Thanks, John. Emily did so well with the children up here. I wonder if all the adults would come up and just sit on the steps. I guess not. Okay, well, we'll go ahead anyway. Open your Bible with me, please, to Ephesians chapter 5. In this month of the family today, we're thinking about growing family responsibility. The word responsibility comes from a Latin root meaning an answer. And so one who has a responsibility is one who is expected to give an answer. He is accountable.
She is answerable. Perhaps the epitome of responsibility is found in Hammer, Norway this next week as athletes from around the world together to account for themselves and their practice over the last six or eight years. How many of you are of Norwegian descent? Would you lift your hand? A lot of you are very proud of that and certainly you should be proud of the way that Norway opened the Games so spectacularly last night.
And a beautiful Olympics will be taking place over the next couple of weeks. Can you imagine yourself there on that ski slope? Neither can I. But just for a moment, try to. As you're looking down that slope and you see the end of it and where you're going to jump all by yourself, there to give account for the practice that you have put in over these last many years. Not only to be accountable for yourself, but to be responsible for the honor of your nation.
Knowing that millions of people are watching you and their dreams and hopes for medal hang upon your ability at that moment. That's responsibility. A humorist has defined responsibility as what one suspender button has when the other button comes off. And that's true, isn't it? And yet we sometimes imagine how fun life would be if we just had no responsibilities. If only life were a perpetual vacation, we think. We get weary and we get disillusioned with the load that we carry.
Parents especially are prone to this. But so are employees who say, I just don't think I can go in there tomorrow and punch that clock. Or students who say, if I have one more test in that class. And children say, if I have to take the garbage out one more day. No matter what level we're at in life, responsibility gets tiring. But you know life devoid of responsibility wouldn't be much fun either.
Responsibility is what makes life enjoyable because it gives us a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. Life without responsibility truly would be boring. Some of you are praying for a boring day, I know. But you wouldn't want a boring life. To have no responsibility would be to lose significance and meaning. Responsibility is important to a happy life. It provides incentive. And it enables us to enjoy a sense of accomplishment.
It is the person who has learned the value of responsibility who is truly free to enjoy life, the gift of life that God has given. We are created by God to be responsible people. We are responsible for the way that we live. We're different than animals in that sense. Animals are not created with responsibility. Animals have instinct, but they're not responsible for what they do. Have you ever heard of a court for animals where they're brought before the judge? Of course not.
And animals don't go to heaven. I'm sorry if that breaks the balloon of some child here. I remember when I was about six years old our first pet, Brownie, was a Cocker Spaniel. What color do you suppose she was? Brown, right. A very original name. Brownie had only one fault. She liked to chase cars. And one day she chased one car too many. It happened to be the mailman. And the result was that she was run over and she died. And I cried and my brothers cried.
And my mother told us, well, Brownie has gone to heaven. Brownie is going to be in heaven. And as a child that comforted my heart, but I've come to understand that truly animals don't go to heaven. When animals die, they die. Their purpose is for this world. And God gives them to us to enjoy. But once they are gone from this world, they are no more. That is not true of human beings. We're different than animals.
Contrary to what you may hear in some of your classrooms, we are not highly evolved animals. Human beings are created by God uniquely and part of our unique creation is that we are responsible people. Life for us is a stewardship. It is a trust that we're expected to manage. Responsibility or a sense of accountability doesn't come naturally to most of us. Some are more inclined to be responsible as they grow up, but the fact is that all of us have to learn it.
And learning responsibility happens most naturally within a family setting. In fact, I think we can say that it's one of the most important personal qualities to be hammered out on the anvil of family life. Responsibility. It's not easy to learn responsibility. It's really not easy to teach responsibility either as a parent. But it's essential to be both a student and teacher of this trait. The book of Ephesians is divided into two parts.
