A Child's Obedience -​ Col 3:20-21

​Col 3:20-21 KJV - 20 Children, obey [your] parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. 21 Fathers, provoke not your children [to anger], lest they be discouraged.
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Full Transcript

​Good morning again, precious saints. The master has created heaven and earth and all that therein is, and he has fearfully and wonderfully woven each and every one of us as children in our mother's womb together, gave us life, appointed us a season in which to live and an extent by which it will be lived out. Therefore, the Master also commands, do not forbid the children to come to Him. He made them, they belong to Him, and may the Lord grant us, each and every one of us, ears to hear what the Master is saying today. Amen?

We are in Colossians chapter 3. If you will pick up and find where we left off last Lord's Day, dealing with husbands. We are in the section here in verse 20 and 21, but for our context and for reading, we will read once again the larger surrounding context, verses 18 through 25 of Colossians 3. When you have found your place there, I will invite you to please stand in honor of the reading of the Word of God. Colossians chapter 3 verses 18 through 25, hear the word of the Lord.

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as it is fit in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter against them. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord. Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged. Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God. And whatsoever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men, knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for you serve the Lord Christ. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done. And there is no respecter, no respect of persons.

Amen. Please remain standing for prayer as we seek his face once again. Oh our Lord and our God, we do thank you. Lord, that you have not left us in this life without guidance and without direction. Thank you firstly for our Savior, our Master, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Lord, thank you for the life that we have in him. Help us to live in it and to walk it out to your glory in every age and in every station of life that you have appointed us to. In Christ's name, amen. You may be seated.

Again, we're currently in the household code section of the epistle. practical portion of the book of Colossians which outflows from that which came before, where we are commanded as Christians to do all for Christ. We are to have a spirit, not just a series of wooden laws that we check off in this life that we live, church attendance, do this thing, give a tithe, carry out this duty. But rather we are to think, we are to speak, we are to live, we are to act, we are to have an attitude and outlook given over to this reality in which we live and move and have our being. That whatsoever we do, we do it all to the glory of and in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. From the highest aspects of the responsibilities of our life, the most crucial defining moments of the choices we make that define our trajectory down to what appears to us to be the most meager and lowly drudgeries of life, the duties, the dishwashing, the putting the socks into the laundry bin, to how you speak to your children, everything is to be done. this light and in this context has become Christians who are walking worthy of the gospel to which they've been called. And so we are to be a people who always bear in mind in everything we do if we were to do that and do it right and do it well we are to remember The Master, remember the Lord Jesus Christ, the life He lived, His sterling, perfect character, the manner in which He spoke, the manner in which He refused to speak, the way that He taught, the commands that He gave us, the directions that He gave us, the lessons that He called us to learn.

And we are to keep in mind His reputation before the world, lest we be numbered among those of whom it is written, The name of the Lord is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you. May it not be named once among us as become saints. Let us be a people who, if necessary, bear about in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the life also of Christ might be manifest in our mortal body. Let the world see Christ in us. Let us be, as the Master commanded us, salt and light.

And there's no age denomination on those commands. Isn't that something? Look here, in this remaining section of the chapter where we're concluding with these duties, I want you to notice that children are being directly addressed in the Assembly of the Saints where this letter is to be read. I want you to take note of the fact that it is a basic, it is a foundational, you could say fundamental reality.

So much so is the obedience of children in any society that God enshrined the necessity and the importance of it in His Ten Commandments. Children are commanded to honor their father and mother. And so we could say, perhaps to some degree, even more than self-willed wives and rebellious wives can be a mark of unruly pagan society, in some ways, even the tyranny of misused authority, if you read Romans 1, and you see what it looks like when the Lord hands a nation over to judgment, the disobedience of children, in particular, is a sign of cultural disintegration.

Paul's gospel, New Testament, new covenant remedy for that disintegration is a restoration of the children to their proper place in the home. And along with it comes the full battery and weight of biblical text and scriptures that align with that, not only diagnosis, but with that remedy. Children are addressed directly.

Don't miss that, because what does that mean when we say, and look at our main text here, Colossians chapter three, verse 20 through 21. Children, obey your parents in all things. Here's what that means. Children, look at Pastor Austin for just a moment.

The Lord says you are old enough to understand and you are responsible for the things you know And when God says do something, He wants you to do it. And when God says do something, not only does He want you to do it, but He says He'll help you do it. But if you don't do it, what is that? It's sin. But the Lord knows, because He made you, and He's given you this responsibility, and even if you should see Him very soon, and not when you grow old and have much gray hair, like some of us here, or no hair at all, you will still have to give an account for every time you did not obey mommy, and you did not obey daddy, and you did not obey the Lord in your home. And Paul, by the Holy Spirit says, you know what is right, and the Lord God himself expects you to do it.

So that when the sermon's being preached, it's not just for mom. When the sermon is being preached, it's not just for dad. It's not just for your older brothers and sisters, it's for you too. And that's good news because the Lord sees you and he hasn't forgotten you. He's given you commands by which to live. And he intends to give you aid in which to do it.

