Dennis Tuuri

In Isaiah 6:8 we read, “And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, who shall I send and who will go for us? Then said I, here am I, send me.” Ushered into the Lord’s presence, falling down as a dead man and being absolved of his sins through the sacrifice, ultimately pointing to that of Jesus Christ, Isaiah is given a word to obey, to carry to the nations. That’s what the sermon is.

This sermon scripture today is 1 Thessalonians 2:10-12. Ye are witnesses in God also how holy and justly and unblamely we behaved ourselves among you that believe. As you know how we exhorted and comforted and charged every one of you as a father doth his children that you walk worthy of God who hath called you into his kingdom and glory.

At this point in time the younger children may be dismissed to go to their Sabbath schools if their parents desire that.

Okay, we’re going to talk today about the apostle as father. Considering last week the apostle as mother. This week in the next couple of verses that we just read, we read about the apostle as father.

Essentially, we’re just outlining the verse for you. Verse 10 speaks to the father’s walk, what his life is like. Says that he calls both the Thessalonians and God to witness that walk is holy, just and blameless. And then after that, we see the father’s talk, what he says, how he instructs his children, and how Paul instructed the Thessalonians. He exhorted them, he comforted them, and charged every one of them as a father doth his children.

And then in verse 12, the goal of all this is that they would walk worthy of God who hath called you into his kingdom and glory. So the apostle as father—his walk, his talk, and then his goal for those under his charge, whether it is the father in terms of the apostle or the father in terms of the household.

So there’s a lot of application today in terms of applying these things to your own lives if you’re a father particularly in charge of a household. If not, these apply generally also to all as we said superior inferior relationships. The fifth commandment of course, the commandment to honor your father and mother, generally comprehends all superior inferior relationships. And when I use those words don’t get upset, I’m not talking about the essence of the person, but rather the functional superiority and inferiority that exists in relationships. If you’re an employee, then you are in an inferior relationship functionally to your employer.

And so if you’re an employer, some of these things we’ll talk about today would refer to you as well. And if you’re a church officer, these things would apply very directly because this is telling us what Paul did as a church officer. And if you’re just another Christian exhorting and admonishing another Christian, these things also apply to you in that relationship.

Yeah. So, but directly I want us to think mostly of this in terms of the Christian home and then secondarily in terms of the church.

Okay. And I’m basing all of this on the fact that I think these verses fit together as a unit. And in the middle of them he says that he’s doing this as a father doth his own children. And uh we have spoken, as I said last week, in terms of the mother with her child and it’s the same word here used for the child that the mother nourishes and cherishes that we talked about last week and is gentle toward. It’s the same word here.

And the very use of the term “a father with his children,” that word for children implies immaturity, of course, but it also implies a degree of tenderness or dearness of the child to the father. That’s kind of implied in there. It isn’t stated as overtly in this section as it is with the mother, but it is implied in that use of that term.

Early commentators have noted that when Paul spoke of chastening his converts, he compares himself to a father or to exhorting them, he compares himself to a father. But when he speaks of cherishing or loving or caring for in that sense those under his charge, he compares himself to a mother.

Now we can make too much of this, but I think that there is a differentiation, a concept of the division of labor that’s at play here and more than that God is particularly equipped mothers to do a particular kind of nourishing of children and fathers for a different kind.

And although the same word child is used in both cases in this passage from First Thessalonians, I think we can see in what goes on in these two sections, the apostle as mother and the apostle as father, a transition as the child matures. Originally, he was talking about the nursing mother who cherishes and guards her little one and nourishes him, feeds him as well, self-sacrificially living for the child. And here he’s talking about instruction to the Thessalonians. And so we can see a maturation process at work.

And so I think that there is some reason to believe on the basis of this and other scriptures that children essentially until the time of at least in the Old Testament of their weaning were primarily under the mother’s direct care. But as the child got older and they wean them at a much older age in the Old Testament, you know, three or four years of age, as the child matures and can speak and can understand words better, the father’s role becomes greater in maturation of the children.

And so that’s a very important thing to consider. We’re going to make relationship to this to what’s going on in America today. I think it’s a very promising phenomena in terms of homeschooling. But this is important, that this transition from the mother to the father occurs in this verse. It’s important for our homes as well.