As most of you know, the first part is about our life in Christ, the salvation we have in Him, who we are in Christ, and the last part is a practical application of all of that in various settings of life and it includes the home. We're going to pick up in verse 33 of chapter 5 and read a few verses that talk about responsibility in the family setting. Nevertheless, let each individual among you also love his own wife even as himself and let the wife see to it that she respect her husband.
Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with the promise that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth. And fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
There are three insights in this text about growing responsibility in the family setting, which will help us to see its importance and know better how to enjoy the benefits that responsibility brings. The first insight is regarding marriage and it says that marriage expresses God's original design for responsible living. Now the text that I've read comes at the end of a whole paragraph on the home. Verse 33 fairly summarizes the whole text beginning with verse 22.
It talks to husbands and wives and the unique rules given to each. God instituted marriage before the fall. Did you know that? Some people who get unhappy in their marriage say, oh, what a curse marriage is, it's a part of the fall into sin. What about? Before man ever fell into sin, he instituted marriage. And we're going to go back to Genesis chapter 2 and read about that. I invite you to open your Bible to Genesis 2 and verse 18.
In the longer context, Paul quotes a verse, in fact he quotes verse 18 of Genesis 2. Well, we're going to start reading. Marriage is a good gift from God out of his creative wisdom for the happiness of mankind. We're going to see here that God has established order in the home. The Lord God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper suitable for him.
Out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called the living creature, that was its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, the first anesthesia, and he slept.
And then he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place and the Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which he had taken from the man and brought her to the man. Now why did he do that? Because the man has been naming everything that God has created. So now God has created something new, he brings this new creature to the man that he might name her. And Adam gets his eyes open real quick. He says, ah, this is now bone of my bones.
This is different God than anything else I have seen. This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. He goes on to say, for this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Did you ever think about the fact that we have our marriage ceremony all screwed up? What would we do in our culture? The groom comes out and stands here.
And then the bride comes down the aisle with her father, sometimes with her mother. And they give her away. According to this verse, it says that the man shall leave his father and mother. So what we ought to do is have the bride stand here and have the groom come down the aisle with his mother and father. And they kiss him goodbye and present him to the bride. Isn't that biblical? I didn't hear any amens on that. Now we're very free with our wedding ceremonies here.
If you want to change it and try to implement it, go right ahead. I'm not going to guarantee what the response will be, but what it says here is that God created the woman for the man. Now in 1 Corinthians 11, 1 Timothy chapter 2, as well as in Ephesians chapter 5, Colossians chapter 3, it makes it very clear that God created the man to be the head of the home. He created the wife to be the helper. They have distinctive roles, but they are created to be equal in the sight of God.
The woman is not lesser human. The woman is not a helper because of the fall in the sin. The fall hasn't happened yet. Man is expected to be the head of the home by God's design because he was created first. And the woman's role is that of helping or completing her husband. And then God gave to these two equals who had distinctive roles responsibility.
Going back to the first chapter where we picked this up as we read beginning in verse 25, and God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind, and God saw that it was good. And then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. And let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
And 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 rule. Now here's my point, that marriage expresses God's original design for responsible living. God brought man and woman together in marriage and he gave to them responsibility. You'll notice that God did not create Adam and Steve to get married. It is Adam and Eve, male and female.
That's what marriage is about. However, much else you hear in our culture today about it, that is not marriage. Homosexual relationships can never be a marriage, can never be a home. God created marriage for male and female and said to them, now rule. You see, they were not to take a honeymoon forever in the Garden of Eden. That was not to be a perpetual vacation. God said, now I've created you, I want you to subdue the earth and rule. God gave them responsibility.
So marriage expresses God's original design for responsible living. God created us male and female. He gave us our roles in the world and he established his marriage into home as the place where responsibility starts. Now having said that, where does singleness fit in? Now I want you to listen carefully to what I'm going to say so that you don't misunderstand me. Where does singleness fit in? Singleness fits in as a consequence of the fall of humanity into sin.
