stay standing is the issue.

So what can we conclude from the fact that the shoes of verse 15 are the readiness to move with the gospel of peace? I conclude this. A ready offense is an essential part of a successful defense. And O how true this is!

Giving the gospel away is one of the best ways of experiencing its power in your own life. The best way to taste the power of God for your own soul is to venture something on it. It’s the great old truth of the Lord himself when he said, “He who loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” The more ready we are to move with the gospel, the more life and power and joy and security we will know in the gospel.

In giving we will receive. In dying we will live. And in telling the gospel we will hear it again with O so much more depth and power and joy.

How lovely on the mountains
are the feet of him
who brings good news, good news,
proclaiming peace,
announcing news of happiness:
Our God reigns! Our God reigns!

__________

Used by permission: John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

Raising Children Who Hope in the Triumph of God

by John Piper – Listen |   Download

Ephesians 6:4

Let’s think for a moment about the word “Lord” at the end of Ephesians 6:4. “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

Confessing That Jesus Is Lord

Lord is an extremely exalted title as Paul uses it. In Philippians 2:9–11 he says that “God has highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

To say that Jesus is “Lord” means

• that he is the rightful King of the universe,
• that he is ruler over all the world,
• that he is the commander of all the armies of heaven and of all his Christian soldiers on the earth,
• that he is now reigning until he has put all his enemies under his feet,
• that he is triumphant over sin and death and pain and Satan and hell, and
• that he will one day establish his kingdom of righteousness and joy on the earth and reign forever and ever to the glory of his Father.

To confess that Jesus is Lord means that you believe that he will triumph over all things. He is not a small-town god. He is more powerful than Reagan and Gorbachev and Hatcher and Khomeni and Kadafy and all the other leaders of the world put together. He will come in triumph. And when he comes, he will be just as visible and real in Minneapolis as Michael Jackson at the Met Center, only his audience will be bigger, and his band will be louder, and his laser will be like lightning from one horizon to the other, and when his concert is over, all the evil and unbelief in the world will be gone, and those who followed him will live and play and work as happy as a child could ever be forever and ever.

Therefore I conclude that whatever else it means to bring our children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord—the King and Commander and Ruler of all things—it means this:

• Bring the children up to hope in the triumph of God.
• Bring them up to find their place in the triumphant cause of the Lord Christ.
• Bring them up to see everything in relation to the triumph of God.
• Bring them up to know that the path of sin is a dead end street no matter how many cool and famous people are on it, because the cause of righteousness will triumph in the end. Christ has already struck the decisive blow on Good Friday and Easter morning.

The Family in God’s Great Design for the World

I confess that I have gotten very excited about being a father as I have been thinking this week about what a family is and what it’s for in God’s great design for the world. I get excited

• when I think of the family as a breeding ground for children who hope in the triumph of God,
• or when I think of it as a training school for teaching what is true and false about what the world is really coming to,
• or when I think of it as a boot camp for fitting out young soldiers of Christ for the greatest combat of the world,
• or when I think of it as a fortress for protection or a hospital for healing or a supply depot for replenishing the troops or a retreat center for R and R,
• and I get especially excited when I think of the family as a launching pad for missiles of missionary zeal aimed at the unreached peoples of the world.

Instilling in Our Children a Vision of God’s Triumph

Paul says, “Don’t provoke your children to anger.” What does he mean? He doesn’t mean don’t cross their will. He doesn’t mean don’t deny their desires. He means don’t cross their will for no good purpose. Don’t deny their desires without making it a part of some great vision of God’s purposes in the world. Show your children something great to live for, so that when you cross their will and deny their desire, it’s because you are fitting them for some great purpose of God!

Anger comes from feeling that a parent’s rules are petty and trivial—that they don’t have anything to do with something really great or important. But a child who sees that the rules of the home and their consistent enforcement are connected to some great vision of life and some great cause to live for will not harbor resentment toward their parents. They will be like young soldiers who may complain now and then about the toughness of the training but would die any day with the captain, because the cause he stands for is so great. Parents who don’t see discipline as part of some great vision of what their children might become for God will wind up using discipline to increase their own private comfort. And children will see that and eventually become angry.

