Teaching Children Obedience

Introduction

Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Open your Bibles, please, to Ephesians chapter six. I want to start at Ephesians chapter six and in verse one, please. As you are turning there, I would tell you how glad I am to be with the South Bumby Church again. It is a delight for me to be with you, especially enjoying all this lovely Florida sunshine. I’m just thrilled to be with you this morning. I would ask a special favor. I’ve been here a couple of times before, which means I see many familiar faces, and I do even remember some names, but I will not assume that you remember my name. I’ll introduce myself, and I hope that you will help me a little bit with your name by introducing yourself as well.

I remember, you know, most of you here, Josh and Jenna, for example, although Josh, you’re aging some. I remember you’re younger. Uh I hope to try to remember most of your names as we go along together during the week. We’ll say more about the series and as we talk about built to last, building strong families. In this Bible class hour, probably need to talk about some of the most important things that uh will help all of our families, and that is the matter of obedience, as set forward right here in Ephesians chapter six, in Ephesians six and in verse one. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Parents, if you think carefully about our goal as parents to raise our children to know and serve the Lord, then it seems to me that what’s being set forward here in Ephesians 6 1 becomes absolutely fundamental to all of those efforts.

What we want our children to do is to come to a place where they love and trust God. That’s what we’re looking for. But of course, biblically speaking, faith must never be inactive, something cold and sterile that doesn’t affect the way we live. Faith and love in the Lord always leads to what? It leads to decisive action. Doing, in fact, obedient doing, it always leads to obedience. That means, as a parent, what I want to do is teach my children to obey God. And the way the Lord has ordained for that teaching to occur is set forth right in this verse. Children learn to obey God by learning to obey mom and dad. That’s how that works. That’s where everything starts. Some people complain sometimes that the Bible doesn’t have a whole lot of specifics in it about how to raise children, and I certainly understand about that.

There are principles given, but I don’t think you find a lot of explicit kinds of principles. Give them an allowance. Don’t give them an allowance. No, I understand sometimes why people say, I just wish the Bible hadn’t more to say. Well, here’s something pretty specific, isn’t it? Children are to do what their parents tell them to do. That’s a specific. Interestingly, in all the conversations that I have with parents about children and about raising children, oftentimes I don’t hear a whole lot about that. Yet the truth of the matter is, obedience is a theme throughout all of Scripture. From the beginning of creation to the end of Revelation, it is difficult to turn to a single page of the Bible where obeying God is not being discussed, set forth as the central agenda, as what’s of primary importance.

Having said that, then what I want to know is how are we going to help our children grow up and learn to obey God? The answer to that is we’re going to teach them to obey God by teaching them what obedience is all about as they obey mom and dad. So this morning, what I want to do is I just want to talk a lot about obedience and how that’s going to work. And the way that I’m going to do that is rather than give you a bunch of my think-sows and opinions, which aren’t worth anything at all. I just want to study the Bible and see what the Bible says about obedience in general. Obedience, your obedience, my obedience, everybody’s obedience. And what we can do, once we see what God expects of us in obedience, then we can turn and we can look at our children.

We say, you know what, these are the parameters that we need to be raising to. This is what we need to be instructing. This is what we need to be looking for, because someday at the age of accountability, God will expect what? He’ll expect them to obey him in exactly and precisely the same sort of way. So I want to teach my children what obedience is all about, just as God has taught me through the word what my obedience is all about. Does that make sense? I think that makes an awful lot of sense. So let’s just think a little bit then about obedience. Yours, mine, everybody. Let’s just think a little bit about what it means to obey God. I suggest for you here several principles.

1. Obedience Is Submitting to the Authority of God

Let’s just begin with a good definition here. Obedience means what? It means that I’m going to submit myself to the authority of God, and I’m going to do what God says. Look in your Bible in Matthew chapter 8. In Matthew chapter 8. You remember Jesus here had some conversation about what it means to obey as he met a man who understood about obedience. In Matthew chapter 8, I’m reading here, in verse 7, the centurion replied, Matthew 8, please, in verse 7, the centurion replied, Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. And I say to one, go and he goes, and to another come and he comes, and to my servant do this, and he does it.

Our obedience is rooted in submission to the authority of God. He is God, and we are not. And that means that God has the right to command, and we are expected to do as God tells us to do. And you understand, I trust, that that obedience is not optional. It is not something that we do when we feel like it, when we want to, and we get around to it. Obedience to God is absolutely essential. In 2 Thessalonians 1, in 2 Thessalonians 1, you want to be lost, just don’t obey God. In 2 Thessalonians 1, I’m looking at verse 7 there. The Lord Jesus will be revealed, Paul tells us.