Singleness was not God's original intent or design. It's the result of sin. It was not the original pattern. But I'm not saying that singleness as a state is sin. It's the result of sin. In fact, singleness is exalted by the Lord as the apostle Paul writes about it in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. And he says, considering the present circumstances, the present stress, whatever he meant by that, probably a unique situation there in the world at that time, but applicable to all ages.
Considering the present circumstances, he says, in fact, that singleness is even to be preferred over marriage. That doesn't mean that God has established a brand new pattern is to be followed, but it's an exception to the pattern, but a beneficial one, spiritually speaking, because one who is single is able to devote more of the energy of life to serving Christ. So it's an honorable state. But God's design is for marriage, and intrinsic to marriage then is responsibility.
With marriage there is obligation. There is trust to fulfill the God-designed roles for husband and wife. The duty is involved in love and respect, as he summarizes it in verse 33. Now there's a second insight regarding growing family responsibility that I see in our text. It is this, that children learn responsibility through the modeling of their parents. As I indicated before, and as you well know, responsibility is not natural to us. All of us had to learn to be responsible.
Children must be disciplined and trained in what it means to be responsible. This is not a marginal issue. This is an essential for their happiness of life and for the welfare of society. We are entering into a society today in which nobody wants to take responsibility, and our courts are buying into that. People commit heinous crimes, and then because of one thing or another they're not held responsible for it. It does not speak well for our future.
God created us to learn to be responsible in life. Children learn responsibility through the modeling of mom and dad. The training begins as parents set the pace and live out in their own lives the meaning of responsibility. Parents model it, and how do parents model responsibility to the kids? Let me suggest several ways. First of all, by keeping their vows of marriage.
A husband and wife stood before God and a few others, or maybe many others, and as a part of the ceremony said words something like this, I take you for better or for worse. Say, yeah, but I didn't know how much worse. For richer or for poorer. But I didn't know how poor. In sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part. That is a vow made before God. A bride and groom really do not understand those vows, or they might write them a little differently.
Sometimes they do, but there's always these thoughts wrapped up in it. We don't know what the future holds, but it's when mom and dad are faithful to their marriage vows that children understand what responsibility means. Now in our culture, divorce is so easy, legally. People get divorced because of irreconcilable differences or a whole list of reasons, and the result of that is that children see it doesn't mean anything to give your vow to God. Marriage really isn't that important.
Look at mom and dad, they got a divorce. You understand my point, I know. Having said that, and I want to underscore again the importance of those vows, that God intends for marriage to be a monogamous union between a man and woman for life. We also recognize that it takes two, especially with the laws as they are today, it takes two people to keep a marriage together. Some of you have been through divorce. Someone asked another person, who won the divorce?
The answer was nobody, and that's true. I want to tell you, there are no winners in divorce, and among the most hurt and tragic losers in divorce are the children who see the model of responsibility shattered as their home is torn apart. But we live in a fallen world, and God knows that. As I understand God's word, he has made a couple of very narrow allowances for divorce, nothing like what our society says. But God permits it because of the hardness of the human heart in certain cases.
And because our laws are written the way they are today, a person can be quite opposed to divorce and still be faced with it in his life or her life. What do you do then? What do you do when that model has been shattered? Then as a single mom or a single dad, you just seek God's grace to model responsibility in that role that's been thrust upon you. My mother did that for seven years. It can be done. It is a heavy load. It is not easy.
But God can give you the grace to model responsibility where you are at that moment. And then moms and dads model responsibility in giving themselves sacrificially for the welfare of their children. Now I need to say this in balance because there is a tendency, especially in the part of baby boomers, to want to give their kids too much, to not to deny them any toy that they may wish, any privilege they may crave, any game for Nintendo.
But conversely there are some parents who are so wrapped up in themselves that they don't have time for their kids and who sometimes don't even provide for them in a physical way, a material way. We have all wept as we've heard about the children in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, 19 of them in a cold apartment without food and clothing. Children learn responsibility by following the model of their parents who provide in a balanced right way for their needs.