Young children, this is what is being called out to you here in this text. Children, young and older, teenagers who think anything that goes to children doesn't necessarily apply to you. It's not an age-specific word, by the way, you need to know that. The word child, as it's used here, simply means offspring. So the question is this, are you in the order of your home, the dad? Are you the mom? No. Are you the offspring of your parents living under their roof? Yes? Well, good, this is for you.

Now that we have gotten rid of that first hurdle, let's see what few more we can kick over along the way. Dear children, you are called to happily, happy, without complaining, obey the words and the voice of your parents in all things, not just the things you like. And you are to honor them from your heart. as you submit even to their discipline, knowing that the Lord put you there for this season for your good and for your instruction. Now, parents, you're already aware, I believe, of the second portion of that text that we read, verse 21. And I speak to parents, but fathers particularly.

We'll see some of that. There is a summons to you to wisdom. wisdom for you to regard and practice in the discharge of your parental duties that you do well to take heed of. Otherwise, there will be great woe and anxiety and tears in your home. And worst of all, it'll be at your hands.

Scripture emphasizes here in these texts that the obedience of a child is not simply just about doing what you're told and that's it. But as we're gonna lean into some of these verses and these words, we won't be able to cover everything that deals with every aspect of childhood and obedience and parenting and parent raising and disciplining. My goal is to just be as close to this one text and give us as much as we can this morning. But scripture emphasizes that the obedience of a child is about teaching their young heart to regard and to honor and to esteem God-designed authority. that they might be preserved from the culture-destroying powers of rebellion within them and around them. And so again, before we dive off into the concept of obedience, we need to remember one of our main themes in Colossians, that Christ is supreme over creation. As we said of the Lord, Psalm 139, verses 13 through 14.

For thou hast possessed my reins. Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. Dear children, you're not here by accident, regardless of what the culture tells you. You were made by God, you are here for a purpose, and you belong to him. And you were made in such a way that scripture says you were fearfully and wonderfully made and you are like a piece of pottery that has been made by the master potter God himself. And just like a pot or a jar or a vase, any kind of vessel has a job to do, you have a job to do that the potter made you for.

Psalm 127 verse 3 through 5 says, Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." And what does this verse tell us? This verse tells us that children are not a nuisance, children are not a burden as such, but children are a great blessing of God Himself.

They require great stewardship, great care, great attention. They are very needy. That's God's design. But they are a great blessing, a great blessing and a gift. And even in this text says a reward from God himself. So that is the context of how we as saints view children. They're a gift. God made them. They belong in the assembly.

They're summoned to understand and hear, which means we have the responsibility to teach and to preach to them and to hold them accountable for what they know as precious gifts that must be stewarded, that belong ultimately to God, knowing our stewardship, as we will look at, is not permanent, but it is for a season. And we must give an account for our time with them.

He who is supreme over creation and has given us these precious gifts also warns us in Scripture, just as man has fallen from his highest state walking with God in the cool of the day, just as woman has fallen to seed by the subtlety of the serpent and brings forth children in much sorrow. So we see now in Scripture that these precious gifts that come to us do not come to us righteous They do not come to us thinking, acting, speaking, behaving wholly.

They come to us full of the same sin that cast the whole of the human race into the darkness we find ourselves in today. Psalm 51, verse five, David writes, behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. We see that the original sin of Adam is at work, propagating Adam's nature into every child that comes into the world.

And almost as if a poetic sigh of creation, every child that comes healthfully into the world does so how? Crying. Proverbs 22, 15. Scripture says, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

Here we see the natural sin nature that is in every last one of our precious little babies, boys and girls, is a sin nature that must be proactively restrained. It must be proactively restrained. You will never need to teach your child how to lie or steal or take. You're gonna need to teach your child truth, obedience, and how to give sacrificially.

That's the responsibility that falls upon the parent. Now this is serious. This is serious. We will have to bounce between a certain gentle sweetness as we speak at the level that children can understand, Parents, this is serious. And I will also need to give you the degree of seriousness that Scripture raises the importance and the necessity of this restraint. In national Israel, there was a law upon the land. So serious was this necessity to the preserving of the people of God that it was written in Deuteronomy 21, verses 18 through 21. Listen.

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him, meaning they've done their due diligence, will not hearken unto them, then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him and bring him out unto the elders of his city and unto the gate of his place. And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey our voice.

He is a glutton and a drunkard." This tells us they've reached a stage in life where they have exhausted the rod, they have exhausted their teaching, they have exhausted instruction. As this child is grown into the latter end of childhood and into maturity, he has grown into an outward ostentatious rebellion. He is known among the people as a glutton and a drunkard.

And before he begins to enter into society, here is this final gate that shuts him up forever. Verse 21, and all the men of his city shall stone him with stones. that he die. So shall thou put evil away from you and all Israel shall hear and fear. This is the Word of God. Now imagine for a moment, I don't need to stretch your imagination, these wicked days in which we live in the cultural unraveling of our society, how many teenagers have you found in the news who are guilty of crimes so heinous even a backward secular court is forced to deal with them and try them as adults? Let not a wrong kind of syrupy sentimentality blur your eyes to the severity and the danger of what sin does to a nation and to a society. Listen, this is serious. Leviticus 20 verse nine, for everyone that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He hath cursed his father or his mother, his blood shall be upon him.