2. God Expects Obedience, and Right Away

We must do what God says. Let me clarify that by giving you some synonyms for the word obedience. Those would include comply, conform, follow, keep, yield, bow, defer, submit, satisfy, carry out. I need to ask myself, do I bow to God? Do I submit to his will? Do I keep his word? Do I defer to him and his way? Now, I just need to ask. Am I teaching my children to do the same with me? Children obey your parents. Am I teaching my children about submitting to authority so that someday they will easily and naturally submit to the authority of God because they have been trained in what obedience means? Let me suggest the second principle for you this morning, and that is that God expects to obey.

Now, I’m certainly aware of the invitation of Jesus, come take my yoke, for example, in Matthew 11, or that Jesus stands at the door and knocks in Revelation the third chapter. I understand some of that. But within the bounds of the covenant, we should see clearly that God expects his people will do exactly as he says. Think about, for example, the Ten Commandments. They are not the ten suggestions. Thou shall not do so-and-so and so-and-so and so and so. God has no qualms about that at all. He says explicitly what he expects to be done. He forbids in explicit terms, and he expects that we will obey what he has told us to do. Now, let me just ask this a moment, dear. Why is it that we are so reluctant to command our children and expect similar obedience?

Why is that? Have you noticed that parents today are more and more just reluctant to tell their children what to do? Almost as if there’s something wrong about that. Really need to let little ones express themselves. Find their. I can’t find any of that in Scripture. Can you find that in Scripture? We certainly don’t do that as children of our Heavenly Father. Why would our children in some way be treated different when they are told to obey their parents? Just as we obey God our Father. Let’s think about it. We know better than our children do simply because we are older, we are more experienced, we are smarter than our children. We know right from wrong. We’ve studied the Bible. We know more about God’s word.

You know, when they hit teenage years, kids start thinking they know way more than mom and dad have ever known. And then about the time they’re 20, they come to realize just how smart dad really was. But the truth of the matter is, parents are smarter all along the way. And even if maybe you don’t feel that much smarter than your child, the truth of the matter is you are supposed to command your children. That is the mandate of Scripture. We are commanded by God to command them. When we don’t teach our children about obedience, then we are disobedient. We are disobeying God when we teach our children that obedience doesn’t matter. On top of all of that, throughout the history of the world, until relatively recently, parents had no qualms whatsoever in commanding children and expecting obedience.

But now people are panicked about that. That might damage little Johnny’s self-esteem, mar him in some terrible kind of way. We’ve somehow divorced ourselves from what the Word of God is telling us, and we’re getting away from simple principles of obedience. Why don’t we, Mom and Dad, feel perfectly comfortable saying to our children, no, you cannot do that, and then making sure they do what we told them to do. Why? Because we are their parents, and when we teach them that obedience is expected, they are learning, yes, they’re learning how to obey God someday. As we’re talking about that, maybe I should say something about when you obey. Biblically, when should people do what God has told them to do? Everyone here knows the answer to that.

When God commands, you do what God says at what. In the Old Testament, in Genesis, please, in Genesis chapter 17, we’re reading in the Old Testament as a congregation where I am in Dallas at West Side, and we’re reading through, reading through Genesis and talking about getting to know God and learning about the Lord. Notice the important lesson taught here in the covenant of circumcision in Genesis chapter 17 with Abraham. In Genesis chapter 17, this is verse 23 that I’m reading, after God had told Abraham about circumcision, we read that Abraham took Ishmael, Genesis 17 and 23. Abraham took Ishmael his son and all those born in his house, bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham’s house, and he circumcised the flesh of their foreskin.

That very day, as God had said to him. He did what God told him to do at once. Even a difficult, dare I say it, painful command was carried out immediately. In fact, if you’ll journey further in Genesis to chapter 22, in chapter 22, if you’ll look at verse 3, probably the most difficult command that’s ever been given anyone, certainly the most difficult command in the Old Testament, Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your son. And we are told in Genesis chapter 22 and in verse 3 that to take on this terrible task, Abraham rose early in the morning. We’re going to do what God told us to do. And we’re going to do it right now. I want you to see, Mom and Dad, that in the Bible, God does not count.

He does not count to three. He does not count to five.