So I think it is in the spirit and wording of our text today to say that the great challenge for parents is to give their children a vision of God’s triumph in the world, and to instill in them the thrilling hope of fighting on the side of truth and righteousness and joy and victory.

Ten Basic Ways to Instill This Vision

What then should we do? Well, sometimes it helps just to remind ourselves of the obvious things we so easily neglect. That’s what I want to do. And I hope that it stirs us all up to be really radical Christians.

1. Make All of Life God-Saturated

The first thing parents need to do to raise children who hope in the triumph of God is to make all of life God-saturated.

I can remember the blankets that were on my bed when I was a little boy. There was a green one and there was a gold one. They were identical except for the color. And that’s good because what mattered to me was not the color but the soft, smooth, silky edge. I used to snuggle down, pull the covers up around my neck, and then find that soft two-inch silky border of the blanket and hold it between my fingers as I went to sleep. The softness and smoothness and coolness of it made me feel secure and happy.

I think of that blanket now as a picture of the way a lot of church people treat God. He is the soft, smooth, comfortable border of their lives. He is not woven all through life. He is there on Sunday in a kind of external way. And he is there in times of crisis and trouble. But he is not pervasive. Life is not saturated with God.

He makes no difference in how much TV the family watches or what they watch. He makes no difference in whether the music in the home edifies the spirit or drags it down. He makes no difference in what the family does on the Lord’s Day to keep it holy. He makes no difference in the disciplines of eating and exercising and sleeping. He makes no difference in what kind of car or house or clothes or furniture they buy. He just seems to be irrelevant most of the time.

And kids of course know this. And they draw from it the obvious conclusion—God is nothing very relevant to my life, and the cause of Christ is nothing great and all-consuming. God is not exciting enough to build your whole life around. He is a kind of necessary evil to be tolerated on Sunday but a dispensable drag on Monday through Friday. You can read this pretty easily from the kids that come from such homes.

So the first thing we must do is to be radical Christians—or I should say, simply, real Christians. We should saturate all our daily life with God. He should be the source and goal of all our acts. “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). The children will see it and by God’s grace will believe that the triumph of God is the greatest thing in the world.

2. Pray

That triumph comes only by grace and only in answer to prayer. Prayer is the first and fundamental way that we join forces with God in his victory over sin and evil and unbelief. And so the second thing we must do as parents is pray for our children and teach them to pray.

We need to pour our hearts out in secret where none but God knows what we say, pleading for the salvation and holiness and perseverance of our children. And our Father who sees in secret will reward us.

We need to pray in the presence of our children so that they can hear our longings and read our hearts and learn themselves to pray. And we need to pray with our children so that they have a chance to pray in a loving environment.

How many great men have testified to the power of their father’s and their mother’s prayers. Augustus Strong, who was a Baptist seminary president at the end of the nineteenth century and who wrote a systematic theology still in print wrote in his autobiography,

One of the earliest things I remember is [my mother] taking me into a dimly lighted closet every Saturday afternoon after the day’s work was done and kneeling with me beside a chest while she taught me how to pray. I remember her suggesting to me the thoughts and, when I could not command the words, her putting into my mouth the very words, of prayer. I shall never forget how, one day, as I had succeeded in uttering some poor words of my own, I was surprised by drops falling upon my face. They were my mother’s tears. My mother’s teaching me how to pray has given me ever since my best illustration of the Holy Spirit’s influence in prayer. When we know not what to pray for as we ought, he, with more than a mother’s skill and sympathy, helps our infirmities and makes intercession within us while Christ makes intercession for us before the throne. (p. 80)

3. Demonstrate the Importance of the Bible

The third thing we must do to raise up children who hope in the triumph of God is make the Bible the most important book in their lives.