Now I want you to imagine for just a moment if there was a righteousness in the land where there were godly fathers that stood up and they taught their sons and daughters righteousness and godliness and they ruled their homes with love and equity and justice and fairness and truth and holiness.

And with the gentleness of submissive mothers and quiet mothers who taught their daughters and their children the nurture, the love, the gentleness, the peacefulness that goes with all of that. And in the face of all that rebellion, a child backwards and forwards willfully all the years of their childhood, dig their heels in obstinately and then demand that they be turned loose upon the nation. What mercy is it of God? to restrain the madness of a slew of immature, loveless, angry, rebellious, dishonoring young men and women, to restrain them from entering into polluting and changing society to fit their unsanctified and unrestrained lusts and murderous hearts. It's a goodness of God to do that. We need to see, though, that the Lord in the church is reaching into. This important season of life, this incredibly important season of life, of teaching, of restraint, of of corralling and making and humbling and nurturing and raising them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, loving, comforting all that goes with godly and holy parenting. And he aims to restore not just the importance and the seriousness of childhood, but to restore the heart and the spirit of childlikeness to childhood.

And here we're reminded of the master's tender sympathies to the children in Mark 10, verse 13 through 14. And they brought young children to him that he should touch them to heal them and help them. And His disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, He was much displeased and said unto them, Suffer, or allow the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not.

For of such is the kingdom of God. Now here were these strong-headed disciples who thought they knew something about categories and groups, and they had made, as they often make in their three years of teaching, a bad calculation and a bad judgment, and they're corrected by the wise teacher, the master. And he tells them here that heaven was made for those such as these childlike, believing, trusting, following, who look unto their parents, whose eye is upon them, that lead them and who trust them and who follow after them with a kind of childlike simplicity. Heaven was made for those such as these. Don't forbid the children. Bring them to me, the master says. And so it is, dear children.

You may come to Christ Not, you don't have to go through the pastor, you don't have to go through mom and dad. Christ, Jesus himself, looks to you and says, come to me. And he allows no man or woman to forbid you to come to him. The governments of this world If they say you can't have a Bible, you can't talk about Jesus, you can't give out gospel tracts, you can't tell your friends about Jesus or that you go to church and the government says you can't do that. No, children, the Lord Jesus said you may still come to Him. Though you may grow up in a home where, Lord forbid, You're under the sound of my voice now, but something devastating and terrible happens in a year from now, two years from now, all of a sudden the Lord's authority is not welcome in your home. Listen, he still says you may still come to him.

He has commanded that you will not be forbidden and he has made provision. He has made a way for you to reach him in his word by his spirit. And with that, The Lord desiring to restore childlikeness to the season of life, we now come to this prescription, children, that you are responsible for. In verse 20, children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing unto the Lord.

And the word obey literally means to hear under. literally to listen very intently, to give and pay attention, and to get yourself underneath the sound of your parents' words, underneath their command, underneath their authority, to be obedient to them, to literally come underneath the sound of their words. So when your parent tells you to do something and they give you a command, think about that word.

Have they spoken? then you can't ignore them. If your parent speaks, you cannot pretend like you didn't hear them when you know you heard them. You must be aware that they spoke and you must put your mind and your heart and your actions and your words underneath the words that they have spoken. Those words are higher than what you want to do.

Does that make sense? And I want you to know that you will do this for your parents if you love them. Now, in a word that has had so much cultural baggage around it, we don't like the word obey very much as a modern American, modern Westerner. But you need to know the word obey carries with it, regardless of what the culture thinks, in the Lord's economy, it carries with it a great weight because obedience in scripture is right next to love.

The Lord Jesus Christ said, if you love me, if you love me, keep my commandments. In John 14, 23, Jesus answered and said unto him, if a man loved me, he will keep my words, and my father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him. 1 John 5, 3, for this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous. They're not grievous. And this opens up an idea of thought.

If you love the Lord Jesus, you will obey him even when it appears to be difficult. Why? Because you love him. If you love him, you'll obey him. And when you obey someone because you love them, your obedience is not upset and sulking and mad and sad and why you do it because you genuinely love and you care about the person to which you obey. If Christ is your Lord and you love him, you'll obey him from a happy heart. And so the word here goes beyond just obey. But like it says in the Ten Commandments, it takes us to the idea of honor.

Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord God giveth thee. Obey and honor. Obey and honor, dear children. These two words, obey and honor, are God's will for your life right now. To obey and to honor. Obey, you do what is right, but there's more to it. You must have an attitude and a heart of honor that goes with it.

This is God's will for the parent-child relationship. Not only that obedience would be done in the strictest sense, but that their heart would be being trained how to honor, because very often it will not come naturally. This is what the Lord designed it to be, not mere outward action of obedience, but inward reverence. We are all called to honor our parents. That means to respect them. That means we are called to have a sense of reverence for them, literally, to see them as having a kind of preciousness, and they're valuable to us. They're unique. We don't have anyone else quite like them. And they're precious, it's precious.

