God’s Expectations for Children

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Transcript:

Turn with me in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter 6. Ephesians chapter 6. We’re continuing on this morning with our series on building godly families.

If you’ll recall, our first week we talked about why God put us together in the first place, why we should care. We talked about several reasons. The moral upbringing of our families, the supporting one another, the loving one another, the keeping each other out of trouble.

The last two weeks we’ve talked about godly husbands and how they’re to behave. We’ve talked about godly wives and how they’re to behave. I was told last week I was brave for bringing up the subject of how wives should treat their husbands.

I don’t know if I’m brave or foolish or just don’t care, but anyway, that’s what the Bible said. Today we’re going to talk about how children are supposed to behave. Next week, it being Father’s Day, we’re going to talk about how parents should treat their children and then the next week after that I plan to end up with how the church fits into all of this.

Because it’s not the church’s job to raise godly children, but it is the church’s job to assist families in being godly families. Today we’re going to talk about children, though. And I told my wife yesterday, it’s a shame the children’s church kids weren’t going to be up here for this, and she said, well, they wouldn’t listen anyway.

I said, well, a few might. She said, yeah, a few might. I said, I only need a few to listen.

But you may think, I’m not a child, or I don’t have children at home anymore. What does this have to do with me? It has everything to do with you.

Because you either have, in this room, you either have children at home, you have grandchildren that you can be an influence on, you’re around children here at the church that you can be an influence on, or you are somebody’s child. I think that covers just about everybody, doesn’t it? There are things that the Bible has to teach all of us about how children are to behave toward their parents.

Even if you are a child in your 60s, the Bible still has things for us to learn about how children are to treat their parents. This is one of the areas where our society is falling apart, and the churches have not done a great job in the last 40 years of helping to stem that tide. Churches, if anything, for the most part, seem to be reinforcing the behaviors that we see throughout the rest of society.

It wouldn’t come as any surprise to my wife, but I joke about probably being on all kinds of government watch lists. Those of you who know me better than others probably are not surprised by that either. Not that I’m a terrorist or support terrorism or anything, but I figure I’m probably on a government watch list somewhere because I’ve always been more concerned with being biblically correct than politically correct.

And recent reports, even from what I believe is the Department of Homeland Security, said those are the people to watch out for. Christians and veterans and homeschoolers and, you know, the really bad people that are messing up society. So I figure I’m on some kind of watch list somewhere, and it probably got worse after we had Benjamin.

Because, folks, I, even before I was a parent, I had godly parents. I was around other people who were godly parents. I was taught from the Bible in church what godly parents do.

And I’ve taken the, I’m not a perfect parent, and my child’s not perfect either. He’s one of those sometimes that screams in the store and other people look at us like we’re terrible. But I take very seriously the responsibility that God has given me to be Benjamin’s father and to be the new baby’s father.

And I’m not willing to abdicate that responsibility to my wife. And together, we’re not willing to abdicate our responsibility to be his parents to the church, to the government, to the public schools, to the media, to any of them. We are his parents.

God has given him parents for a reason. God gives children parents for a reason. And unfortunately, in our society in the last 40 years or whatever, children have been taught that parents don’t matter, that parents are irrelevant, that in many cases, at the most, parents are just there to wait on you, make sure your needs are met, and then you can completely disregard what they teach.

You completely disregard what they tell you. And, folks, that’s flat-out wrong from a biblical standpoint. I was reading this week an article that talked about a case from the Washington Supreme Court, And it was shocking enough, but then to find out this was 32 years ago that this happened.

In 1980, the Washington State Supreme Court took a child away from her parents because as a 13-year-old, they decided she was involved in a little too much promiscuity and she was too involved in drugs, and so they grounded her to try to deal with the problem. Well, when she began threatening to run away, the police became involved. I don’t know whether they were on the family’s side or the girl’s side, But it seems natural that a parent would lovingly step in and say, I love you too much to let you act this way, and would ground her if she was involved in these kinds of things.

Well, when the police got involved to keep her from running away, child services got involved too and took the daughter away. Not because they were abusing her, but they decided the parents weren’t doing a good job. Who were they to make these choices for?

And this 13-year-old girl was taken away. Apparently, the family sued, and the Washington State Supreme Court said, We can allow child services to break up this family because they know better than the parents. Folks, that was 32 years ago.

I don’t believe it started there, and it sure has not stopped there. Because we can turn on the news periodically and see stories like that where the government sends the message to children and to the rest of society that parents don’t matter. I’ve watched undercover videos where kids, even kids who appear to be being trafficked, can go into the local Planned Parenthood office and get medical treatment and counseling up to and including an abortion without their parents’ consent or even knowledge.