When God says to do something, you do that. And you do that right away. Think of the disservice that we do our children when we teach them, yes, you have to obey, but you only have to obey after a period of time. After testing mom and dad further, after pushing them more. Then finally, think about this. Think about children who learned that they have to obey after they’ve thrown a fit and had a big whining fuss and cried and carried on and hollered and yelled, finally now I have to obey. Think about what that says about my relationship with God when I grow up. And now the Lord is telling me I need to be baptized, for example. Well, maybe I’ll do that one of these days, but I don’t want to do that right now.

Isn’t that the attitude of many young people? Where do they get that attitude? That obedience is not something that is to be done immediately, but it’s something that I do when I get around to it. When I feel up to it. Kids are simply missing the vital link that obedience is something that is to occur at once. Now, that does not mean, let’s be clear. That’s not mean when you tell your children something to do, that they’re always going to understand, or that they’re always going to do immediately what we tell them to do. Someone’s thinking, Brother Robert, do you have kids? I have kids. I know about kids. But I know what the goal is, and I know biblically what obedience looks like, which means I need to train to that goal.

3. Obedience Never Depends on Understanding Everything

And as a big part of that, let’s just make sure we understand here. In the Bible, obedience never depends on our understanding everything that God has told us to do, or why? That’s important here. Why God has told us to do that. Think about, for example, when the children of Israel got to the edge of the Red Sea, and God told Moses, stretch out your hand. Do you think Moses knew what was fixing to happen? I don’t think Moses standing there on the banks of the Red Sea saying, I saw the movie. Charles the Basket did this. It was awesome. He did not know, did he? But he did what God told him to do, didn’t he? Did what the Lord told me? What about Joshua?

Hey, we’re going to take City Jericho. And the way we’re going to do this military operation is we’re going to walk around the city every day. You think Joshua understood about that? Joshua did not understand about that. But Joshua understood about obedience, didn’t he? God tells you to walk, you walk. That’s just what you do. What about in Luke chapter 5? Do you remember this story? Peter says, We have fished all night. You know, Jesus? You’re a carpenter’s son and you’re a rabbi. What do you know about commercial fishing? But you know what, Jesus? At your word. We will let down the nets. We understand what’s going on here? We think you kind of lost your mind. But we’re going to do what you tell us to do.

Obedience does. Even when we do not have full understanding of everything behind that command. Now, there are certainly times that the Lord reasons with us and demonstrates, for example, why he’s telling us what we ought to do. But even when we don’t buy all of that, understand all of that, get all of that, have put all that together, what do we do? We do what God tells us to do. Now that doesn’t mean that the Lord is abusive and mean. I’m going to say about that in a moment. Okay. But it does mean that our finite minds do not sit in judgment on the infinite mind of God when he commands us. And it’s the same way. I can’t let a five-year-old pass judgment on my commands as a father.

I need to teach my child when I say you do. Because that’s how I want my five year old someday to respond to the commands of his heavenly father. Now, as I’m saying it, somebody’s thinking, you know, my kid says, why just all the time? Why this? Why that? Why this? Why that? And I appreciate that. We don’t want to squelch our children’s spirit. We want children to learn to think for themselves. That’s important as they develop their own faith in God. But we’re not going to get in a circumstance where we sit down with the five-year-old and we’re going to try to explain everything about everything when they don’t understand what we’re talking about. Why can’t I play in the street? There is no way that you can explain the physics of a car traveling 55 miles per hour, what the front bumper of that car will do to a five-year-old wife.

4. Doing Half Amounts to 100% Disobedience

That’s just not going to happen. We don’t get all that. What do we say? Tid says, Why? What do we say? We need to say, do what I tell you first, and we’ll talk about it later. But obedience comes first. Do what I say now, we’ll talk about it later. Obedience comes first. And as I am saying and talking about obedience, let me make sure I get this principle on the board. When you only do half of what God tells you to do, what’s that amount? That amounts to 100% disobedience, doesn’t it? The example I’m thinking of, of course, is Samuel in 1 Samuel 15 of King Saul. In 1 Samuel 15, you would remember that Saul was tasked with the unpleasant task of obliterating the Analokites.

And for a variety of reasons, Saul did not see fit to obey the Lord, and he began to make excuses about that and try to negotiate that and try to explain why Saul’s way was better than God’s way. That went nowhere. And in fact, finally, then in verse 22, there we read, as the Lord Samuel said, 1 Samuel 15, 22, has the Lord as greater delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord. Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. There’s no excuse for disobedience ever. And doing half, some, 75%, 80% of what God has told you to do while you left down the rest doesn’t help. God does not grieve on a curve.