And then parents model responsibility by doing what pleases God. Children see that. They know when mom and dad are doing what is pleasing to God, however difficult it may be, however high the price, moms and dads, we must set an example of responsibility before our children when it comes to spiritual things. It has been noted that each generation tends to be a little less faithful, a little less responsible to God than the previous generation.
If that be true, how faithful, how responsible are your children going to be to God and for His work in the next generation as their adults? You see, we need to model a very careful example of faithfulness of being responsible to God so that our kids have that model to follow. We model responsibility to our children by establishing boundaries for them. Kids need boundaries. They must have them set or they're frustrated. They may push against them. They may cry about them.
They may complain that they're there, but they need boundaries. Setting expectations for them, explaining rationale for rules, giving them chores to do, permitting consequences for disobedience or for failure, allowing them to suffer a little bit because they fail to do something. All of these things model for them what it means to be responsible so that as they grow up, they tend to grow up as responsible adults.
You see, to lead a productive and satisfying life, children must learn responsibility and they learn it best in the home setting through our parental modeling. As I say that, there are some of you parents sitting here today and you're just overwhelmed with guilt because some of you have adult children who are not responsible and you say it's all my fault. If only I had, if only we had, and you can go on forever thinking thoughts like that, I want to bring a word of encouragement to you.
Do you know that even the best of parents may not be able to persuade all their children to be responsible? I'm thinking of a man in the Bible who had two sons. One of them was responsible to a fault, the other one had no responsibility at all. The man is not named, but he had a son who was prodigal. And we so admire this man that we often compare him favorably to God himself and say that he opened his arms to receive his repentant son as God opens his arms to receive us when we repent.
This good and godly father had a son who was irresponsible. Undoubtedly he shed many tears just like you shed, but I want to tell you today, don't allow yourself to be overwhelmed by guilt because you have a child who didn't learn his lessons very well. And do what that father did, allow that child to experience the consequences of his irresponsibility. And pray for him, pray for her, that in due time they may return.
So as you think about the responsibility you have to model before your children, don't expect perfection of yourself. And if you have a child who fails, at least at this point in his life, don't allow yourself to be overwhelmed by feeling guilty for it. You may need to go back and apologize for things you did wrong, be very transparent about your failures to the child, that may be part of the process in helping. But don't allow your life to be ruined by unnecessary guilt.
My third insight and very quickly we touch on it is that a family matures in responsibility as it conforms to God's plan. A responsibility unfortunately isn't learned in a single episode. Don't you wish it could be? I mean just one lesson and the child forever will be responsible after that. But responsibility is a process.
It begins with small steps and lots of failures, but over time with discipline and correction and larger steps and more responsibility and given freedom as a result of that, a family matures and every one of the family plays a part. The parents have a part. Going back to Ephesians again it says fathers don't provoke, don't stimulate your children to wrath. What caused them to be exasperated is the thought. Do not provoke your children to anger. How do you do that?
We exasperate our children when we for example over discipline them. We discipline them for things that they're not old enough to be responsible for yet for example. I think a parent with the first child is especially prone to that. As we get more children we realize more appropriately what children ought to be like at certain ages. If you are a new parent, you have a child you're rearing in your home, be patient. Don't over discipline. That's a danger.
The other danger is not to discipline at all, but don't over discipline. Don't withhold your love. I had a friend who's now with the Lord who had two daughters. The guy liked to play around with psychology and he owned up to doing something that I think may have revealed a real problem in his life psychologically as well as it hurt his children. When they were very small toddlers he would smile and softly say to the one, I hate you, I hate you.
To the other one he would with a very gruff mean voice say, I love you, I love you. He was trying to see what the effect would be of the words and the tone, the actions to see how the child would respond to that. To me that's very cruel and I think he paid a price for it in the two girls as they grew up. We ought not to treat our children as guinea pigs. We exasperate our children when we give them everything they want.