Folks, our kids are being taught that their parents don’t matter. You turn on the television. I love kids’ shows.

There was a point where it’s not that I watched a lot of TV, but if I watched TV, it was going to be the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon, and I’m not talking about as an 8-year-old. I’m talking about this was last year. And I love those shows.

I love the kids’ shows. They were definitely cleaner than a lot of what else was on TV. But I started noticing a pattern where parents were absent, or they were absent-minded, or they were completely disregarded in their instructions, and it was treated as though it was okay, it was safe, it was harmless behavior.

Folks, in our society, there’s a concerted effort to marginalize parents. And it would be easy for us to go along with that. It would be easy for us to say, well, I’ll let the media raise my kids.

I’ll let the schools and the government raise my kids. It would be easy to say, I’ll let the church raise my kids. None of those institutions, none of those entities were designed to raise children and can’t do the job that parents can do.

And it’s time that instead of going along with the easy thing to do, that Christian parents would stand up and take back the role that God has given them in the raising and nurture and admonition and growth of their children. Next week we’re going to talk about specifically the roles of the parent toward the children. This week we’re going to talk about the way the child is to respond.

What are the things that we are supposed to be teaching the children, and what is God’s expectation of them in return? And this applies, again, if you have minor children at home like I do, and we’re trying to teach him the right things. We’re trying to teach him don’t hit, say thank you, stay out of the dog water, things like that, fighting a losing battle with that dog water.

We’re trying to teach him. It applies if you’ve got minor grandchildren. Now, of course, you don’t want to overstep the bounds of the parents.

You don’t want to undermine the parents, but there are still things as a grandparent you can do to influence your grandchildren in a godly direction. There are things that you can do as honorary parents and grandparents here at church to reinforce what’s going on at the homes of the children who come in this place. And there are things that as a church, we ought to stand together and say these things are right because they’re in the Word of God.

This is what God expects for children. And there are things that even we as adult children can learn about how we’re to treat our parents. Ephesians chapter 6, children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

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. That’s our passage for this morning. A short three verses with instructions for how children are supposed to behave, what God expects from children.

Not a lot of complex rules here. Now, throughout the scriptures, God gives, I believe, a lot of specific instructions to parents about how they’re to raise children. Gives a lot of specific instructions to husbands and wives.

For kids, he keeps it simple here because the responsibility for leading, for ruling, for directing the family falls to the parents, not to the children. The children’s job may not be easy in the sense that it’s fun, may not be easy in the sense that it comes naturally, but it’s easy in the sense that it’s simple. There’s not a lot that they have to remember.

Three short verses here that in most places where he gives instruction to children through the Bible, it falls right in line with these simple instructions. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor thy father and thy mother.

I’m reading it again because it’s so short. Which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long on the earth. And in this passage and in so many others, God lays out His expectations for children.

There are things that parents are supposed to do. There are things that parents are supposed to teach them, but it’s not just left to the parents to teach them, and maybe they’ll catch it, maybe, you know, if you’re lucky. No, God lays out His expectations and says, children, you also have a responsibility here.

Ladies and gentlemen, with children, with grandchildren, with influence over children here at church, there are things that we teach them their responsibilities. We start even at a young age, teaching them the responsibilities that God has given them. Contrary to what our society teaches, God did not intend for people to remain children and to remain teenagers well into their 40s and 50s.

Oh, that drives me crazy. Men especially who won’t take care of their children because they’re too busy running around doing the things they did when they were teenagers. We’re not here to talk about my pet peeves, though.

God’s expectations for children. It starts out with the very simple expectation, God expects children to obey their parents. God, let me repeat that in case we don’t get it, God expects children to obey their parents.

Now, we would all like for our children to obey us, wouldn’t we? Wouldn’t we? I would hope so.

I don’t know about you, but I feel like a bad guy when I have to tell Benjamin no so many times a day. Christian got him up this morning when I was getting ready for church, and he came into our room where I was ironing clothes, and the first thing he did, he came running into our bedroom, had the ironing board set up, and he goes for the cord on the iron. He knows not to play with cords.

A daily battle we have. I would love it if just once he would see a cord and leave it alone. When I have to tell him 15 times a day, Benjamin, no, no, no, no. Sometimes we’re trying to teach him little bits of sign language, too, and just for emphasis, get in there with him and go, No, no, no, you’re not supposed to do that.