This is the first command of the second table of the law, where the first table deals with your relationship to God, and the second table deals with your relationship to man. The first table of the law, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and your strength. The second is like unto it, second table of the law, to love your neighbor as yourself. Well, who's your first neighbor, dear children? That's listed in the very first commandment on the second table. Commandment number five, honor your who? father and mother. These are your closest neighbors. This is a fulfillment of the law that you're going to take with you to the rest of mankind. It begins with how you think and feel and respond to your parents.

Now the command was originally given, obviously, to the promise that they would prosper in the land, the children of promise and the land of promise. But here, this is quoted directly in the New Testament, as we see in Ephesians chapter six, verses two through three. And look how Paul quotes it. He says, honor thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth. And so there is a blessing here for us, dear children, now.

And it may not necessarily merely be having years of long life. It may be, though, that it will mean a full life. A life that has a fullness to it, a complete measure to it that otherwise it could not have if lived out in rebellion. We need to realize that the family unit is the building block of society. That's why it's gonna affect all the other relationships as we'll see in a second.

Parents, you cannot neglect to shepherd the heart attitude of your children. There is a blessing tied to it that your children will miss out on if you do not take it serious to heart to inculcate within them, teach them, and not only to restrain them in the negative, but to proactively teach them in the positive what it means to have respect and honor and love and obedience in this way. Mere external obedience, mere just doing the thing you said is not a fulfillment of the spirit of the law. That's what I want to get at here today. So I want to say this before I turn to children more thoroughly again, parents. Actually, I want to speak to the children, dear children.

If you have godly parents, if you have a mom and a dad that fears God and obeys His word and teaches you to obey it. Loves you enough to discipline you and teach you. You have one of the rarest and greatest treasures and inheritances in the world that children can have. There may be some children that have more money and more toys than you and your parents. They may have a bigger house and more land than you do. But if you have godly parents, if you have parents that fear the Lord and they're trying to teach you and fill your mind with heavenly things and holy things, you have a great and a rare inheritance that will bless you for eternity. And I would encourage you to love them and to regard that blessing that God has given you and to be a good steward of it.

This definition of honor brings weightiness, deep respect. It's going to include childhood obedience. It's going to extend in that reverence even to parents in their old age. This is the first commandment with a promise and so there is a blessing upon the life that comes with it. This is a foundation block for society, and it places the highlight to the family structure and authority as being essential for any stable community in the earth at any time. And so, parents, you have the heavy duty of teaching your children how to honor you in accordance with God's laws.

I have often regularly recommended this book as a great help, just as an aside, a practical tool. We give it away, or we sell it, or something in the back there, Shepherding a Child's Heart. It's full of great practical insights, simply just taking the scripture and applying it. And so if you are scribbling furiously, dear parent, and you want just a good helpful resource, I would encourage you to grab hold of that. But here's really the core I just wanna grab from that that's present in the text we've already read. Look at the title of it, Shepherding a Child's Heart. Not just forcing an outward changed behavior. You're doing something unseen inside the child that you're aiming after that goes beyond just the externals.

You need to know that, because you need to know true obedience, true honor, is from the heart. And if you're going to just teach your children how to go through the motions of what they're told to do, and it's fine if they do it with a grumbling spirit or a sour attitude, all you're gonna end up doing is teaching them how to be Pharisees. And you'll fill your church with Pharisees. Brother Votie Bauckham, while he was alive, made an excellent point on this. He taught that whenever we teach our children to obey, we need to teach them the wholeness of what that means. Not just some mere, you know, external legal sense. Not just, we could even say it this way, mere external legalistic obedience. which just creates those Pharisees, but rather a heart obedience that captures these three areas in particular. One, when you give them a command, when you give them direction, when you tell them to do something, one, the most basic and easy to understand of all, they do it, right? That's pretty straightforward.

They're obeying it, so they do it. They actually obey the command. Two, they do it right away. Delayed obedience, is disobedience. And three, they do it with the right attitude. They do it with a cheerful heart, not just with a murmuring spirit. If one of these three legs of that stool is not there, then it falls. It's not obedience, and it doesn't hold up. Let me make the case here briefly, logically. I may have a child who very quickly responds to me. I tell them to do something, go take out the trash, I may say. And they respond with a cheerful attitude. Yes, dad, I'll get right to it.

And yet, as they march out with great speed away from whatever it was they were doing, they never actually get around to doing what I told them to do. It's all flash, it's all show. And there's no proper execution, obedience, never happened. Okay, well let's say two.

I may have a child who I told them to do this, and they did it correctly. Go and do this, yes, I will, I will, yes, sir. And then they go and they do something else, and they do something else, and they do something else, and then they make a great delay to prioritize what I asked them to do first. And somewhere along the way, I may even catch them in that cycle going, where are you? I was like, oh, dad, I'm gonna do it, just I had a few other things I needed to get to first.