Before we get into the specific talking about some of these verses, another thing that occurs to me: if you look at this pattern as a whole picture, is that you don’t see a lot either in terms of the mother’s role or here in terms of the father’s role of intellectual transmission of data.

Now that’s assumed of course—you’re going to teach your children things and he’s going to teach the Thessalonians what the law of God requires and it’s implied in the fact that he says that his walk was just according to God’s standard and that he was encouraging them, exhorting them and admonishing them and warning them implies instruction going on in intellectual matters. But the important thing to recognize here is that what’s stressed is the action, that is the goal of all this putting feet on it as it were.

It’s stressed first in the example of the apostle himself. He begins by saying what his walk is, his life, not what his doctrine is. Now doctrine is real important. We know that. But he begins by saying how his walk was amongst these people. So he points to his own action. And then he encourages them. We’ll look at those three words in a couple of minutes here. But he encourages them with a set of three words to take what he instructs them in and apply it. Does no good if it just gets here and doesn’t get into here.

Okay? And then the whole point of that is there—that he commends to them a walk worthy of God. And I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but the idea of walk literally means to go around, is what the word walk there means. And it means your lifestyle, what you do. Okay? So the whole thing is geared toward performance and toward action and toward application of biblical truths. Very important to realize that we live in an age today that does assert in many ways what some have called the primacy of the intellect and we think that the big deal is getting understanding of something and that’s you know the end product—well it isn’t. God gives us understanding that we would obey and obedience is extremely high in our list of priorities.

It’s easy to get most of the basic concepts of scripture, not tough. We just read Psalm 15: “Who can abide in the holy hill of God? Who stays in relationship to God and who’s supposed to be kicked out of the church institutionally?” is what’s being talked about there among other things. Well, it’s real simple stuff. You know, you don’t whisper about your neighbor behind their back. You don’t talk about them. You don’t try to make money off people through usury and hurting the poor people who need to borrow money in the midst of your covenant household. You don’t do those things. You don’t tell somebody something and then not do follow through on your word. Pretty easy stuff.

Okay. But the tough thing is applying it and doing it. That’s where the rubber meets the road.

Let’s look at the example Paul gives. The example first of his own life. And the first thing he talks about is personal piety. Personal piety. He begins here. This is the first of three adverbs. They’re not adjectives. They’re adverbs. They’re describing not himself as a person—he’s describing what he does. They’re adverbs, not adjectives. It describes the way he was amongst them, what he did, not what he claimed to be.

Having said that, it is important that what he did demonstrated a heart attitude of love and separation to God, personal piety, holiness. The word used here for holiness is not the normal word that means to be consecrated or set apart to something. This word has more of the concept to it of piety, uprightness, religious devotion, love for God, holiness. The other normally used word is being set apart or consecrated positionally—in many cases this refers more to the action of the heart.

And so the father and the one who leads the church or instructs other people within the church is to have a heart that loves God and it’s evident that his love for the Lord is real. Now it is true that there’s been a perversion of this general doctrine in the last couple of centuries known as pietism which has nothing to do with God’s law. But we don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There is a biblically required piety in one’s life, a love for God that is a sincere devotion to him. Okay? And we don’t want to forget that. It’s very important. It’s one of the first things Paul gives us in way of example of himself here as a father.

He is pious. Your children should know that you love God, that you have a heart that wants to be consecrated and set apart to God, and that your life is becoming circumspect—not just in the exteriors of obeying the standard but in the very heart attitude that you have and your children should know that and see that in your life.

Now this heart attitude is related though to an objective standard. So he goes on to say that he was holy—that is he had personal piety—but he also acted justly. He conformed himself to God’s standard. And so fathers, your children should certainly know you love the Lord. But by loving the Lord, the demonstration of that is the obedience to his external standard of the law. Righteousness here, justice is what’s being talked about, the same basic word that’s translated righteousness or justice, justly, etc. It means conformity to a standard and specifically of course in this context, conformity to God’s standard, the revealed law of God.