Stay away. Sometimes even slap his hand because those cords are going to hurt him, especially if he pulls a hot iron over on himself. I would love it if he would just obey and listen.

And I know he’s still a little guy and he’s still learning, but at this point he knows that he’s not supposed to play with the cords because he’ll tug on the cord and look over a little bit and see if anybody’s watching. I would love it. I know I’ve talked about the cords before, but that’s our big battle right now.

I would love it if he would just obey me. It’s not fun having to tell him no 50 times a day. Those of you who have kids now or have raised kids in the past, did anybody enjoy telling them no, they couldn’t 50 times a day, getting on to them, disciplining them?

Is it fun? No. We would all like our children to obey us.

And this morning, I don’t tell you I have the silver bullet on how to make that happen because every children is different, y’all. So every child is different. And some forms of discipline will get to the heart of some children more quickly than others.

I know my mother used to have to spank my sister. She was strong-willed, used to have to beat her to get her, not really in an abusive way, but in the old sense of the word, beat her. Would have to beat her to get her to comply.

And with me, my mother could just look at me crooked and I would melt all over the floor. Every child is different. For one, you know, you may have to spank them.

For another child, you may just have to look mildly displeased. Every child is different. I can’t tell you your specific child or grandchild how to get them to obey.

But the point is, with each child, we are supposed to teach them to obey us. And again, I’m not an expert and certainly not one to lecture you all on how to raise children. But what I do know from what little time I’ve been a parent and from watching my own parents, It comes down to consistency with the rules, consistency with what you enforce.

Instead of, as the world says, we’re going to lay down rules and then we’re going to let you break them and we’re going to let you get by with them sometimes. And folks, that teaches our kids to disobey us. God expects children to obey their parents.

This teaching is for children, but for us as parents, as some of you may be future parents, some grandparents, we are also supposed to help that happen. Children don’t just normally wake up one day and say, hey, I think I’ll obey mom and dad today. They have to be taught.

They have to be directed to obey. And we teach them to obey by giving them standards to live up to, by giving them rules and principles to live their lives around and then holding the line on those things in a loving but firm way. We teach them to obey us.

Folks, children are expected to obey their parents. God expects children to obey their parents. He says, children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.

He does not here give them any qualification on that statement except for obey your parents in the Lord. As much as I wanted to find it sometimes as a child and as a teenager, I never found the verse that said, children obey your parents unless you really just don’t feel like it. I would have loved to have found that.

It wasn’t there. I would have loved to have found the verse that said, children obey your parents unless you just think they’re being completely unreasonable and don’t know what they’re talking about. I would have loved to have found that verse.

Ladies and gentlemen, you know as well as I do, it’s not in there. It says, children obey your parents in the Lord, period, because this is right. We teach our children to obey their parents.

We teach our grandchildren to obey their parents. We teach children around us to obey their parents. I’ve seen many times in families and groups of friends and such where a child is told to do something by their parents and they don’t do it, they disobey.

And the other adults around them sometimes will think it’s cute when they disobey. Or they’ll encourage it. Oh, your parents don’t know what they’re talking about.

We have a responsibility to teach children to obey their parents. It says, obey your children. I keep saying obey your children.

Obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Again, there’s no qualification on that statement that says obey your parents if you want to. The only qualification on the statement is obey your parents in the Lord.

Now, as I said a couple weeks ago, when the Bible tells, for example, women to respect their husbands, It doesn’t say only the godly husbands. Women are supposed to show respect to their husbands. The husband is supposed to love the wife and not mistreat her, but ultimately the wife is supposed to respect the husband whether he deserves it or not.

And the implication there is that, well, not an implication, it says right out, so that she may win her husband to the Lord by her testimony. Working many years ago as a volunteer in a youth group, the question would come up because we’d have kids that were there that didn’t have parents that went to church there. Maybe they came in on the buses.

Maybe they came with friends. They didn’t have Christian parents. They didn’t have church-going parents.

The question came up, well, what if my parents aren’t Christians? Do I still have to obey them? Yes, yes.

The statement, obey your parents in the Lord, is not obey your parents who are in the Lord. It says obey your parents in the Lord. That means that we as a church, we as Christians, we as parents and grandparents, don’t teach children that they disobey their parents just because they’re not church-goers like us and do what we say instead of what they say.

There’s no qualification on here that says we’re exempt from obeying non-Christian parents. It says obey your parents in the Lord. And what that tells me is that insofar as our obedience honors the Lord, we are to obey parents as children.