Well, that's not obedience. Still, that's not reverence. They have still, watch this, here's the underlying heart, they have still set their will above yours and they're still in rebellion. Lastly, as we've already been indicating by Phariseeism, they may do it thoroughly. They may do it quickly, without delay. But they may do it with the ugliest attitude. They may do it without any gladness at all that they have a parent like you to guide and direct them. They may do it as though they deep down believe in their heart that they don't and should not have to do that. And they are still rebels at heart. And here's the greatest danger.

If you reward that kind of obedience, if you reward that, If you say, thank you for doing that good job as some sort of like peace offering to them while they're cutting eyes at you, you will produce Pharisees in your home. Self-righteous, self-pitying, oh, look at how obedient I am and they don't seem to see how unhappy I am with this arrangement. Proud children who do not believe from their heart that this order and design is of God and it's right.

When scripture is clearly indicating to us even as it says in Ephesians, children obey your parents and the Lord. For this is right. For this is right. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing unto the Lord. Dear children, remember when we were talking about the wives and it said that they were to regard or submit to or obey their husbands, their own husbands in all things?

Okay, dear children, in this season of life, you're not called to strictly obey and honor in this way every adult in your life. Your parents will line out and guide out for you those authorities that they want you to take heed of and those who you don't. And it's up to your parents to wisely distinguish who you can follow and who you cannot. But you need to know here the command is specific for parents. Obey your parents in everything. The way your best friends, mom and dad parent them is none of your business.

I say that with love. The way Susie and Johnny's dad allow them to go to bed at a certain time or a different time or go over here or don't go over there, those are not the parents God has called you to submit to. The parents God has called you to submit to are the ones He wisely and lovingly put you under.

This is important groundwork. Because children, you need to understand you're accepting this truth. You're going to carry with it for the rest of your life. You're going to carry this with you. There are many godly helps in the fight of parentage that the Lord has put alongside. Some of us have a great blessing of having godly grandparents, aunts, uncles, maybe other very close Christian brothers and sisters in the church. But parents, I'm gonna say something to you.

I need you to take this counsel and to heed it. You need to be very wise and safeguard and keep in a unique place that you don't share with others, parental authority. You need to safeguard that because the Lord gave it to you. And no matter how much you try to mercenary that out, the fifth commandment doesn't change.

There is a unique place of honor. The Lord God sovereignly chose to put the parents. Does that make sense? It says, honor your father and mother. This is the God-ordained special relationship that exists within this context of the family unit. And when present, it's not shared outside of that parental authority. Scripture gives mom and dad this unique role and they shouldn't just hand it over to somebody else to figure it out.

It falls on your lap and at your feet. for the rest of your children's lives. All their relationships with the rest of humanity will flow out of this, how this question is answered. Did they ever learn to truly, from their heart, reverence and honor their parents when they were children? Because if not, they have been set up for failure. because that will give rise to every other relationship. It will evidence itself in every other relationship they have for the rest of their lives, including their coming to and their understanding of God himself.

This is key. The Lord, speak to you fathers for just a second, as this text does give unique emphasis to you. You bear the name, the title, of the heavenly father from which every lesser father on earth derives the office of his name. Okay? You represent him. You represent God's interests in your home. And you need to realize your children will initially relate to their heavenly father and his laws, and perhaps for a lot longer than initially, by how they related to their earthly father and their earthly father's rules.

If the father's rules were always flexible, if they were always sort of a matter of opinion, and when it felt like it's time to enforce, maybe it's not, even though there's no functional or objective difference between the two. If they are grown up and they have a hard time seeing the rigid line of black and white, right and wrong, and that aspect of God's law, then when they come to God, who is black and white, right or wrong, yes or no, then they will begin to see God as hard and as someone that they are justified in feeling bitter against. because they never saw the clear strength of a command, the constancy, the consistency of it, the unflexibility of it. They never saw it mixed with love and unyielding care and concern for their soul that was based on principle more than just temporary preference. This isn't the place to teach your children something other than God's ways.

They're to enter into it with obedient cheerfulness. Because, let me ask this question, isn't that going to be the sum of the Christian life? Isn't the life of a born again child of God, of any age, a true child of God, who is walking with God, that they are lovingly striving to obey Him out of grateful, thankful hearts, and they don't consider His commands to be grievous? Isn't that the life we're going to live for the rest of our sainthood? And the most basic element that will belong to them for the rest of their life, that you impart into their life, besides the knowledge of the gospel, is that they have been adequately prepared by their parents for that kind of life to be lived out. that they understand, that they have something whereby to relate to.

So then we go to the text, and when the Lord Jesus Christ speaks in saying, if you earthly fathers know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more does your Father in heaven know to give good gifts to those who ask Him, or to give the Spirit unto those who ask it of Him? There's a constant comparison. Hebrews 12, if your fathers disciplined you according to their pleasure, how much more will you be disciplined by the Father in heaven and live? There is a compare-contrast between an earthly father and a heavenly father throughout the New Testament.