And so a person cannot be a good father unless he gives the example not just of loving the Lord but a love for the Lord that motivates him then to obey the Lord’s commands. The love for the Lord that I just spoke of and a true piety and devotion to God does not equal or equate to pious gush about how much we love the Lord but rather it shows a self-sacrificial action that we might obey God’s law, his commandments. And so the father is supposed to be externally obvious in his obedience of God’s righteous standard.

These two things are frequently related together in scripture, holiness and righteousness. In Luke 1:73-75, we read that God’s sending of the Messiah is result of the deliverance out of the hand of enemies. It goes on to say that we might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of our lives. And that’s the way Paul was. He was without fear. He was courageous. And that courage meant that he could then fulfill his requirements to be holy and just before God, consecrated to God yes, but loving God from his heart and a love that issues forth an external obedience to the commandments.

And then third, Paul says, as a result of this, there was an absence of substantive charges from men against him. He said, “We walked unblamably. We behaved ourselves among you that believed.” And he doesn’t say there that he walked blamably among those that didn’t believe, but he’s calling them that did believe to witness to this fact and the reality of this fact. So he says we walked unblamably—we had no substantive charges that could be brought from men against us. We were separated unto God in his service. We strove ever to do what was right according to God’s standard. And as a result we can say that we walked blamelessly in the sight of men and God. It rounds out the first two. It’s the result really of the first two statements. It means to be without cause for reproach. And I might just say there, it means to be without a just cause.

We know Paul was accused by various people. He doesn’t mean that there were never a charge laid against him. What he meant was there was never a substantive charge that can be documented from his life that could be laid against him. So he says here that the basic meaning is that we behaved ourselves in relationship to our conduct in such a way that we could be seen to be blameless in the sight of God and the sight of men.

Now he says that the phrase—he says unblamely we behaved ourselves amongst you that believe. “We behaved ourselves” has implied to it the concept of becoming. And so by inference what that phrase means in the original language is that what we’ve just described as a picture of Paul and should be a picture of all fathers is not something that just happened. It’s something that he worked to achieve in his life.

Okay? And so, fathers, for you and your family, your family should see you as loving God, conforming to the standard of being blameless then in terms of the charge being laid against you. But it doesn’t just happen. It’s something you have to aim for and press toward the mark to accomplish. That’s what Paul said he had to do. And so we should, seeing this model from Paul obviously in terms of the church, but taking terminology from the family, we should also examine our own life in the same way.

Do our children know that we love God? Or do they see us as being slavishly obedient to the commandments of the Lord? And if we love God, is that love linked to an obedience to his commandments? Or is it antinomian? Is it we sure love him, but we’re going to do our own thing? That isn’t love. That’s something else, but it isn’t biblical love.

Do our children see us making a self-conscious attempt first to understand the law of God? What does Psalm 15 mean? Well, you should be able to tell people what that means. You should be familiar with the case laws and then walking in obedience to those things. And then should your—would you—what would your children say in terms of a charge against you relative to these two things? Could your children see moments when at home you let down your hair and you don’t keep in obedience to these things and then aren’t repentant about before God for your violation of God’s law?

You know, it’s we’re real intimidated one by another. We see each other at church and we’ve got our Sunday best on. That’s a good thing. It’s a good thing to dress up as we come before the President, the King, and remind ourselves that our interior should be spotless before God and we should have made confession to sin. But we see each other normally in those kind of contexts and we don’t know what goes on in each other’s homes.

But our children know what goes on. Our children know what goes on. And part of our job of rearing our children to walk worthy and part of Paul’s job of rearing the church to walk worthy was to demonstrate that conduct not out there at the unbeliever but interior to your home where those children are watching you. That’s part of being a man. That’s part of leading the flock that God has put you in control of in terms of your own household.

But what would the community say as well? Are you unblameable? If they did a background check on you at the police for instance this last couple of years? You might have been able to keep it out of the church newsletter, but you know what’s going on in your life? Are there charges that people could bring against you? Legitimate charges. You know, what would a credit report turn up on you? What would your neighbors say about you if I went to your neighbors and said, “Well, you know, what about this guy? You know, what’s he live like?” Would they have a substantive charge to be brought against you?