Our children, well, and children around the country should be taught, and we need to start in our own families, children must be taught to obey their parents unless and until their obedience to their parents causes them to disobey God. That’s the only exception I see here. Your parent tells you to go out and knock over a liquor store, murder somebody, blaspheme God.

I’m not going to tell a child that they’re supposed to do that because it goes against a law even higher than the law of the parents. But folks, if a parent teaches their children, if a parent tells their children to do something, just because they’re not a Christian, even for a Christian child, is not an excuse to disobey. We’re taught to obey parents.

Children are taught to obey their parents in the Lord, and that’s God’s expectation that children would obey their parents. It’s God’s expectation of us to teach the children to do so. Secondly, God expects children to value and respect their parents.

He says, honor thy father and thy mother. What I’ve always thought was interesting about this and what I know some people have had trouble with this verse and also where it’s seen in the fifth commandment in Exodus chapter 20, honor thy father and thy mother, quoted here, is that there does not seem to be an age component accompanying this. As a matter of fact, it was to a group of mostly adult Israelites that Moses brought this commandment.

It was to a group of adult Pharisees that Jesus confronted for not obeying that commandment in Mark chapter 7. When the Bible says, honor thy father and mother, there’s no age limit on that. Now, that’s hard to do.

Does that mean that God expects our parents when we’re adults to run every aspect of our lives and we’re supposed to obey them the way we did when we were children? Not necessarily, because the Bible also teaches that a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two will become one flesh. There’s a sense that when you grow up and get married, you’re not a part of your parents’ household the way you were before.

But the commandment to honor our fathers and mothers does not end when we turn 18. It does not end when we get married. It does not end when we have children of our own.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is where it applies not just to us as people who teach the next generation. This is where it applies to all of us because we’re all somebody’s children. We are to honor our parents.

That word, again, does not necessarily mean we obey everything they said. If I obeyed everything my mother said as an adult, I probably would not be a pastor. She’s proud of me.

She’s proud of God’s call, but my mother was counting on me to be the one to make my first million and buy her house. because even before I wanted to be in politics, I wanted to be in the stock market. And she was counting that.

She always said, when you make your first million, will you buy me a house? Yes, Mama, I will. She’s going to be waiting a long time on that first million.

So if I obeyed everything she wanted me to do, I probably would have had to take a different vocation. Yet I knew God was calling me to pastor, so that’s what I did. And yet I’m still commanded to obey, not to obey, but to honor my parents.

And that word honor means to place value on them and to respect them. We’re taught in our society that starting as teenagers, we go through this stage where our parents, we think they’re just idiots. And we’re taught that that’s okay, and we grow out of that sometime around 25 or some people later now, that we start to realize, hey, maybe mom and dad weren’t so stupid after all.

I think I probably, too, went through that phase in about a week. I’ve told you before I wasn’t a teenager even when I was a teenager, and my parents would attest to that. I think I went through the my parents are dumb for about a week when I was about 13 and then quickly realized my parents knew what they were talking about.

And you know what? I don’t tell you that to say how good I am. I’m fortunate because that saved me a lot of trouble growing up realizing how smart my parents were.

I love my parents. I don’t necessarily do everything they think I should do, but I try to treat them with honor and respect and as people of value in my life. Now, I don’t call my mother every day like I used to, But we’ve gotten to the point where Christian talks to my mother about eight times a day, so I’m pretty well caught up on what’s going on back home.

But I still respect my parents’ opinion. I will still call them on the phone and say, what do you think I should do about such and such? Now, I may not always, again, do exactly what they think I ought to do, but a lot of times theirs is the, other than Christian, theirs is the first opinion I go to seek counsel.

We’re supposed to honor our parents. We’re not supposed to leave home at 18 and say, I’m never talking to that man again. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Oh, that woman, she’s so crazy. I’m not dealing with her anymore. And never have.

. . Folks, we’re supposed to honor our parents.

Does that mean they’re always honorable? No. Again, I love my parents, but they’re sinners just like I am.

I’m under no illusions that they’re perfect. And yet, I’m required to honor them. This was taught from early on in Israelite culture.

It was taught early on in the Bible that they were to honor their fathers and their mothers. And it’s a command that Jesus took seriously. It’s a command that God takes seriously.

Even in the New Testament, they were still talking about this. If you want to turn with me for just a moment, Mark chapter 7, starting in verse 9, Jesus is confronting the Pharisees. Really, they confronted him, and so he turns it back at them as he always did.