You are going to set their understanding of where the basics and the beginnings of that foundation and their thinking begin. You need to realize your children are going to relate to you to a certain degree on how you're going to then leverage that and use that later in their childhood to point into how they're going to relate to God. And if you give them a bad foundation, they're not going to have a sufficient natural New Testament ladder to point the way the teachings in Scripture are given. If anything, you'll be a stumbling block. Obey. Obey. If they don't, it's going to affect their matters of employment.

Can you imagine, I mean, you've seen the self-willed teenager there bagging groceries. Who is this man to tell me what to do? I don't even obey my father that way. Who does he think he is? What's kind of awful is that teenager might be a little right. If he didn't respect his own father enough to do what he said with the right attitude, what makes you think he's gonna obey some boss making $20 an hour who doesn't care about him? They were never held to the standard parental obedience as a young person, so they don't see the value in it now.

It's going to come up in the marriage. Listen to me, it will come up in the marriage. Because a marriage is all about what? It's about living together, mutually respecting the other, loving the other more than yourself. And if as a child you were never made to see your parents literally as superior to you and their will as superior to your own and their rule and that rightful place of it, then you will never see anyone ever as being more important than you. You never will. And when it comes time to give, to be the giving, sacrificial person in a marital relationship, that child will always still be a child, just married. And they will remain selfish and they will remain in a place where they are not able to get outside of themselves and their own wants and their own felt needs in order to appeal to someone whose will may be different than theirs.

This will affect every area of their lives. in the home and outside the home. Obey is an act of submission, and it is right. When we look at this society, we see a symptom of our godless culture, something that our Christian heritage would have given us, and many of us have gone without. I myself being a first-generation Christian and not having all the benefits of these things, I could tell you much about the sorrow and the agony that comes with learning God's will, God's ways later in life in these areas. Everything needs to be grounded. Parents, everything you do needs to be grounded inflexibly in the Word of the Living God. There needs to be a reality that you understand the authority that you have is borrowed. It's real, but it's borrowed. And it's only granted for a season. To accomplish a purpose. And that season will not come again. You get one shot.

And during that time, We use our authority to do this ultimately. We teach our children to serve others for the overall good of the home and the family unit, and everyone else will benefit by that, love neighbor, and ultimately to obey the Lord, love God. We are to lay out the truth of the Lord's commandments before them because you must realize it's ultimately not your commandments explicitly that they're obeying at the root, it's God's. We need to be a people who, when we chasten our children, we look at them and say, young lady, we do not lie.

We do not bear false witness in this home. And we will deal with that every time. Young man, we do not steal. We do not take what is not ours in this home. The Lord has said. Children, we do not take the Lord's name in vain in this house. Regardless of what everyone else does, what you may have heard, In this house, the Lord Jesus Christ will be honored and His name will be had in respect here. For me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

We do not covet things that do not belong to us. Now give it back and apologize. We do not hurt or mistreat or harm others. The Lord gave you those hands to serve, not to hit. I'll do unto others as you would have done unto you, and love your neighbor as yourself." Do you see? Do you see what the parent's doing? These aren't arbitrary things.

It is God's law at the end of the day that we as parents need to remember that they have broken. It's ultimately Him that they've sinned against and you need to discipline them in such a way that you are constantly reminding them that they will have to give an account to someone else besides you. They're going to have to give an account to God. And either we are preparing them to give an account to Him ultimately or we are misrepresenting the authority He's given us because it comes from Him.

That's why a parent cannot command a child to disobey God. His authority is borrowed, and it stops when you go outside of God's will for the life of your child. As Peter told the chief priests, who had a lot of authority, because remember, of the chief priests and Pharisees, the Lord says, you know, they sit in the seat of Moses, do what they say, just don't do what they do. But whenever they told them that they couldn't preach in the name of Christ, Peter said, we must obey God rather than men.

Daniel and the three obeyed the law of his Lord as a child despite the Babylonian rules. Though they were called, keep in mind, all the prophets, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the others said, submit yourselves to Babylon if you want to survive. Well, they're in Babylon and they're commanded to bow down and to subserve themselves to laws that were against God. And what happened?

They obeyed God rather than men. And even when their life come under threat, our God's able to deliver us from this fiery furnace. But if not, we're still not going to bow down to your statue. And the Lord honored and blessed them. A child is always so free to obey the Lord. We hear stories all the time of young people who've come to Christ in the Middle East who've been persecuted by their own family and for denouncing Islam and been threatened with death at young ages, whose lives become in danger for doing so. They rightly stood in obedience to the Lord.

Parents, we need to remember we have a job to do. We have a job to do. Don't lose sight of this. And we have been given enough authority to get the job done. One day we will turn them over for life to God and we will give an account of the time of our stewardship over them. We will give an account of the authority we were given for that time. What did you do with it? What did you do as parents with the authority you were given and the time that you had it? Because a day will come when that authority will not be there anymore.

But, according to the wisdom of the Proverbs, if we have so labored and parented in such a way by the help of the Holy Spirit, can't do this in and of ourselves. If we have been enabled to teach them to obey and honor their parents, when they were young, that when they are old, they will not depart from it. And we may get to enjoy the fruit of their appreciation, their being still sensitive to our counsel and our advice and our well-being, even when we age greatly. And the time comes for them to requit their parents and to take care of them in old age. This isn't a guarantee in every instance, but it is a principle of wisdom. This is a general truth. Because the respect was taught, we may then continue to have a godly influence in their lives, even as they grow and mature, if it was instilled there with love during the time when we were able to make much of it.