We exasperate our children when we conform our schedules to their every wish. They don't need that. We exasperate them when we pamper them by giving them everything that they ask for. That exasperates children and we're commanded in the word of God not to do that, but as parents we are to nurture them. I'm looking for spring anywhere I can find it these days. This is a word for spring. To nurture is the picture of a plant that's being carefully tended.
It's like that plant you may have there in your kitchen and you carefully till the soil around and you water and you stick in those fertilizer sticks. Just watching that plant grow, you nurture it and this is the picture with our children we are to nurture them. It uses two words by discipline and by instruction. The one means by training by act, the other training by word. That's the role of the parents in maturing responsibility in the home. What about children?
Children obey your parents in the Lord. That's right. It's right to do that. Honor your father and mother. There comes a point in life when you can no longer be held responsible to obey your parents as you establish your own home, but you must always honor your parents. When parents are modeling their roles and nurturing their children and when children are learning to obey and to honor their parents, the family matures in responsibility. Responsible living tends toward a happy and long life.
Notice what it says. This is the first commandment with promise. What is that promise? That it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. That is, those who learn responsibility, those who fulfill and carry out their responsibility, tend to live happier lives and longer lives. I begin by saying that we are created by God to be responsible beings. The Bible says we shall all give account of ourselves to God. We shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body. We're not like animals. Someday we are going to stand before God and give account for our lives. Now on one hand that's kind of a fearful thought. It was even to Paul. But on the other hand it's a delightful thought that God entrusts to us the gift of life.
He wants us to enjoy it by learning to be responsible and someday when we get to heaven he's even going to reward us with eternal rewards because we have learned responsibility. So as we think about the judgment seat of Christ, let's anticipate the fact that we will receive our just due when we have been responsible, when we've paid a price for it, when we've been faithful in its cost to something. Let's remember that God sees and God will reward for our being responsible.
Someone has said there are three things that we should all think about. From where you came, where you're going, and to whom, to whom you must give an account. Let's think about those as we bow in prayer. I hope that you know that you came into this world not as an accident, but as someone whom God planned. And God your creator wants to be your redeemer and Savior. He gave his Son on the cross to die for your sins. He rose again from the dead.
That he might be in a position to forgive you and give you the gift of eternal life. Where are you going? Are you going to heaven? Do you know that? I hope you do. If not, will you give your heart to Christ? Will you trust him today? Believe on him for the saving of your soul? And then think about to whom you must give an account. The fact is that all of us one day will stand before God. How wonderful to know that when you do your sins are forgiven if you're in Christ, if you've trusted him.
But we will also stand there, our sins forgiven, to give account for our lives, our deeds, whether we've learned to be responsible. So as we think of that, let's ask the Lord to teach us what it means to be responsible individually and in our families. Father may we grow in responsibility in your family. And in our own family units may we grow in responsibility. We've been created for that as part of what life is about and all of its joys and its opportunities.
And I pray that where you have found irresponsibility in us, that you would point that out that we may acknowledge it, confess it as sin, and give ourselves a fresh to you. May we learn by the power of the Holy Spirit to live in the joy of fulfilling our God designed roles in the family and the responsibility you've given us in the world. May we hear one day those words, well done, good and faithful, responsible servant.
Singing together with me a response from your heart I trust, the simple little chorus, In my life Lord, in my life be glorified. Let's sing it. In my life Lord, be glorified, be glorified. In my life Lord, be glorified. Let's stand together please. May the response from our hearts also embrace our homes so that we as husbands and wives, as moms and dads, as children, say Lord in our home be glorified. We want to grow in responsibility Lord, in our home be glorified.
In our home Lord, be glorified, be glorified. In our homes Lord, be glorified. Lord that is our prayer and as we go from here we ask you to teach us what we need to know that we may live in this world with all of the joys, the opportunities, and the freedoms that you've given us in Jesus Christ. May we live as responsible people who will joyously be able one day to stand before you and hear your commendation and receive your gracious reward. In Jesus' name, amen.