And if they would, if they would, then it’s time to repent from that and to press toward the mark where you live at peace with men as much as is possible with you. False charges will occur, but it’s the substantive ones that Paul said he was not guilty of.

So, that’s the first image that Paul puts before the Thessalonians in this urging them to do what’s right. He puts before them his own walk as it were. There’s that phrase again. He puts before them his own walk.

I might just add here that in Philippians 2:15 we read that to be found blameless we must not grumble. That’s the implication of Philippians 2:14 and 15. “Do all things without grumbling or disputing that you may be blameless and harmless sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation among whom you shine as lights in the world.”

We’re going to talk about that in a couple of minutes. Paul wants them to walk worthy of the kingdom and glory. The glory is the visible manifestation of who God is in his presence. And Christians to be lights in the world is to exhibit the glory of God. Okay? That he’s called us into, to exhibit that glory. And to be blameless means we don’t grumble or dispute about things. Thankfulness is at the core of developing the pious, obedient, blameless life before God.

Thanklessness is at the core according to Romans 1 of the man who rebels against God. And so if your children see you thankless time after time in your household and various things happen, then it’s something to repent of and it’s something to make sure they know that you’re sorry for doing it. Not because ultimately you’re giving them a bad example, but because you’ve sinned against Almighty God and you love him and you don’t want to call him somehow a bad guy for forgiving you whatever’s come into your life that you’re grumbling about that day.

So at the heart of doing a lot of these things according to Philippians 2 is a thankfulness before God. Okay.

Paul, as I said, aimed at these things. Another verse that supports that is Acts 24:16. Paul said, “And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offense toward God and toward men.” That’s a goal to seek out, to have a good conscience toward God and toward men. And it’s not easy. Paul exercised himself toward that end. And I’m charging you and admonishing you and exhorting you and myself to keep that goal in front of us as men in the world in which God has called us to live.

Some have said that the reason the early church did so well in terms of evangelization was that the sermons that the early church taught had shoes. The sermons had shoes. Their walk, their talk rather, was verified by their walk.

It’s said of St. Francis of Assisi one day that he was going to go out and had a young convert with him there and they were going to go evangelize and preach in the village. So they went out in the morning and they started walking around the city, the little town there that he lived on the outskirts of and they’d stop and talk to neighbors along the way and they’d go along their business and about midday they came back in a circuitous route back to where they started and the young guy said, “Well, when are we going to start preaching here?” You know? And Assisi said, “Well, you know, we have been preaching. If we can’t preach with our walk then we really have no business preaching with our talk either.”

And so Paul makes sure that he demonstrates and reminds the Thessalonians that his walk was good, his shoes were on, and before he gets to talking to them about the way he encouraged and exhorted them. We said this before, that James B. Jordan in a tape not too long ago talked about the concept that unless you lay down your life for somebody, unless you labor hard and diligent for them, unless your life is blameless, it’s pretty tough to get the charges underneath you to listen to what you’re going to have to say and obey you.

Jesus gave us the model of dying for us and then calling us to obedience. And so Paul says in terms of us being a mother, that they were self-sacrificing. In terms of being a father, we were blameless. And as a result of that, then he calls them to obedience to God’s word. And so in our households, it should be that way. Don’t think that just because you’re the dad and they’re the boys and girls, they’re going to obey you. It doesn’t work that way. God has called you to a higher calling to exhibit him to your family and his law and the love that he’s put in your heart through the Holy Spirit. Okay.

Secondly, the father’s talk. Then his walk, the father’s instruction. First, the father’s instruction takes the message from the head to the hands. And as I said, there’s not a lot about the content of the instruction in here. Now, the next verse, they walk worthy of the kingdom, some have seen that as the content, and I suppose you could say that it is as also the goal.

But essentially, what Paul obviously is doing is teaching them biblical truths. And he talks about his talk as being that takes the message from the head, from the intellectual attainment of the data, to the hands to make it real and to make him do this work.

He says, “As you know how we exhorted you.” To exhort means to come alongside and it has the concept with it of admonishing, exhorting, urging onward to a particular task. So the apostles who lived this way then came alongside the Thessalonians and to encourage them to live in like manner.