Dear children, if your parents give you direction in anything, if they give you a command, if they tell you to do something, do not think badly of them. Do not think wrong about them. Do not be offended. Don't be upset. Unless you know they're telling you to outright disobey the Lord, you have no grounds to disobey.

If your parent is giving you direction, they are doing the right thing according to God. So obey them. Now you've got your parents telling you to obey them. Now you've got Pastor Austin telling you to obey them. And now, you know, God's told you to obey them. You're outnumbered. Obey them. Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. If they are telling you what to do, they're doing the right thing by using their authority because that's what they were commanded to do. They're being disobedient if they don't tell you what to do. Do you see?

Proverbs 1, 8-9, My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother, for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head and chains about thy neck. Proverbs four, one through four. Hear ye children the instruction of a father, and attend to no understanding, for I give you good doctrine. Forsake ye not my law, for I was my father's son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother. He taught me also, and said unto me, let thine heart retain my words, keep my commandments, and live. There's a blessing. There's a blessing in obedience to this.

And with our little bit of time remaining, Fathers, one more time, provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged. Do not provoke your children to anger. It's repeated essentially in Ephesians 6, 4. And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Now this applies to parents in general.

But there is upon the head of the home a particular emphasis in stewardship where the Lord has given you a place to ensure with your authority that this discipline is being carried out. It is taking place, but take heed that you do it in the right spirit. Make sure it's getting done. It's gonna fall in your lap and at your feet if it's not getting done, but make sure it's being done in the right spirit. And I'll just give a few thoughts.

As we've said, God commands children to obey their parents, but we never said parents were a law unto themselves. If you want to make your children bitter with you, then try to get them to obey unbiblical commands. Set them up with a contradictory example in your own life of hypocrisy and an exact opposite of what you're commanding and telling them to do. We're talking in the principles of righteousness.

There's gonna be places where you and your wife can have time together and go places that the children can't go. Guess what? Mom and dad can stay up later than you. That's okay. They can have a special meal together that you don't get to partake of. That's okay. They can take special time together. That's okay. That's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about them telling you to obey God while they disobey in front of you. That's the hypocrisy we're talking about. Fathers, if you do and live something different than what you're commanding them, the ramifications of that are not just gonna disappear and go away. But rather than go through all the different ways we could possibly stumble our children or exasperate them, I've left here just a few practical helps that I hope will help some parents. And I share these not as, again, some great gray-headed sage. Some of you have more children in here than I do. and in a more advanced stage of life. But I say these as a man who's been helped by these things myself.

One, more is caught than taught. You can say a lot of wonderful things, but in the end, they will just live the way you live. They will compromise where you compromise. They will make excuses where you make excuses. And they will justify it where you justify it, and they will take it further than you.

Because you taught them the principle. Two, from an early age, teach them to give you their eyes. Early on, teach them to give you their eyes. My family will tell you, when we go out and about or we're in a store or in a parking lot or somewhere, I teach my children to keep an eye on mom and dad.

Look at us, when we turn, you turn. When we go, you go. And if I don't trust that that child's gonna do that, if they're three and bobbing around, they have to hold onto my belt loop. And the moment I don't feel that tug, we're gonna have words. Listen, teach your children to look you in the eyes when they speak. and you need to look them in their eyes when you speak to them. Not only is there a real intimacy in that, there's a real intimacy in that, and if you don't do that with them young, they'll struggle in communication and marriage later, but you need to set yourself as the object of their attention at that age.

Why? Because our Heavenly Father gave us that example. Look unto me. all ye, the ends of the earth, right? And so the Lord Jesus Christ, looking unto him, the author and the finisher of our faith, right? It's like, life is kind of like riding a motorcycle. You're gonna go whatever direction you're looking. How's that for pastoral advice? You need to be the eyesight of your children. And then when the time comes and you've taught them to give you their eyes, as they get a little older, they start, they get into the season of why. Why? Why? Why? Don't shut it down. Answer their questions.

God ordained that season so you could fill their mind with the answers to why. If you don't give it to them, they're going to try and get it from their friends and a companion of fools will be destroyed. When they get into the season of why, now there's some regulation and shepherding that needs to happen there, but don't, don't lose that season. The Lord appointed it. Their mind is starving, they're hungry, they want to know why, and God gives them a lot of why's in the Bible.

So teach them, teach them. Because if you have taught them to give you their eyes, when they were young, and now they're looking to you for all their answers. And then you steward that season well, and you give them as many biblical answers as you can, four, five, six, seven, eight, hundred times. And then there comes a point where it's inculcated in them, and now they're stronger and they can bear a burden, and then they give you their hands. And you say, come and do like I do. Come alongside, work with me. Shape their thoughts and then turn that thinking into action alongside of you.