Mark chapter 7, verse 9, he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. For Moses said, Honor thy father and thy mother, and whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, If a man shall say to his father or mother, it is Corban, that is to say a gift, By whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, he shall be free.

And ye suffer him no more to do aught for his father or mother, making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered, and many such like things do ye. So they had confronted him about something to do with his following, what they thought the commandments of God were, which really were commandments that they had added to the word of God. And he said, if you want to talk about commandments of God, you all have taken the commandments of God, and through your own traditions you’ve made them nothing.

You’ve treated them like they were nothing. He said, God commanded you to honor your father and mother. And he confronted them about the fact that even though they profess to honor their fathers and mothers, they may say, oh, yeah, I love mom and dad.

They’re great people. At the same time, it was expected that they would take care of their families. And that didn’t just mean their children.

That meant their elderly parents. They were supposed to take care of them and support them. And yet there was a practice going on in that day called Corban, the offerings, and they would take money that they should have been using to support their parents.

And instead of giving it to support their parents in their old age, they were taking it and giving it to the temple and say, it’s a gift on your behalf. And the Pharisees would say, yeah, that’s fine. You have no further obligation to your parents.

It would be like if any of us had an elderly parent who needed care, who needed medical care, who couldn’t make ends meet on Social Security, needed money to live on, needed money, needed food to eat. And we had, and knowing that they had a responsibility to give to the church as well, We said, okay, we’re going to take the money that we should be giving to support you, and we’re going to give it to the church in your name. And all they get to show for it is a little card.

Donation’s been made in your name to the church or whatever. And we say, oh, that’s okay. And then there they’ve given to the church.

They look good. They get the tax benefits. And all the while, mom and dad are still starving.

That’s basically the way the Pharisees were treating their parents because they were more concerned with outward righteousness than they were with really following the commands of God to honor their fathers and mothers. Not that we shouldn’t give, not that they shouldn’t have given to the Lord, but the problem was God had also told them to honor their parents and to take care of them, treat them as worthy of value and respect, and they were taking that money and using it to make themselves look good in the eyes of their Pharisee brethren. Folks, it could hardly be called honoring, respecting, valuing your father and your mother to treat them that way.

Say, instead of feeding you, providing you with shelter, providing you with food, by the way, as you did for me, I’m going to take the money and use it to make myself look good. And it’s been done in your name. It’s a gift.

And then to say, yeah, that’s okay. Folks, we as a society have been taught it’s okay to treat our parents that way. As young children, we’re taught that we can raise attitudes against our parents.

We can talk back to them, speak to them in hateful tones of voice. We see it all over television. You go out to the stores, to the restaurants.

You see people talking to their parents in a way I wouldn’t talk to my dog. And you see people leaving their parents to rot in old age. No family around, no love around them, no support, sometimes not even any.

You know, a lot of people say it’s easier to write a check. And, you know, please don’t think I’m speaking against you if you’ve had to put a loved one in the nursing home. That’s not what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about is the way our society just treats people like they can be discarded. Sometimes we can’t physically care for somebody the way they need to be cared for. That is not what I’m talking about.

To say I’m going to put you over here, whether it’s nursing home, whether it’s hospital, whether it’s whatever, or just move you in with somebody else because I don’t want to have to deal with you. Folks, from the youngest age to the oldest, we as a society are being taught that it’s okay not to value and respect and honor our parents. And as Christians, we ought to be placing honor and value and respect on our parents because God commands it and because it’s right.

We should be teaching that to our children because someday they’re going to take care of us. Try to be very nice to Benjamin because I know one day he may have to select the nursing home. We should be teaching it and we should be showing it by example in the way we treat our parents, in the way we talk about them.

God expects children of all ages to value and respect their parents. Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth. Third of all this morning, God expects children to fear him.

Now what does this have to do with parents? Nothing. I know I’ve talked a lot about parents, but this is about children today.

God expects children to obey their parents. God expects children to place honor and value and respect on their parents, and God expects children to fear Him. Our children are being raised in a country, our grandchildren are being raised in a country, and in a society where they’re taught that it’s not important to have respect for authority.

And that is only possible because we have come to a place in our country where we no longer fear the living God, and we no longer teach our children and our grandchildren to fear God. In Romans chapter 13, God tells us to be submissive to those in authority over us because He has placed them there. And even the man that we think is not fit to be there, whether it be from school teacher, whether it be president, whether it be governor, whoever it is, whether we think they’re fit to be there or not, God for some reason has allowed them into that position of authority.

It doesn’t mean we have to agree with everything they say or stand for, but we are to respect those in autho

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