William Quayle, a great old Methodist preacher from 60 years ago, looked back on his parents’ home and said, “I would rather have been the son of a woman and a man, who in their penury could not leave to the child of their love . . . anything but a Bible, than to have been descended from all the majesties of history” (William Alfred Quayle, by M. S. Rice, 1928, p. 31).

I just read yesterday a little article by William Frankena who teaches philosophy in the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He said that when he was a boy, his father read at least one chapter from the Bible after every meal and that they finished the Bible every year for 16 years.

Most of us are so afraid of a little resistance from our children that we set very small goals by the standards of our ancestors. After years of reading systematically through books of the Bible, we are working on memorizing verses this year at the breakfast table. We have memorized 29 verses so far this year.

We need to help our children feel what Eugene Nida just wrote this month in a summary of his life as a Bible consultant for Bible translating around the world. He said,

Another important privilege [of this work] was to realize that the message of the Holy Scriptures is certainly the most important and meaningful message for the modern day. [Do our kids see this conviction in our use of the Bible?] To see how an intelligible, clear translation of the Scriptures could have a transforming effect upon a psychologically distraught hippie, upon a self-satisfied and smug intellectual, and upon a depressed and oppressed Indian community in the Andes made me realize that there is no real substitute for this good news. (”My Pilgrimage in Mission,” IBMR, Ap 1988, p. 62)

We must show our children that this book is the most important book in our lives and that it contains the answers to life’s greatest questions and that it is the battle plan for the triumph of God.

There is so much more to say about what we must be as parents if we are to raise up children who hope in the triumph of God and who throw their lives into the great cause of Christ.

4. Be Living Examples of Faith

If we had time, we would talk of the need to be living examples of faith and hope for our children in very practical ways. And I would tell you stories about how my father was totally dependent for our livelihood on invitations from churches to preach, but how he said, when there were big holes in his schedule, that God would provide for those who trust him. He believed it. And it never occurred to me as his son to doubt God’s word or my father’s faith that God will always triumph.

5. Be Happy

We would talk about the need to be happy lest our children get the impression that the triumph of God would be the triumph of gloom.

6. Discipline

We would talk about the need for firm, no-nonsense corporal discipline and recall what it did in the life of Amy Carmichael to fit her, as Elizabeth Elliot says, “for the buffettings she would have to endure” on the way to the triumph of God.

7. Be Humble and Willing to Apologize

We would talk about humility and the willingness to apologize to our children, and show them that the cross can triumph even over a dad’s mistakes.

8. Worship Together

We would talk about the need to worship together so that the children can see mom and dad praise God and bow in reverence and cherish the preaching of God’s Word, and get a foretaste of what it will be when the Lord comes in triumph at the end of the age.

9. Uphold Standards of Everyday Holiness

And we would talk about standards of everyday holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Standards of sexual purity, and financial integrity, and rigorous truthfulness, and self-control, and hard work—what it means in practical everyday terms to be on the side of the justice and grace that will someday triumph over all evil.

10. Love

And finally we would talk about love. Parents loving children and children learning to love—learning that in the end everything is in vain without love, that in the world love is the visible expression of faith in the triumph of God, that in the soul love no matter what it costs is the way of joy.

Our great challenge from Family Week is to be the kind of church and the kind of parents that raise up children—old and young—who hope in the triumph of God.

__________

Used by permission: John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

Marriage Is Meant for Making Children…Disciples of Jesus, Part 2

by John Piper – Listen |   Watch |   Download

Ephesians 6:1-4

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “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.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

The ultimate meaning of marriage—the ultimate purpose of marriage—is to dramatize on the earth the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church. What we saw last time was that this flesh-and-blood drama of the love between Christ and the church is the God-designed setting for making children—and for making them disciples of Jesus. These are two purposes for marriage. And the ultimate one creates the God-ordained setting for the other one. Ultimately, marriage is a flesh-and-blood drama of how Christ (dramatized by the husband) loves his church, and how the church (dramatized by the wife) is devoted to Christ. And this flesh-and-blood drama creates the setting—the physical, emotional, moral, spiritual nest—for the other purpose of marriage, namely, bringing children into the world and bringing them to Jesus.