You do not get partial credit. You must do exactly what God tells you to do. This is rooted in the very principles of obedience, because obedience is about what? Submitting to the authority of God. And when I have submitted to the authority of God in only half of what I’m doing, then what does that mean? That means really I’m I’m not really submitting to the authority of God. I’m doing what I thought was best where I agreed with God. Or I can see why you want me to do that. See why you want me to do that. That doesn’t make any sense to me.

That’s not true submission, is it? That’s not true obedience. Doing some of what the Lord has said, but not all of it, equals here in 1 Samuel 15, complete failure. And children need to be taught that. Bomb says, All right, it’s time for bed. Cut off the television, put your toys up, go upstairs and brush teeth. Some parents are going to be happy if Junior gets up, drags himself upstairs and brushes his teeth. Woohoo! Why three? Feeling good. No. No, not feeling good. Not feeling good. That’s disobedience. That’s what that is. That’s not fully submitting as we need to teach our children to do, so that someday they will fully submit to God. Think about it. One of these days you’re going to sit down with your child and you’re going to talking about the five steps of salvation.

And you do not want your child to say, I believe in God. One out of five. Woo-hoo!

5. God Commands Us for Our Good; Obedience Shows Love

Fully submit to everything that God tells us to do. Now, as I said all that in front of you then, I know somebody is thinking, man, you know, God and all this obedience thing. Whoa. Kind of dictatorial. Where does God get off with all of that? That’s a very American reaction to the Bible’s teaching on obedience. We don’t like to be told. We don’t want anybody telling us what to do. Hey, I didn’t vote for God. Who’s he to be telling me what to do? We think very carefully about that for a couple of minutes. First and foremost, you understand that God commands us for our good. As I was doing some research and preparing for this lesson, I ran across a fellow who’s talking about when he got his first car.

And I just love the way he talked about this. In 1956, he said, I bought my first brand new car. It was a Dodge with fins on the back, and it had push buttons instead of a gear shift. It was three colors. I was proud of it. It was mine. I could do with it as I pleased. Then I found a manual in the glove compartment. It told me how often to change the oil. When the spark plugs had to be changed, what air pressure to keep in the tires, everything I needed to do to keep the car running trouble free. I could have responded, oh no, you don’t. Don’t tell me how to run my car. I bought this car with my hard earned money.

I’m doing it as I please. That would have been, of course, silly. Because the owner’s manual had been written by the people who designed and built the car. And they were simply telling me what I needed to do to keep the car up and make it last a long time. And I don’m afraid too often we think of God’s commands as entirely arbitrary and capricious. And fail to see that what God is telling us is the right way to live. Not just the right way to live so that someday we can gain an eternal home with him, but no, the right way to live so that we can maximize this life and the life that is to come. We buck against God’s commands as if somehow we know better how to maintain the car than the one who designed and built it.

We need sometimes a dose of humility in our obedience in order for us to see just how we must obey God. Good thing I say about this, look over look with me over in John chapter 14. The truth of the matter is, when we obey God, we show the Lord that we love him in a very real way. If you were going to do something to demonstrate your love for God, just what exactly would you do? I mean, you can’t send God flowers, buy him a Hallmark card, mow his grass, wash his car. What are you going to do? Jesus tells us, in John chapter 14, I’m reading very in verse 15. If you love me, John 14 and 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Verse 21, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me, and he who loves me will be loved by my Father. I will love him. I will manifest myself to him. Sometimes obedience is characterized as something that’s very external, and as a result, it’s not valued by many people. But the truth of the matter is, real obedience always comes from where? It always comes from inside. Real obedience always begins with the heart. Because I love and trust God, I do what He says. What we want to teach our children is exactly the same thing. Obedience is not about dad being a dictator, some sort of capricious sorts of commands, turning everybody into an automaton. They have to do what he There’s not what we’re doing at all.

What we’re looking to help our children develop is a relationship with mom and dad where they love and trust mom and dad and realize the best thing they can do for themselves, and the best way to show mom and dad that they love and trust mom and dad is that they do what mom and dad says. They obey mom and dad. They obey their father, just as someday they will obey their heavenly father. They haven’t said all that. Someone says, poor Mark, you know, that all sounds pretty good, but I don’t think you know about my kids. Let me just stop right there for just a moment. I want you to see here. Josh, is there a laser pointer on this? Open your eyes very wide.

