Children (Part 1 of 2)

When it comes to understanding how children should respond to their parents' instruction, Scripture is clear and concise.

So why is it that parenting is still such a challenge? Today on Truth for Life Weekend, Alistair Begg teaches us about the daunting responsibility of raising a child. Colossians chapter 3 and verse 20, and our text is, Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the LORD. Here, in one concise sentence, Paul provides this clear and comprehensive instruction on the upbringing of children.

And it is quite remarkable when you ponder how many books are out there, both secular and Christian, how many thousands of books and how many millions of words have been penned, utilized in endeavoring somehow or another to get to this issue of children and their parents. And here we find in what is just really one sentence that Paul has expressed the essence of what multiple books on child-rearing struggle themselves to express. He has been teaching them that the gospel doesn't simply alter our relationship with God, which it does, but it actually alters our relationship with everyone and with everything—that the gospel is a life-changing transformation. And in the context of this letter, as in the other letters that Paul writes—interestingly, Colossians and Ephesians and Philemon, Philippians 2, written from the Roman imprisonment—in each of these letters, he labors very, very hard to make it clear to his readers that what is true concerning them will work itself out in the everyday events of life. And so, for example, when he says in the sixteenth verse of chapter 3, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, he says, as you do, you will then be teaching and admonishing one another. In other words, the fellowship of God's people is an instructional environment—that God's people are learning not simply from the instruction of the pastors and teachers, but they are learning in the context of one another, because we instruct one another, both verbally and also graphically, in the way we live our lives.

And it is in that context that our singing, our psalms and our hymns and our spiritual songs are edifying things—that they speak to us about life, and they reveal God to us, and we speak to ourselves sometimes when we're singing, and we speak about one another and to one another in our hymnody. And then, in the context of that, he goes on to say—and really, in a comprehensive statement, whatever you're doing, whether it's in word or in deed, I want you to do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus and give thanks to God the Father through him—then, he says, wives, submit your husbands. So having addressed wives and, in turn, husbands, he now turns to children in verse 20, and as I said, next time he will put the second wing on the plane, as it were, as he comes to give instruction to the fathers. I wonder, might we just observe in passing that since Paul wrote these letters to, for example, the believers in Colossae, and he wrote these letters in order to be read, that we might safely assume that Paul anticipated the presence of children in the assembly when the letter was read. And they would be able to listen and learn that the wives, that their moms, were supposed to, in the way they responded to their husbands, model the response of the church to Jesus. And they would learn that their dads were supposed to love their moms with a sacrificial kind of love. And they would then learn that it was their privilege and their obligation and their responsibility to be obedient to their moms and dads. And we may, as parents, inadvertently send a message to our children concerning the nature of gathering for praise and for instruction in this larger room—a message that says to our children, This really isn't for you, or this isn't something you would enjoy, or this isn't something you would understand, or this is something that you can get later. And suddenly, our children have gone from kindergarten to seniors in high school. And despite all we say about the blessing and the benefit of the teaching of the Bible, we have allowed our children to pass through our fingers without the benefit of that being their portion.

If you got it wrong as parents, let's get it right as grandparents. Paul assumes the presence of children in the gathering of God's people in the reading of this letter. Now, let us notice, essentially, two things. First of all, the obligation that it speaks to. And we may observe a couple of things by way of the obligation. First of all, that it is clear. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. It is certainly not difficult to understand. One commentator says it would be hard to find any practical family instruction more rooted in every part of Scripture than the importance of children's obedience to their parents.

I think that's well observed. There's virtually no place we can go in the panorama of Scripture—save perhaps Song of Solomon—in which we will not find this constant, recurring emphasis. So the clarity of the verse is there. The Scripture's calling for children to listen to their fathers and to see that they don't despise their mothers. Proverbs—Solomon helps us in this, doesn't he? Proverbs 23, 22. Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.

That's not hard to understand. Those of you who are young people who are here tonight, what am I supposed to do? I'm supposed to listen to my dad.

Okay? What else am I supposed to do? I'm not to despise my mother when she gets old. May your father and mother be glad.

May she who gave you birth rejoice. The father of a righteous man has great joy. He who has a wise son delights in him. So the Bible makes it very clear that children are in obedience to their parents to listen to their dads and not to despise their mothers. Equally so, it makes clear that it is the fool who spurns his father's discipline.

It is always the fool in the Bible. Again, Proverbs is littered with this. It is the foolish child who neglects what his father says.