Matthew Henry said that the apostles not only informed them of their duty but quickening and exciting them to the performance of it by proper motives and arguments. That’s how they did it. They quickened and excited the Thessalonians to the performance of the duties by proper motives and arguments.

Bahnsen in his commentary says they admonish them so that they might act freely, that they might do these things freely to God. Neil says this phrase could be rendered “to urge the hesitant.” To exhort means to urge those who are hesitant to do something. So Paul made a strong appeal here to get them to walk into obedience. He didn’t just lay it out there and then they could decide whether or not they’re going to act.

He encouraged them strongly to act and put it in practice into their lives. This is a general term, as Finley said, for any animating address, an address that animates and excites people to obedience in their lives.

And so, it’s a good thing that in our homes we begin to have family worship. And it’s a good thing that we begin to have Bible classes in our home schools. But that’s not going to do any good if we don’t follow through on the pattern that the Apostle Paul sets out for us to come alongside of our kids and teach them by example and teach them by exhortation to walk in obedience to that intellectual instruction we’ve imparted to them in our home schools or in our family worship times.

And Paul says that’s not the job of the mother primarily here, that’s primarily the job of the father to come alongside and encourage to obedience.

Secondly, he comforts the heart. Says we encouraged you, we admonished you and we comforted you. This word is not very dissimilar, it’s very similar to the one that just preceded it. Some people see in it a little more of an emphasis upon comfort. Lenski, however, says that to be comforted comes after undergoing affliction, but Paul’s purpose here to the Thessalonians is to get them to face the affliction. They need to be strongly encouraged to face what possible affliction or persecution may come upon them as they do what’s right.

I think that Lenski has got a good point there, that Paul is admonishing them to an action and he’s not going to comfort them for having achieved that obedience until they’ve done it.

Having said that, these two terms, both of them can have on both sides of them the concept of comfort or consoling as you come along beside and encourage, exhort and admonish to obedience. They both have that kind of thing going with them as it were. Okay?

And so what that means to us as fathers is when we come alongside our kids to make practical application of the truth, we don’t do it simply as a stern taskmaster, but we come alongside of them certainly admonishing, exhorting with all the authority that God has given us in our household, but we also do it in such a way as to not break their spirit, not break their heart. We do it with a consoling as well and a comforting that urges and puts before them the benefits of obedience.

And so Paul tells us to admonish and encourage. But then the third word he uses here, to adjure of the soul, is an even tougher term. He says, “We exhorted you. We comforted you. And we charged every one of you. We charged you.”

And Paul does this. We see this throughout the scriptures. Men make charges one to another. He warns them. In 1 Corinthians 4:14, “I warned you because,” he goes on to say, “you don’t have many fathers.” If we’re in Christ Jesus, I have begotten you through the gospel.” To those that Paul was directly placed in authority over in terms of his function, he warned them and charged them not to do what was wrong.

Bahnsen summarizing these three says that he admonished them so that they might act freely, he encouraged them that they would act gladly, and he testified that they would act reverently. And so we’re supposed to come alongside our children to get them to do the task and to warn them and solemnly charge them in the sight and presence of God of the obedience and the blessings that come from that, and the curses that come from disobedience. We’re to constantly put in front of our kids as we encourage them to take what we teach them and put it into practice.

We’re to constantly put in front of them those two pictures of Psalm 1, the two rows, blessing and cursing. Book of Proverbs, “My son, do this. It’ll be blessing to you. That’s a good deal. Don’t do this. That’s cursing. That’s the way of death. That’s the way of destruction. Don’t do that. There’s the way of the sloth over here. The house is broken down. Here’s the way of the diligent man. Things are neat. Things are tidy. Things life is progressing. Dominion, man is at work.”

And so Paul wants us to charge our children, keeping them in mind of the real sanctions that God will bring into their lives. Even if man fails to, God will always do it. Bring those sanctions into their life when they reject his command, those negative sanctions, and positively putting before them the positive sanctions that he gives us ultimately on the basis of Christ’s work and the blessings that come into our lives.