Let me know. Okay, maybe I’ll do a little laser eye surgery during the week. That’s great. All right, here we go. I want you to look very carefully on the board. I want you to notice something. None of that. None of that’s the opinion of Mark Roberts. None of that’s the opinion of Bob Buckratter. Or one of your elders. Or anybody else. This is what the Bible teaches about obedience. And I want you to notice that nowhere in the Bible do you get a pass. Nowhere in the Bible does it say everybody else that needs to obey like this, you’re different. You have to do those things. You don’t. It’s all good. Everybody else? Yes, you. You’re the different one. And now I want you to think about this.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say your children get a pass. No. Obedience looks like this for you and you and you and you and you and me and everybody else who have walked the planet, and that includes your children. This is the word of God. So often when we talk about raising children, people start flying out their opinion, and then someone says, Well, that worked for your kids. That doesn’t work for my kids. And you know what? That may actually be right. What work for my children may not work for your children at all when we start talking about opinions. This is not opinion. This is scripture. This is what God expects of you, and someday we’ll expect of your children. Don’t look at any of that and say, Well, I don’t think we can get there.

No, no, no, no, no. What we want to do is roll in heaven. We want to say, I want to get there. We may not be doing that today, but I’ll tell you what, things have got to change. We gotta get there because this is what God expects of my child. So he says, How am I going to get there? So glad you asked. Let’s just think about what it takes for us to help our children obey in a biblical and scriptural sort of sense. Brother Bob, my sense of timing here is completely off. Tell me when Bible class is going to end. Can I tell you in about 10 minutes? In about 10 minutes, Bob’s going to give me a word or two about when Bible class is going to end.

6. Don’t Negotiate; Obedience Is an All-the-Time Thing

That’ll help me. Let me tell you, I’m lucky I’m not here in a bathrobe and a cup of coffee, okay? You ring a bell and then you bible. Okay, they’re going to ring a bell. They’re going to ring a bell at 10 after? I think that’s right. Brother Bob thinks that’s right. Do you teach here? Is it I obey. Ah, I love that. When the bell rings, quit. Okay. Let’s see here if we can figure out a little bit here about obedience this morning and how to help our children come to better obedience. Let’s just start with this principle right here. Don’t negotiate. If you look in Scripture, you’ll notice that God does not negotiate obedience. Not ever. So that means that if I say to my child, sit here by me, then the command is not just sit, and as long as the kid pops down somewhere, then it counts.

No, what was the command? Sit by me. And that child must now what? Sit by me. I will not negotiate that. This is what I’ve said. You must do what I have told you to do. There’s no negotiation. Some parents, as I said, will accept half obedience. If the kid gets sit down somewhere, oh got some of that. We’ll worry about the rest of it later. No. No. That’s not how the Lord does things. Which means that’s not how parents who are training children to obey the Lord someday want to do things either. Now, let me say this. That means you don’t want to command if you don’t really care and you don’t intend to enforce it and back it up. If you say sit here by me, then you’ve got to make a kid sit there by me.

If all you really care about is a kid sit down, just say what? Sit. But as soon as you say sit by me, now we’re at a whole other level, aren’t we? That’s a change in command. We want to teach our children that they have to do everything that mom and dad says because we want them someday to what? Do everything that God tells them to do. Teaching children to fully obey is complicated because we’re weary and we’re tired and we’re willing to sometimes take half. Now, some of you who were here when I preached in a meeting several years ago, and you remember my story about the dogs, and you remember that I have hunting dogs. Okay? One of the most important commands that you can give a hunting dog is the command to hunt dead.

That means I’ve got a bird down, and I need that dog to find that dead bird. Most of the places that I hunt, waist high grass, thick, hard, very difficult. See a bird in the grass, really complicated. Need a dog. You don’t have a dog, you’re just not going to find stuff. When I say hunt dead, I want my dog to put his nose in the grass and start looking. To that end, if we can’t find a bird, and that does happen every now and then, I will take one out of my vest. And I’ll drop it. And here in a minute, he comes snuffling over here and he finds one. Because I want him to know. When I tell him to hunt dead, he’s going to hunt dead until we find the bird.

And when I finally realize, you’re not going to get this one. I got to put one down because he isn’t going to stop until we find a bird. The dog understands he must do everything I tell him to do. And I’m not going to give commands that I’m not willing to back up. When you think about that, mom and dad. The dad’s in Bible class, and uh Belray, little kid came in, he’s a sweet little kid, and we’re talking there and so forth and so on. And we’re going to go out the door, go into the auditorium. And his parents started to go out this door to go in the auditorium, and they said, Come on, come on, Johnny, we’re going to go this way. He said, No, I’m going this way.