It is the foolish daughter who despises the instruction that comes her way. And the discipline of the parents is the discipline, first of all, of correction. That our parents discipline us to correct us, to bring us into line, to make sure that we stay within the confines that God has laid out for us, so that we might enjoy the benefits that accrue to us, and so that we might avoid the pitfalls that are present in the gullies and the nooks and crannies that often appear so attractive to us. The corrective influence of our parental jurisdiction is vital to the well-being of our children.

And many a young man, many a young girl, will be saved from manifold stupidity and heartache by simply paying attention to Colossians 3.20, whether you feel like it or whether you don't feel like it. The clarity with which it speaks is unavoidable. Children, obey your parents. So when you undergo the discipline of correction, it is there to drive out faults so that you're able to come and say, I was sorry, I'm sorry, I was wrong, and I accept the consequences. But part of our obedience is not simply to the discipline that comes to us by way of correction, but it is the discipline that comes by way of instruction. And that is laid upon the parents to instruct children, to train them up in the way that they should go, to teach their children skills that are useful and are necessary in life.

That is why it is such a daunting challenge to be a parent. Because you say to yourself as you go down the road, how many times am I going to have to say this? And the answer is probably, oh, about another thousand, maybe seventeen hundred. And that's before they even get out of junior high. How many times am I going to have to say this?

Time without number, probably. And it is the equally foolish parent who bails out of the responsibility prematurely, who may join the disaster zone in the company of the disobedient child. To accept the discipline of training is simply to say to our moms and our dads, I agree that what you are training me in is necessary, and I agree that it is useful, and I agree that it is biblical, and I want you to know that I accept your instruction. And when's the last time one of your children called you into the bedroom just to say that to you? Well, you know, it may only come much later.

But please, God, it will come. When a child resents and rejects parental discipline, when a child is disobedient and is not trained by such discipline, he or she begins to develop what we might refer to as emotional calluses. When we talk about the hardening of people, and when we talk about a child being hard and indifferent and cold and calloused, we may be sure that that has not happened simply as a result of a moment in time. But it has almost inevitably happened over a period of time, in the same way that a person may listen to the gospel being proclaimed, and it is either softening their hearts or it is hardening their hearts. That is why it is such an awesome and dreadful thing, to be in a Bible-teaching church where the gospel is faithfully proclaimed and to be on the receiving end of it and to do nothing with it. Because an individual may develop those same kind of spiritual calluses to the truth of God's Word, to the point that they become cynical and disinterested and almost reach the point where they are impervious to its truth. A child that develops those kind of emotional calluses grows increasingly antagonistic to all kinds of authority. You will get the calls from the schoolteachers, you will get the calls from the youth group leaders, you will get the calls from anybody in a position of authority—the coach of the soccer team or the football team, the baseball team, whatever else it is—he'll be on the phone to say, I really don't know what it is with Billy here, but he doesn't seem to listen to a single thing that anybody says, myself and everyone else included, while he's a disobedient boy. He's disobedient to his parents and to the instruction of Scripture.

And he has now begun to make it a hallmark of his character. Such a young man or a young woman unchecked, unreached by grace, will become inevitably a menace in any community, and ultimately a menace to themselves. The Bible teaches that. "'I went past,' says Solomon, "'I went past the garden of a lazy man.

The wall was broken down, all overgrown and riddled with weeds.'" A silent testimony to a failure to consistently do what is right when it's right. Equally true in the realm of children. You see, real obedience—and the Bible addresses this—real obedience is a matter of the heart.

Real obedience is a matter of the heart, in the same way that real respect is a matter of the heart. I met somebody this week from Georgia. In Georgia? And I said, Oh, I like people from Georgia.

I said, There's a sort of respect in Georgia, isn't there? And they said, Well, I hope so. And I said, No, I like it they say, Yes, ma'am, and yes, sir. And then we talked about how it's possible to say, Yes, ma'am, and yes, sir, and not really mean it.

It's possible for our verbiage not to be an expression of our hearts. And children can become adept at this, and the children who are listening to me tonight know that there is a huge distinction between an obedience that is heartfelt, God-honoring, and sincere, and a spirit of sort of reluctant external subservience, which provides only a thin disguise for what is an increasingly stubborn and rebellious heart. Now, in each evening we've cross-referenced our verse with what Paul says in Ephesians. I don't want to do that so much tonight, but you'll notice, if you do turn to Ephesians 6, that he says, Children, obey your parents in the LORD, for this is right.

And honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you, and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. In other words, he doesn't provide as an incentive a threat. He provides as an incentive a promise.

The Old Testament had plenty of threats that went along with this. There were lots of things that were going to happen to children if they failed to comply with the instruction. But here, when Paul frames it, he says, it's as if he stands back from the text, and he says, Children need to understand that the whole motivation in this is their well-being. It is that things might go well with them.

It is that they might enjoy the privileges and opportunities of their childhood. But it will not happen, absence the obedience which reveals itself in respect. For a young person to respect his parents or her parents means at least this, that they speak kindly to them and they speak kindly about them. In fact, that is true of all respect. The real test of respect is to overhear a teenager talking to his mother or his father on the phone and to watch his eyes.

Because the eyes will give him away. Listen in the mall as the girl holds the cell phone to her ear, and you see her saying, Yes, Mom. But it's not Yes, Mom.

It's Yes, Mom. There's no respect in that response. I hear you, all the seeds of indifference are built into that interchange even though the phraseology is accurate.

It does not express the heart attitude. And genuine respect for an individual when you speak to them demands that you look at them. That's not simply a cultural issue. That is a pressing emotional, psychological, interactional issue.

That's business 101. Look the guy in the face when you shake his hand. And how many times do parents have to take their children's little faces in their hands and kindly say, Look at me. Look at me. Or, Let me see your eyes. Because the eyes have it. The eyes are the gateway into the soul, into the psyche, into the heart of the individual.

It is imperative that we instruct our children, Look at me. I don't want you looking anywhere else. I want you looking at me. Because when I see your eyes, I see you. It's much harder to disguise things when someone's got a flat-on gaze into your face. Children know that.

That's why they look down. Well, Solomon actually has a startling image in relationship to this. I'll just read it for you, and then we'll move to our second and our final point, which should be an encouragement to some. Proverbs, once again, The eye that mocks a father, that scorns obedience to a mother, will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley, will be eaten by the vultures. How does that sound?

A fairly graphic image, isn't it? What he is saying here is exactly what I'm trying to convey. The eye that mocks a father, the eye that scorns obedience to a mother, will eventually become an eye that is useless. So the instruction is absolutely clear. And secondly, the instruction is absolutely comprehensive, isn't it?

Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the LORD. Oh, but, says somebody almost immediately, surely there are exceptions to this. And of course there are, in the same way that there are exceptions to all of these aspects of interpersonal relationships. But aren't you always a little wary of yourself when you want to immediately sidestep the comprehensive nature of a word of instruction to find the exception clause? Let me find out the things I don't have to do in relationship to this. Don't let's go there first.

Let's just look at it face on. Don't be so quick to look for exceptions. Learn to obey your parents across the board. That's what it says. Let your instinctive reaction be to parental instruction obedience. Now, that is the default.

That is the screensaver. The screensaver goes immediately to Colossians 3.20. I'm going to obey my parents in everything. Unless, of course, our parents instruct us to do something, which is a clear contravention of what the Bible says. If our parents demand of us some practice which would be untrue to the Bible and offensive to God, then at that point, of course, we have to exercise the Acts chapter 4.19 response. Judge for yourselves whether it is right for us to do this, but I have to obey God in this.

That is clear. That's practical advice that can only be applied in our lives with God's gracious enabling. This is Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. If you listen to Truth for Life regularly on the weekends, you know that we carefully select and recommend resources that are designed to help you grow in your walk with Christ. And this is the first weekend we're introducing Alistair Begg's new book titled Brave by Faith, God-Sized Confidence in a Post-Christian World. In the book Brave by Faith, Alistair addresses the ways in which our culture is shifting away from Christian beliefs and embracing instead secularism.

As believers, we find ourselves living in a new normal where we are increasingly in the minority. Alistair makes these observations by drawing from the book of Daniel. He shows us how the pagan culture in which Daniel lived is not that much different from our own.

In fact, there are many striking similarities between ancient Babylon and the modern Western world as it relates to belief in the God of the Bible. But thankfully, the book does not end there. Alistair uses these comparisons as a guide so we can be prepared to live faithfully no matter what. Brave by Faith is a book that will consistently remind you of God's sovereignty in every situation. Request your copy today by visiting truthforlife.org. You'll also find a companion study guide available for purchase or free download when you go to truthforlife.org slash store. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Join us again next weekend as we'll conclude this message by learning more about how God's call to obedience still applies to families in contemporary culture. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.