So this means to charge, adjure, strongly encourage the wavering as it were, our children. It’s not enough them to receive intellectually, be exhorted to action. They still will get discouraged in wellbeing. And when they do that, we have to admonish them and adjure them, charge them according to Almighty God to do what’s right and to place that charge upon them.

This is, as I said, frequent in scripture and we see this going on lots in scripture where a father will gather his children for a charge. For instance, Moses charged Joshua. God charged Joshua through Moses to go into the promised land and it’s in the context in terms of Joshua, by the way, of the same thing. He strengthens Joshua, he encourages him, and he charges him. “I prepared you now and I’ve encouraged you, that’s part of the preparation. Now you do it. You move out and you act in obedience. I charge you by God,” and it has an official capacity to it.

But we should be doing these things to our own children, recognizing that God calls us to do that according to these words.

Calvin in summing up this section said that the Thessalonians are not merely told what is right. They are pricked by exhortation and summoned to the judgment seat of God so that they may not sleep in their errors. They’re pricked by exhortation. That’s what those first two words, pretty synonymous words, exhort and comfort, are. They’re pricked by exhortation and then they’re summoned to the judgment seat of God. Paul testifies to them. He warns them. He witnesses to them as it were. He calls them as it were in the presence of God and says, “I adjure you by the living God to do these things.”

And that’s what Paul does. And Calvin summarizes that as summoning them to the judgment seat of God so they don’t sleep in their sin.

Now, notice here that in this particular phrase, “and charged every one of you,” and it’s very emphatic in the Greek. He’s saying that the exhortation and the comfort and the charge was to each and every one of you individually. And we have children and it’s important that we have family worship and it’s important that we have family exhortations and charges. But it’s also important you get to know your children individually and come alongside each of them individually and do these same things.

Paul uses both words here. He uses it throughout the scriptures where he says on one hand I did this to each one of you individually and I did it with you as a group. The one and the many, and that’s what we have to remember to do with our children as well—not leave them out individually and thinking that we don’t have enough time to deal with each one. Okay.

So that’s Paul’s talk as it were and as I said it conforms with the scriptural model very well. Throughout the scriptures there’s the exhortation rebuking reproving and charging that the righteous do one to another to encourage each other to walk in faithfulness.

Now one thing here for the children: Hebrews 12 is a picture of all this as well. Says that God chastens and scourges every son whom he receives. And he says this is for your well-being. And in the context of that he says, “We had fathers of our flesh which corrected us and we gave them reverence. Well some of us gave them reverence. I suppose we all should give them reverence. Our fathers that correct us. And he goes on to say our fathers for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but he for our own profit.”

What he’s saying there is that your fathers are going to make mistakes. And as your father attempts to not just lay out some intellectual truths for you, but to come alongside and exhort, encourage, rebuke, and charge you, he’s going to make mistakes. Remember, we said that Calvin said, “Elders are right a good one eighty percent of the time.” Elders are supposed to do this to church people too. Church officers are supposed to do this—to come alongside, end dear to the children, but also to exhort, comfort, and charge. They’re going to be wrong maybe one out of five times. And your dads are too.

But you know, God isn’t wrong. God is behind that whole process. And he is working through that authority. And while they might mean it for evil, even sometimes, God means it for your good and he means it for his glory.

We were a couple of us having a conversation. I don’t know if I’ll be able to explain that. Probably shouldn’t even take it on, but I’m going to try anyway because I thought it was such a great concept.

A couple of us were meeting with a friend the other day, and he was talking about relationship of work and money. And he said, “You don’t want to see those two things as together in your mind. Work and money are separate things. You work and then as God blesses, you get money, but they don’t equate. Say, your job is to work. Don’t focus on the money, the end result. Focus on the task God gives you to do. And then God brings all this to pass.”

See, and it’s the same thing with our fathers exhorting and encouraging us. If they work poorly, okay? And if they don’t do well, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to get paid by God. We will. He superintends the process.

I was listening to a Gary North tape this last week and he was talking about how God delegates authority, but he doesn’t give up any authority. God has all control. He’s sovereign ordainer of whatsoever comes to pass. And he gives people real authority. And we say, “Well, how can that be? Doesn’t make sense to me. If I can have authority, that means God doesn’t have it.” Not true. He gives men authority, but he retains all authority himself as well. We can’t understand that because we’re not God.

