If you’ve
ever tried to do something difficult, you know that its not quite enough to
know what to do and how to do it. You have to have a good answer for the “why”
question—why should I do it? You have to have some compelling reason to put out
the effort.
Many
people, for example, have a vague desire to get in better shape. They know what
to do and how to do it, but they lack a compelling reason to do it until they
are diagnosed with heart disease or diabetes. But we probably all know people
who have had a health scare, then all of a sudden their motivation kicks into high
gear, because now they have a crystal clear answer about why they should make
certain changes.
Over the
last few weeks in this parenting series, we’ve been talking about the need to
teach our children not only what they should do according to the Bible, but how
they can do it and why they should do it. Until we have answered all three of
these questions for our kids, we have not engaged in fully biblical parenting. Now
by God’s grace, He can overcome whatever is lacking in our parenting efforts—in
fact, He does all the time because none of us are perfect—but our desire must
always be to be fully biblical in our role as parents.
So we must
communicate the what, how, and why of the Christian life to our kids. These
three aspects form a very powerful dynamic in our lives which will empower us
to follow God. Think about parenting, for a moment,
like coaching. Telling our kids what they should do is like explaining
the basic rules of the game; telling them how they should do it is like
explaining the skills and strategy that will allow them to succeed; and telling
them why they should do it gives them the drive and motivation to succeed against
all obstacles.
Now we’ve
already learned that to teach our kids what they should do, we should teach
them the commands of Scripture. These are the basic ground rules for life. To
teach them how they can do it, we should point to them to the Gospel. We also
learned how a couple of New Testament authors built on this idea. For Paul,
pointing our kids to the Gospel revolves around teaching them about the
resources that they have “in Christ.” For John, it revolves around the idea of
abiding in Christ.
Today we’re
going to add the third side to this triangle, so to speak—the “why” question.
When we think about teaching our kids why they should obey us, it is here that
we think about that classic conversation that ends with “because I said so.” As
the conversation goes, we ask our children to do something and they ask us
“why?”—perhaps two or three or a half-dozen times! And normally with a tone of
exasperation we say, “because I said so!”
Now believe
it or not, that is a perfectly legitimate answer. It is also a true statement—your
kids should obey simply because you have asked them to do something. But why is
that? Who made you the boss? This is really the direction that we must go in
answering the “why” question—we must point our children not to ourselves as the
final authority, but to the one who is the final authority, God Himself.
Our
position of leadership and authority over our children comes from God. We do
not have this position simply because we’re stronger than them or because we’ve
been alive longer than them and therefore should be wiser than they are.
Perhaps our children should have a sense of gratitude, since we have raised
them, but ultimately we as parents should remember what Jesus said to Pontius
Pilate in John 19:11—“You would have no
authority…unless it had been given you from above.”
So
ultimately, teaching our children why they should obey us is a matter of
teaching them why they should obey God, since He is the one who has commanded
them to obey us. Pointing our children to God as the final authority is very
helpful for at least two reasons. First, it keeps us from putting our parenting
efforts in terms of a power struggle or a “battle of the wills” between us and
our children. Sometimes our children are all-too-willing to jump into that
battle because they’ve seen us in action, and they know that if they push the
right buttons, they may come out on top! But instead of setting ourselves up as
the final authority, we need to point them to God—the One with whom they really
must come to terms. Instead of your will versus my will, its your will versus
God’s will, and even kids understand that that’s a very different situation.
Second,
when we point them to God, we play the role of our child’s advocate rather than
their adversary. As we point them to God, we can explain to them that no one is
exempt from obeying God—not even mommy and daddy! We’re simply teaching them to
obey God because that’s what we’re required to do, too! This idea sends a
powerful message to our kids that we’re all in the same boat. We can teach them
that even mommy and daddy and don’t get to play by a different set of rules.
Through this process we begin to focus their attention on God, and then we can
give them the good news of the Gospel and teach them how the Gospel empowers
them to obey.
So teaching our
children why they should obey ultimately revolves around teaching them the
basics of why they should obey God. In the rest of our time this morning, I’m
going to give you a basic answer to this question so you will know what kind of
ideas you should pass along to your children.
Why Should I Obey God?
1. To avoid the negative
consequences of disobedience
A.
Punishment from those in authority
1)
Parents
When we
punish our children for disobedience, we give them a very concrete example of
the negative consequences of sin. If we are consistent in this, it becomes very
clear to them that disobedience brings punishment, but obedience allows them to
avoid punishment—and may even bring with it a reward, which we will discuss
more in a moment.