Empty-Nesters

In the missionary prayer letter I read this week from Steve and Kim Blewett, one of our veteran missionary families to Papua New Guinea, they explained that both their children are married now (Matthew and Merilee). So under Steve’s and Kim’s picture were the words “empty-nesters.” Everybody in our culture knows the meaning of the term empty-nester. Behind it is the assumption that one of the meanings of marriage is to be a nest for the younger birds until they can fly and find their own worms and build their own nests. And if we are Christians, we say that the very essence of that nest is the flesh-and-blood drama created by a husband and a wife living and showing and teaching the covenant-love between Christ and his church. That activity is the essence of the nest.

A Focus on Fathers

So the question today is: What is supposed to happen with children in this drama? What is supposed to happen to the children that God puts in this flesh-and-blood parable of his Son’s love and the church’s devotion? What happens in this nest for the sake of the younger birds? In answering this question, there are two reasons why I will focus on fathers. The less important reason is that it’s Father’s Day, and the more important reason is that in the text Paul begins by referring to parents in verse 1 and then shifts to a focus on fathers in verse 4.

Notice verse 1: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” So clearly both parents are giving guidance and instruction that can be obeyed, because the children are told to obey their parents, both mother and father. In this nest, both mother and father are teaching and modeling and guiding and disciplining.

But then notice what happens when we get to verse 4. We might expect Paul to continue the united focus on parents and say, “Parents, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” But that is not what he says. He says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” So I made the point last time that in marriage and in this nest created by marriage, fathers have a leading responsibility in raising children. Not a sole responsibility, but a leading one. The way I like to say it is that if there is a problem with the children at the Piper household, and if Jesus knocks on the door, and Noel comes to the door, he is going to say, “Hello, Noel, is the man of the house home? We need to talk.” Not that Noel bears no responsibility. But I bear the leading responsibility in seeing that the children are brought up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Headship Extended to Raising Children

This leading responsibility in raising the children is simply the natural continuation of the leading responsibility in relation to the wife. Back in Ephesians 5:23, 25, Paul said, “The husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church. . . . Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” God doesn’t make the husband the leader in relationship to his wife and then make the wife the leader in relation to the children. We husbands bear the responsibility in both directions. If it were otherwise the children would be very confused. In fact, millions of children today are confused and a host of personal and social problems can probably be traced to this confusion.

So when Paul says in verse 4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord,” he is simply extending the implications of headship in relationship to our wives to the leading responsibility for the upbringing of our children. That is what it means to be a married man: sacrificial, loving headship in relationship to our wives, and firm, tender leadership in relationship to the united task of raising our children in the Lord. So that is what we want to think about today. What does Ephesians 6:4 call a father to do? Someday perhaps we will do a whole series of messages on parenting. But this is not it. So I am going to focus only on one part of verse 4, namely, the charge not to provoke our children to anger.

Why Anger?

In Ephesians 6:4, Paul begins by saying that fathers should not do something. “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger.” Of all the things Paul could have encouraged fathers not to do, he chooses this one. Amazing. Why this one? Why not, Don’t discourage them? Or pamper them? Or tempt them to covet or lie or steal? Or why not, Don’t abuse them? Or neglect them? Or set a bad example for them? Or manipulate them? Of all the things he could have warned fathers against, why this: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger”?

Anger Arises Against Authority

He doesn’t tell us why. So let me guess from what I know of Scripture and life. I’ll suggest two reasons. First, he warns against provoking anger because anger is the most common emotion of the sinful heart when it confronts authority. Dad embodies authority. Apart from Christ, the child embodies self-will. And when the two meet, anger flares. A two-year-old throws a tantrum and a teenager slams the door—or worse.