Don't miss that. Three, let your yeses be yes and your noes be no. Listen, as we've said, pointing to, there'll be times when our children have wonderful questions and we wanna capitalize on it, but it's not necessarily the right time. You can tell them, hey, that's a great question. We will answer it when we get home, okay? Now what have you done by saying that? We will answer it, and you gave a specific time, when we get home. So what needs to happen when you get home? You need to answer it.

Let your yeses be yes and your noes be no. If you don't do that, and you need to do it, even if it's sacrificial, if you don't do that, you're going to cause them to lose confidence in you. If you say you're going to do something, do it. If something comes up, and that happens in life, we're not sovereign. We're not omniscient. Things will change. There will be difficulties, but you need to learn how to go to your children, explain to them why something has changed, and give them a comparable solution, either at a different time or in a different way, so that you don't lose their trust.

Be consistent. Don't say one thing and then go back on it and let your yes be no and your no yes. Don't do that. Don't keep changing the rules on them. Be consistent. Establish the boundaries early and stick to them. Don't let the rules change based on your emotions in the moment. You will make them miserable because they don't know when it's eggshells and when it's fine.

I'm gonna give credit here. Years ago, before Christ Evangel merged into FBC Baghdad, I was pastoring, and I got this advice from Frank Maxson. He said, learn to tolerate less. I don't know if he remembers that. Learn to tolerate less. And I have come to find that to be, that is gray-headed sage wisdom.

Why? Because you need to remember, no good thing dwells in your flesh or your children's flesh. If you're already given to weaknesses and failures and sins that you need to repent of and go back on, and do repent and go back and ask for forgiveness if you've sinned against your child, you must. You must.

You can't have a different standard. But whatever your standard is, your children will ultimately take up whatever the lowest standard is that you tolerate in them. If you tolerate backtalk, if you tolerate them going around you and mom and popping you, if you tolerate disrespect, I promise you, it will not just magically go away on its own. You are commanded by God to restrain it. If you don't, they're gonna continue to trend in that direction.

So rather than allow for a bunch of things because you think you're so gentle, learn to tolerate less. And what you find is you'll maintain a greater parental control early on, and it won't fester and turn into something more difficult later. And that ends up for a better experience for everybody.

Five, when you discipline, don't do it in the middle of everybody else. Do not yell at your children in a public setting. Please don't yell at your children. Discipline them. Instruct them. Let the sting be in the rod on their bottom, not in your hate and wrath and vitriol of your words. When you discipline, protect their dignity. Public discipline is a shame to them that will make them resent you. Protect their dignity. Take them aside. Hide them away the way oftentimes your father does with you, doesn't he? Now, there are times if a sin is committed openly, needs open repentance, right?

You need to learn equity and that what you're doing is commensurate to the action. Six, this needs, I think, no further explanation, make sure your laws are the same as God's laws. Double check all your laws, make sure that your laws are the same as God's laws and your laws are not contradictory to God's laws. And then seven, learn the vital skill of self-control. Address issues sooner. This ties in to tolerate less. Address issues sooner rather than just explode once you've hit your 10th infraction and you're now annoyed beyond self-control.

You will not gain control of your children that way. It may look temporary for a little bit, but all you're doing is teaching them to do what you do. You cannot gain control of your children through your lack of self-control. Does that make sense? For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Discipline is a rescue mission.

Do you love them? Then go rescue them from the sin that's destroying them. Do you love them? Then go rescue them from the sin that's taking them out of the blessings of God. Do you love them? Do you love their future? You love the future of their marriage, the future of their work ethic, the future of their relationship toward God? Then go rescue them. Don't tolerate the sin that eats at them, go rescue them. And do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Listen, our parenting, look at your parenting.

Can you go to God's word and open up the scriptures and start pulling verses out for why you do what you do? Why you discipline, why you don't discipline, your method of discipline, how often you discipline, what you teach them, what you allow them to do. Can you actually go to God's word and build that out? Is your parenting done more in the name of modern secularism? Can you honestly say it's being done in the name of the Lord Jesus in accordance with his word? Because I'll end with this quote from Matthew Henry.

If you will not chasten your children's hearts when they are young, they will chasten yours when they are old. So take heed, dear children, obey your parents. Parents, fathers, Do it in the right spirit and the right attitude. You got a short time to get this right.

Don't waste it. Let's pray. Precious Father in heaven, our Lord and God, we do praise you and thank you, Lord, this day for your holy word. We thank you that you've not left us without instruction. Lord, help us to take heed. Help us to be doers of your word and not hearers only. Help us to not be doers only, but Lord, to do it from the right heart.

Lord, to honor, to reverence, to respect, to genuinely care. Lord, as those who do not see your commands as grievous, Lord, I pray that you would help every single family of Mount Zion Bible Church. Lord, may the presence of your spirit be found in every Home, may the hearth of family worship burn hot with the reading and the teaching of your word and the singing together as families. Lord, may the parents take to heart the importance of their responsibility to shepherd the hearts of their children, and may the children take to heart the seriousness of this issue of obedience and honor. and may you receive all the glory and the honor of healthy homes and godly families. In Christ Jesus' name we do pray, amen.