The point is, he may give your father authority to chastise you and to exhort you and he may use it incorrectly, but God has not given up authority ultimately to him. He retains authority. He’s still sovereign of everything that comes to pass. And the scriptures say that he brings all things into your life for your well-being and for his own glory.

And so, you don’t got to worry about that—that your father’s going to be wrong sometimes. You don’t got to worry about that. You can put yourself at rest and you can become submissive to that process because you’re not submitting to your father ultimately. You’re submitting to God. And on the other hand, fathers, you can be encouraged by that as well. Because if you know, if you’re the sole determiner of what happens to your child, if you think it through very far, you probably won’t do much with him. You’ll probably be too afraid to act.

But the scriptures tell us, no, you act and God will make sure that things work out okay. He’s in control. You’re going to make mistakes. So, very important concept that’ll happen.

Now, Acts 20 is another picture of the same thing that Paul is describing here as a father. And we’ve talked about this before. I won’t go into it in great detail, but he says in Acts 20 the same thing that he says in Thessalonians. He says that “you know how we showed you. I kept back nothing that was profitable from you.” In verse 20 of Acts 20, “we’ve taught you publicly and from house to house.”

You see? And so, the preacher, the church officers should teach the congregation publicly but also house to house. And the fathers, you fathers should teach your charges collectively in family worship, but also one by one encouraging and exhorting each one of them individually like Paul did.

And Paul says as it goes on here that they exhorted them and encouraged them. He says, “You know, with tears, with tears I did these things.” He says, let’s see here—verse 31 of Acts 20: “I cease not to warn everyone night and day with tears.” He warned them. He brought them to the judgment seat of God and put the two paths in front of them. And he did it with tears at times because some of them were going off course.

And that’s the way we should be with our children. Never too busy, never too tired, never too slothful to work hard with our children.

He says to them, he says this essentially—it’s the same picture as I said. And Paul in the context of all that says that he is free from the blood of all men. He says, let’s see what verse is that? In verse 26: “Wherefore I take you to record this day that I am pure from the blood of all men.”

If parents work hard to exhort, encourage, reprove, charge their children, they’re free from the blood of those children. But if they don’t, and if they’re slothful, and if they don’t do those things, then somehow on the sovereignty of God—there is some sort of charge against them for the blood of the child that goes astray. Better to try and error is the point here. Better to engage and make mistakes than not to engage in terms of you leading your family.

And of course, he’s referencing back here to Ezekiel, the watchman of the city who doesn’t warn the city that the robbers are on their way. Then he is guilty for the blood that falls upon that city. And by way of analogy, one of the best things you have to do for your children is to warn them of the dangers that come upon them. Warn them of the sins that will eat their souls alive and the demons from hell that will grab those children and take them down with them. You warn your children about the initial steps to that.

And if you do that—and I don’t mean just instructing, reading a Bible verse to them. I mean like this verse has been saying, coming alongside with your life in order, exhorting, encouraging, comforting, testifying to them. If you do that, then you save them. And at that point then God says, “You know, if they go this way, they go that way, it’s on their own head.”

But if you don’t do that, if you don’t live your life in that kind of commendable fashion, and you don’t reprove them, and you don’t follow up that teaching with exhortation, then you can’t say what Paul says here. You can’t say you’re free from the blood of all your children.

What’s the goal of all this? Well, verse 12: “that you would walk worthy of God who hath called you into his kingdom and glory.” What a wondrous statement. As soon as Paul talks in the first half of the statement about man’s responsibility—you’re supposed to walk worthy of God—he immediately says that God has after all called you into his kingdom and his glory.

What a wondrous thing. Paul here, his gospel, and we’ve said this before in First Thessalonians consistently. We’ve seen evidence after evidence where his gospel is the gospel of the kingdom present now. And he tells them, “You’re in the kingdom now, and you’re called to manifest God’s glory, his righteousness as it were, his essence, his in terms of Jesus. Remember, ‘we beheld his glory, grace, and truth.’ That’s supposed to be the characteristics of your life that shine out.”