So I think Paul is saying, there is going to be plenty of anger with the best of parenting, so make every effort, without compromising your authority or truth or holiness, to avoid provoking anger. Consciously be there for the child with authority and truth and holiness in ways that try to minimize the response of anger. We’ll come back to how.

Anger Devours Other Emotions

The second reason, Paul may focus on not provoking anger in our children is because this emotion devours almost all other good emotions. It deadens the soul. It numbs the heart to joy and gratitude and hope and tenderness and compassion and kindness. So Paul knows that if a dad can help a child not be overcome by anger, he may unlock his heart to a dozen other precious emotions that make worship possible and make relationships sweet. Paul is trying to help fathers do what he had to do with his spiritual children. Listen to the heart-language of 2 Corinthians 6:11-13: “We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections. In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also.”

So what shall we say to us dads about this matter of anger in our children? First, we should say that this verse may not be used as emotional blackmail by the children. Blackmail would say, “I am angry, Dad, so you are wrong.” Some people never grow out of this childish self-centeredness: “My emotions are the measure of your love; so if I am unhappy, you are not loving me.” We have all experienced this kind of manipulation. We know Paul does not mean that because Jesus himself made many people angry, and he never sinned or failed to love perfectly. Since all children are sinners, therefore, even the best and most loving and tender use of authority will provoke some children sometimes to anger.

Avoiding Legitimate Anger in Our Children

So the point of verse 4a is not that any time a child is angry a father has sinned. The point is to warn fathers that there is a huge temptation to say things and do things and neglect things that will cause legitimately avoidable anger in our children. Most of us are aware of the obvious things to avoid: yelling, unjust and excessive punishment, hypocrisy, verbal putdowns, etc. But even more important than avoiding the obvious aggravators, we fathers should think about what kinds of preemptive things we can do that don’t just avoid anger but diminish or remove anger. That’s the real challenge.

Think of this: God has never done anything that should legitimately cause anger in any of his children. We are never warranted in getting angry at God. Ever. It happens. And we should admit it, and tremble, and repent, and turn back to humble trust in his sovereign goodness. But even though God has never done anything that legitimately provokes our anger at him, what has he done about the breakdown in our relationship with him? He has taken initiatives to heal it. Initiatives that were infinitely costly to him.

Overcoming Anger by the Death of Jesus

Look back at what Paul says about overcoming anger in relationship to God’s Fatherhood. This text is a model for us fathers about one of the most crucial strategies for overcoming anger in our children. Look at Ephesians 4:31-5:2. Here God, you could say, is speaking to his children: “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another . . . .” Now, so far, it is just a command: Don’t be angry; be forgiving. But commands are powerless in and of themselves. What comes next is powerful: “. . . as God in Christ forgave you.” So here is our Father in heaven sending his own Son (“God in Christ forgave you”) to pay the price for our sinful anger. Our Father is not just telling us not to be angry; rather, at great cost to himself, he is overcoming his anger and our anger in the death of Jesus.

Then in the next verse, Ephesians 5:1, he says explicitly that he is playing the role of a Father in this: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.” We are children of God if we are united to Christ by faith. He is our Father. He has taken very painful initiatives to overcome his wrath and our sin—our anger. We are infinitely loved by God in Christ. So, fathers, imitate your heavenly Father.

Replacing Anger with Joy

So the point I am stressing is this: When Paul says in Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger,” don’t just stop doing things that provoke anger; start doing things that remove anger—overcome anger. Start doing things that awaken in the heart of a child other wonderful emotions so that they are not devoured by anger—the great emotion eater.

The main task in all this is that you overcome your own anger and replace it with tenderhearted joy. Joy that spills over onto your children. When the mouth of dad is mainly angry, the tender emotions of a child are consumed. In other words, being the kind of father God calls us to be means being the kind of Christian and the kind of husband God calls us to be.