Kids can
learn this lesson from their earliest days. If there’s one thing I’ve learned
with my daughter, its that she is always capable of understanding more than I
think she can. I am confident that that’s true of kids in general, so start
training them from their earliest days. When they start crawling and they start
touching things that you don’t want them to touch, a firm “no” and a swat on
the hand will do. And to help them learn how to avoid that punishment, touch
their hand to the object again and say, “no.” Don’t swat their hand if you’re
the one who’s touching their hand to the object, but touch their hand to it and
say “no” a few times, and they’ll get the picture.
2)
Legal authorities
As our kids
get older, we’ll have the chance to teach them that some actions are not just
sinful, they are also illegal, and they may have to face punishment from the
courts if they do certain things. They may have to pay a costly fine or spend
time doing community service or even spend time in jail. But all of these
consequences can be avoided by obeying God, because God commands us in Romans
13 to obey the government, unless the government commands us to disobey Him. So
in most circumstances, if we obey God we won’t find ourselves on the wrong side
of the law.
3) God
Hebrews 12
states that because God loves us, He Himself may discipline and punish us when
necessary. Far from being an expression of hatred, this is actually an
expression of love. Hebrews 12:6 says, “the Lord
disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” Then
v. 10 says, “he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.”
So God’s
discipline can help us learn the hard way, but its still preferable to learn
the easy way by obeying God in the first place! If we choose to obey, we will
not only bear fruit for God, but we will avoid some of these negative
consequences as well.
B.
Psychological suffering (guilt, anxiety, etc.)
When we
disobey, we will commonly experience troubling emotions until we confess our
sin. In Psalm 32:3-4, King David wrote than when he failed to confess his sin “my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For
day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the
heat of summer.” What a sad situation, and what a situation to avoid by
choosing to obey rather than disobey!
C.
Shame at the moment of Christ’s return
Christ’s
return to this world should be a moment that we highly anticipate, but we might
actually feel shame and embarrassment in that moment if we are not following
Him closely. In 1 John 2:28, the Apostle John writes, “Little
children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not
shrink from him in shame at his coming.” What a sad thought, to think
that that glorious moment might actually bring the sting of shame into our
hearts rather than a shout of celebration. But this can be avoided if we choose
to obey, and when we fail, if we choose to quickly seek forgiveness from God
and others.
2. To enjoy the pleasant results
of obedience
A.
The knowledge of bringing glory to God
This is the
idea of giving God the honor and recognition that He deserves. We can certainly
do this in our own lives, but we can actually inspire the people around us to
give greater honor to God as well. Matthew 5:16 says,
“let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and
give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” If we are grateful to God
for all that He has done to save us and bring us into His own family, we should
desire to see that He receives the honor and recognition that He deserves, and
we work toward that goal by obeying Him.
B.
The normal fruits of obedience
The book of
Proverbs lays out for us the normal outcomes of a wide range of choices. Now
God may have other purposes at work in our lives at times—such as in the book
of Job when God allowed that godly man to go through a time of suffering—but in
general, when we choose to obey God, we will enjoy good things such as greater
confidence, peace of mind, stronger friendships, stronger marriages,
prosperity, long life, productivity, and many other blessings such as these.
Obedience puts us in the position to receive these blessings rather than the
bitter fruit of disobedience.
C.
The reward of an honored position of service in Christ’s future kingdom
According
to Scripture, when Jesus returns to this Earth, He will establish a kingdom
over which He will reign for 1,000 years. When He does, He will reward His
faithful followers with honored positions of service for Him. The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis actually
gives us a great way to pass this idea down to our children. The first
book in particular—The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe—puts this lesson
front-and-center in the plot (many of you may have seen this movie). When the
great lion, Aslan (who represents Jesus) takes back control of Narnia from the
White Witch (who represents Satan), Aslan gives authority to rule Narnia to
human beings—the four Pevensie children, whom the book calls “the sons of Adam
and the daughters of Eve,” which points us back to Genesis 1-2 and the plan
that God had for us in the first place to have authority over this world under
Him.
The plot of
that story is thoroughly biblical and thus provides us with a great tool that
we can use to teach our children about this powerful motivation to obey Christ.
These ideas
that we’ve discussed today form the essence of the answer to the question that
our children have about why they should obey. The core principle is to point
them to God as the final authority over their lives. The best way to do that is
to model that kind of attitude yourself. Certainly we can communicate these
ideas with our words as we have the opportunity, but nothing is more powerful
than a living example of these lessons.
Think about
this—when Jesus was born into the world, God had already spoken to people
through words for thousands of years. But in Jesus, the apostle John says that
“the Word became flesh.” Jesus became a living example of everything that God
had spoken to mankind for thousands of years.
In a
similar way, we can become a living example of these lessons for our children,
and our example will far exceed any words that we ever speak. Over the last few
weeks, we have learned for ourselves what we should do, how we can do it, and
why we should do it. Let us embrace these lessons for ourselves and then our
children will see clearly the path that they should embrace.
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