And they said, Okay. There’s a four-year-old kid leading to adultery. What is wrong with that picture? What is wrong with that picture? If they say, we’re going to go this way, what has to happen? We must now go this way. They gave the command. Don’t give the command if you’re not going to back it up. Thirdly, then, we need to remember. Obedience is an all-the-time thing, not a sum-of-the-time thing. We’re not Christians occasionally, just on Sunday mornings, if it’s not raining. No. There’s no time off from obeying God. We do what God tells us to do always, all the time. Or at least we ought to, and we know that we ought to. So that sadly, some parents teach your children that obedience only is something that gets serious when what?

When mom gets that certain tone in her voice? When dad’s eyes get squinty and says something in a really mean way. You know what I’m saying? I know now. Oh, now I need to come in because of the way mom called. I know now dad really needs it, and I’d better straighten it up right now. Sometimes children learn, and almost anything is negotiable, except for a few really big issues that mom and dad make a huge screaming fuss about. Other than that, I can get away with almost anything. That’s not how it works when we learn to obey God, and I want to suggest to you that cannot be how it works if we’re going to teach our children to obey God someday. Now, let me say this as well.

We certainly don’t want to set ourselves up for disobedience by giving unclear commands. Mom yells, keep the noise down, junior. What does that mean? What exactly does that mean? What’s the standard? What is keep the noise down? I thought we were keeping the noise down. Where’s that going? That’s not clear. That’s not something that a child can act on. We want to be very clear in our commands. And then we’re not going to disuse disobedience. God never excuses disobedience. I cannot find a single time in Scripture where God says, you know what you did there was sinful and wrong? But you just needed a nap. So it’s all okay. Oh, you’re feeling cranky today because we lost an hour of sleep. That is with daylight savings time.

So you don’t have to do what I tell you to do. It’s all going to be. Oh, you’re going through a phase. That’s what it is. You’re just going through that terrible 22s. And so as a result, it’s okay. You don’t have to obey God. Now, all that just sounds ludicrous. That just sounds insane. If an adult stood up and said, you know what? I committed adultery, feeling cranky. You don’t know what I was doing there, we would say, have you lost your mind? Yeah, think about it. With our children, we make those kinds of excuses regularly. What’s amazing is most of the time the children don’t even have to make those excuses. I don’t know, three-year-olds that say, Mommy, I’m not doing what you tell me to do because I need a nap.

Children don’t even say that. We say it for them. What’s up with that? Children must learn that they obey all the time. Even when you’re tired, you obey. Even when you don’t feel like it, you obey. Even when everybody else isn’t obeying, you obey all the time. Now, understand clearly. That doesn’t mean that we’re not sympathetic or that we don’t want to understand our children. They’re going to be tired today, for example, those kinds of things and so forth. We want to understand that. That may flavor how much we expected them today, the kind of commands that we give them, those kinds of things. But when we have said, this is what you’re going to do, then what’s going to happen next? We must hold them to that standard.

Conclusion

One parent wrote the following. It is important to note that while it is good to understand why your child doesn’t obey, that’s very different than saying that reason excuses disobedience. If Johnny hits Susie because he hates to share, or if Johnny hit Susie because he’s tired, those are two totally different scenarios and may change how I parent later. But right now, it’s all about Johnny disobeying me. That is spot on. That is exactly right. I must expect obedience all the time. Now, let me close all this then with one passage and then I’ll ask some very hard questions. In Matthew chapter 7, please. In Matthew chapter 7, please notice there what Jesus says, beginning in verse 7. In Matthew 7 and in verse 7, there Jesus says, Ask and it’ll be given unto you.

Seek and you will find, knock and will be open unto you. For everyone who asks for sees, the one who seeks finds, the one who knocks, it’ll be open. For which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone. If he asks for a fish, would he give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father who’s in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him. I want you to see clearly from Matthew 7 that Jesus sets up a parallel between earthly parenting and heavenly parenting. Do you see that? Dad? Do you see that? You are standing in for God in the lives of your children.

That means we need to think about, are we standing in for God when it comes time to expect obedience? Let me just ask you some very pointed questions. Answer to yourself. Ask yourself, does my child obey me at once? Do you struggle to get your child to do as you ask, often having to command or tell your child to do things over and over? Are you satisfied with less than full and immediate obedience? Do you excuse or rationalize disobedience? Do you envy other parents because their kids behave better than yours? Ask yourself, am I teaching my child to obey me so that someday my child will obey God? That’s an outstanding beginning for building strong families. Thanks for listening this morning.