The Gospel Is the Key

And being a Christian means receiving forgiveness freely from God for all our failures and all our anger. It means letting the smile of God in Christ melt the decades of hardened, numbing, emotionless, low-grade anger. And then letting that healing flow to others. “Let all . . . anger . . . be put away from you . . . . Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” God forgave you. God has been kind to you. God is tenderhearted to you. It is all because of Christ. Therefore, in Christ, by the Spirit, fathers, we can do this. We can put away anger, and we can forgive, and we can experience and awaken in our children tenderheartedness with a whole array of precious emotions that may have been eaten up by anger. They can live again. In you. And in your children.

“Fathers, don’t provoke your children to anger.” Be like God to them. It was very costly. He did not spare his own divine Son in order to rescue other children from his own wrath and from their own rebellious rage. God does not call us do this before he does it for us. That’s the gospel. Before he commands us to love the way he does (5:1), he forgives all our failures to love. Get this, fathers! I am not calling you to love your children like this so that you will have a Father in heaven who is for you. It’s the other way around. I am telling you that God, by the sacrifice and obedience of his Son, Jesus, through faith alone, has already become totally for you. “And if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:31).

God Has Forgiven You

And now, after becoming that kind of forgiving, supporting, tender, sacrificial Father to us fathers, he calls us: “Be imitators of God as loved children” (Eph. 5:1). Experience the fullness of God’s tender and tough emotions. He has overcome his wrath. He has forgiven our sin. And in him—if you will have it—there is healing for decades of soul-destroying anger.

What our children need from us is that we experience the fullness of God’s offer of healing. Here is the dynamic of fatherhood: As God has forgiven you, forgive your wife and forgive your children (Ephesians 4:32). Sever the root of the whole cycle of anger by savoring to the depths of your soul the preciousness of God’s forgiveness. Don’t provoke your children to anger. Show them in your own soul how it can be replaced with tenderhearted joy.

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Used by permission: John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

Marriage Is Meant for Making Children…Disciples of Jesus, Part 1

by John Piper – Listen |   Watch |   Download

Ephesians 6:1-4

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

I have tried to show from Scripture that the main meaning of marriage is to display the covenant-keeping love
between Christ and his church. In other words, marriage was designed by God most deeply, most importantly, to be a parable or a drama of the way Christ loves his church and the way the church loves and follows to Christ. This is the most important thing for all husbands and wives to know about the meaning of their marriage.

Marriage Portrays the Magnificent

The key passage has been Ephesians 5:23-25: “The husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” Don’t be so familiar with this that it doesn’t strike you as amazing. Where in all the world would anyone talk about marriage this way? In three verses, he says it three times:

• Verse 23: marriage: even as Christ is the head of the church.
• Verse 24: marriage: as the church submits to Christ.
• Verse 25: marriage: as Christ loved the church.

fWhat is the most important meaning of marriage? It is found in the words: “as Christ . . . as the church . . . as Christ.” The ultimate meaning of marriage is not in marriage itself. It is not in the husband and not in the wife and not in the offspring. The ultimate meaning of marriage is in: “as Christ,” “as the church,” “as Christ.” Marriage is a magnificent thing because it is modeled on something magnificent and points to something magnificent. And the love that binds this man and woman in marriage is a magnificent love because it portrays something magnificent—“as Christ loved the church” and “as the church submits to Christ.” The greatness of marriage is not in itself. The greatness of marriage is that it displays something unspeakably great, Christ and the church.

Filling the Earth . . . With Worshipers of Jesus

Now what I want to add today is that marriage is for making children . . . disciples of Jesus. There is a double meaning that I hope will help you remember the point. Marriage is for making children—that is, procreation. Having babies. This is not the main meaning of marriage. But is an important one and a biblical one. But then I add the words disciples of Jesus. “Marriage is for making children disciples of Jesus.” Here the focus shifts. This purpose of marriage is not merely to add more bodies to the planet. The point is to increase the number of followers of Jesus on the planet.