So, he’s called you into his kingdom for the purpose of showing forth his glory. And you’re supposed to walk worthy. What does worthy mean? Worthy means it has reference to weight. Okay? Reference to weight. So you can sort of see it on one hand as God has called you into this kingdom and given you these great privileges. And the other side of the balance, the other side of the balance is supposed to be the way you walk and they’re supposed to kind of balance out as it were.

Now, you can’t earn it. It’s not what it’s talking about, but it’s talking about your life should demonstrate the reality of what God has called you to do. And you should walk in such a way as to be worthy of that calling, not to attain it, but to demonstrate it with the equal importance, as it were, the calling itself.

We have several places throughout the scriptures and I won’t look at all of them but I’ll look at a couple of them here where God talks about walking worthily and what that implies. In Philippians 1:27 we read that we are to “walk worthy of God,” well let’s see—”behave as citizens worthy of the gospel of Christ.” Our lives generally are to have that kind of consideration of God’s calling to them.

One commentator commenting on this said of the great man that “the machine often when he entered a room people felt him when he entered a meeting or private home. Although not a stern sanctimonious man but a cheerful one yet people recognized him as a man of God who carried the atmosphere of heaven with him and lived out the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Now the gospel of Jesus Christ is his death and his resurrection, when boiled down, and Michener carried out that gospel with his death to his own sinful actions and the resurrection life that he demonstrated. And so our lives generally in summing up this concept of walking worthily before God are to have that kind of depth and weight to them in general so that people would recognize that we are indeed members of that kingdom of God.

Now to accomplish that, a quote of Michener himself said this. He said: “How diligently the cavalry officer keeps his saber clean and sharp. Every stain he removes with the greatest care. Remember, you are God’s sword, his instrument. I trust a chosen vessel to bear his name in great measure according to the purity and perfectness of the instrument will be success. It is not great talents that God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus Christ.”

And so, if we’re going to have that kind of character, then we have to see ourselves as a sword of Jesus Christ. And we must keep it pure of every stain. Now, we’re going to sin, but the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from those sins as we confess and as we make restitution according to God’s law. He then forgives us of those sins. And so, generally speaking, the life that walks worthy of God and of the kingdom and of the gospel of Jesus Christ is one that is characterized by that depth of character that these godly men had.

Another man said once he was introducing a man to a group in Paris. The guy was an old man who’d been honest all his life. He said, “Citizens, listen. For sixty years of pure life is about to address you. Sixty years of pure life is about to address you.” And your children over time should see your life and see the demonstration through that life that will earn you rather a hearing in their life.

And so to walk worthy means to walk a life that’s circumspect in all matters. In Colossians 1:10, we read: “that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work.”

And so walking worthy of God is defined by Colossians 1:10 as bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. And going on to read here: “strengthen with all might according to his glorious power unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father who hath made us me to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.”

Let’s break that down a little bit. That’s Colossians 1:10 through 12. He says to walk worthy is to be fruitful—fruitful for that kingdom you’ve been called to. That’s what you’ve been called to. Bear fruit for it. Increasing in the knowledge of God. Fathers, you must increase in your understanding of the scriptural truths that you might communicate them to your charges. That’s walking worthy.

Strengthen with all might unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness. To be patient under affliction and longsuffering with joyfulness, giving thanks unto the Father is a demonstration of walking worthy. And he gets back to that concept I said before—no grumbling or disputing. What’s the end with all that?

Colossians 1:12 says: “He has made us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.” Essentially a parallel phrase to what we read—the kingdom, the inheritance of the saints in light, God’s glory.

And so to walk worthy means to be patient under suffering. It means to be thankful in all things. It means to bear fruit in all things for the kingdom. And so we’re to walk worthy of God’s great calling. We are given a great charge here. Paul with his children didn’t lower the standard. He didn’t bring down the high bar as it were down to two feet so they could get over it. Okay? He kept before them the high standard of a call worthy of the gospel of God and of the kingdom of God and the glory of God.

And that’s the way we should deal with our children as well. We don’t want to dumb things down. We want to have high standards and keep them before them that they might press on toward the mark. Our calling makes us in the kingdom princes and kings. And that’s the way we should act. That’s the way we should act.