The effect of saying it this way is that couples who cannot make children because of issues of infertility can still aim to make children followers of Jesus. God’s purpose in making marriage the place to have children was never merely to fill the earth with people, but to fill the earth with worshipers of the true God. One way for a marriage to fill the earth with worshipers of the true God is to procreate and bring the children up in the Lord. But that’s not the only way. When the focus of marriage becomes, “Make children disciples of Jesus,” the meaning of marriage in relation to children is not mainly, “Make them,” but, “Make them disciples.” And the latter can happen, even where the former doesn’t.

Where We’re Heading

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Here’s where we are going. First, I want us to see that God’s original plan in creation was for men and women to marry and have children. Having children is God’s will. Second, I want us to see that in the fallen world we live in, not only is marrying not an absolute calling on all people, but producing children in marriage is not an absolute calling on all couples. Normal, good, painful, glorious—but not absolutely required of all. Thirdly, we will focus on what Ephesians 6:1-4 says about how marriage becomes the means for making children disciples of Jesus.

1. Having Children Is God’s Will

First, the meaning of marriage normally includes, by God’s design, giving birth to children and raising them in Christ. Genesis 1:26-28:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

After the flood we read in Genesis 9:1, “God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’” This was God’s original design. Marriage is the place for making children and filling the earth with the knowledge of the Lord the way the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14). It has never ceased to be a good thing. “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate” (Psalm 127:4-5).

And in the New Testament no one is more positive about children than Jesus himself. Mark 10:13-14 says, “They were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, “Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.” So from beginning to end, the Bible puts a huge value on having and raising and blessing children. If you are among the many at Bethlehem with large families, be affirmed! It is a magnificent calling. We will come back to it in a moment. This is one of the great meanings of marriage—to bear and raise children for the glory of God.

2. Having Children Is Not Ultimate

But the second main point I want to make is that, while the meaning of marriage normally includes giving birth to children, this is not an absolute. In this fallen, sinful age, in desperate need of knowing the Redeemer, Jesus Christ, nature by itself does not dictate when or whether to beget children. The decision about whether to conceive children is not ultimately a decision about what is natural, but about what will magnify the Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

In other words, there’s an analogy between the singleness question and the children question. God said in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” So it sounds, at first, like marriage is always the way to go. Then the unmarried Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 7 and verse 26, “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. . . . I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is.” So there are different gifts and different callings. Marriage is not absolute.

So it is with conceiving children. In the beginning, God said to mankind, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” That’s normal. That’s good. But it’s not absolute any more than marriage is absolute. What is absolute is to pursue spiritual children, not natural children. Marriage is not absolutely for making children. But it is absolutely for making children followers of Jesus. Consider a few passages.

Having Hundreds of Children

In Mark 10:29-30, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.” Here Jesus shifts the absolute from having children biologically to having hundreds of children through the family of Christ and through spiritual influence. It might include adoption. It might include foster care. It might include making your home a place for backyard Bible clubs. It might include hospitality in a neighborhood where your home is every kid’s favorite place. It might include your nursery job or your care for your nieces and nephews or the Sunday School class you teach. The point is: Marriage is not absolutely for making children; but it is absolutely for making children followers of Jesus one way or the other, directly or indirectly.

Being “Children of God”

In Romans 9:8, Paul said, “It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.” In other words, in God’s kingdom, bringing “children of the flesh” into being is not absolute, but seeking to bring into being “children of God” is absolute.

The Most Important Family

In 1 Corinthians 4:15, Paul says, “Though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.” This is the most important family in the Christian life, and this is the main way we have children, not by natural birth, but by supernatural birth. For many marriages they go together. But not for all.

Begetting Spiritual Children

One more verse on this point—Romans 16:13: “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well.” Here is motherhood extending out beyond the son of birth to the son of affection and care. So I conclude that among Christians mothering and fathering by procreation is natural and good and even glorious when Christ is in it. But it is not absolute. Aiming to bring spiritual children into being is absolute. Marriage is for making children. Yes. But not absolutely. Absolutely marriage is for making children followers of Jesus.

3. Making Marriage a Place for Making Disciples

Now in the few minutes we have left, let’s focus on God’s calling on marriage to be a place for making children followers of Jesus. We will focus this week on mother and father, and next week on the father, both because the father gets special focus in this text and because next Sunday is Father’s Day. Here’s the text again:

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘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.’ Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

Five Brief Observations

The father has a leading responsibility in bringing the children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Notice that verse 1 says, “Children obey your parents.” Both. Not only father or only mother. But parents. But when the focus shifts from the duty of children to the duty of parents, the father is mentioned, not the mother. “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” So my first observation that we will unpack next week more closely is that in the marriage, fathers have a leading responsibility in bring up the children in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord.

Nevertheless, both mother and father are called to this together. Both are mentioned as the special object of the child’s honor. Verse 1: “Children, obey your parents (mother and father) in the Lord.” You can hear this truth in Proverbs 6:20-21: “My son, keep your father’s commandment, and forsake not your mother’s teaching. Bind them on your heart always; tie them around your neck.” And you recall that Paul reminded Timothy to hold fast to what his mother and grandmother had taught him as a child (2 Timothy 3:14; 1:5). So both mother and father bear responsibility in this marriage to bring the children up in the Lord, with dad having the leading responsibility.

It is important that mother and father be united in this effort. It is not always possible because sometimes one spouse is not a believer, and then you do the best you can in finding practical common ground, for example, in the way the children are disciplined. But God’s design is a united front. Both have one goal: This child is to grow up in “the discipline and instruction of the Lord”—grounded and shaped and permeated by the Lord, aiming to honor the Lord. God does not design that we be divided on this. The children need one united front coming from mom and dad. Don’t confuse the children. Work through your differences of what to teach, and how and when to discipline, and then stand united before the children. Don’t let the children manipulate you against each other. Make that a hopeless ploy. God is one.

Which leads to the fourth observation. The most fundamental task of a mother and father is to show God to the children. Children know their parents before they know God. This is a huge responsibility and should cause every parent to be desperate for God-like transformation. The children will have years of exposure to what the universe is like before they know there is a universe. They will experience the kind of authority there is in the universe and the kind of justice there is in the universe and the kind of love there is in the universe before they meet the God of authority and justice and love who created and rules the universe. Children are absorbing from dad his strength and leadership and protection and justice and love; and they are absorbing from mother her care and nurture and warmth and intimacy and justice and love—and, of course, all these overlap.

And all this is happening before the child knows anything about God, but it is profoundly all about God. Will the child be able to recognize God for who he really is in his authority and love and justice because mom and dad have together shown the child what God is like. The chief task of parenting is to know God for who he is in many attributes and then to live in such a way with our children that we help them see and know God. And, of course, that will involve directing them always to the infallible portrait of God in the Bible.

Finally, God has ordained that both mother and father be involved in raising the children because they are husband and wife before they are mother and father. And what they are as husband and wife is where God wants children to be: As husband and wife, they are a drama of the covenant-keeping love between Christ and the church. That is where God wants children to be. His design is that children grow up watching Christ love the church and watching the church delight in following Christ. His design is that the beauty and strength and wisdom of this covenant relationship be absorbed by the children from the time they are born.

Parents Pointing to Christ and the Church

So what turns out is that the deepest meaning of marriage—displaying the covenant love between Christ and the church—is underneath this other meaning of marriage—making children disciples of Jesus. It is all woven together. Good marriages make good places for children to grow up and see the glory of Christ’s covenant-keeping love.

May the Lord give us a united focus on what really matters in marriage: Husbands and wives loving like Christ and the church, and the children seeing it, and by God’s grace, loving what they see.

__________

Used by permission: John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org

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