Children, Obey your parents (Part 1 Role of Children)

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”Just as marriage is an illustration of Christ and His church, so also the relationship between parents and children illustrates that of the Father with us. Jesus speaking of little children, in Matt 19:14, said that to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. Children are completely dependent. They are sinners and rebellious, but in spite of their faults, we nurture them and take care of them. We stand between them and danger to protect them and we intercede for them when needed. This is what God in Christ does for us daily. Children do not earn their place in our families. It is given to them by the grace of God, just as we find a place in the family of God by sovereign grace.
It is an opportunity to praise God for His gift to us for our children and to raise them well in the admonition of the Lord. In some ways, society is portrayed as valuing children but when we see how abortion is engaged it, it is obvious that babies are often regarded as inconvenient and are sacrificed to the gods of pleasure and convenience. Societal pressures, such as pressuring women to put their children in daycare and go to work, hide the truth that raising children for His glory is a tremendous blessing. According to Psalm 127:3, “Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward.” Children are a blessing. We are blessed to give up certain comforts to serve and raise our children. Children are not sinless little angels, but they are born fallen, and God needs to give us much instruction and grace to raise them.
Eph 6:1-3 speaks of Recipients of the command, Requirements, and the Reward of obedience.
RECIPIENTS: “Children, obey your parents . . .”
Children are being addressed directly, which is quite rare in the scriptures, and so there are three implications: 1 Children are of significant value to God, valuable enough for God to speak directly to them instead of waiting for them to grow up. 2 Children have responsibility before God. He expects them to understand their calling to obey and submit to their parents. 3 Children were involved in the worshiping community of Paul’s day, and were expected to be present in the public worship service, where the letter would be read and expounded. In many churches today, children do not sit through the service and spend a significant duration of time in another program created for their age bracket. Although well-intentioned,
WE KNOW THAT CHILDREN’S CHURCH DOES NOT WORK BECAUSE 1. STATISTICALLY CHILDREN LEAVING HOME CONTRIBUTE TO THE HIGH LEVEL (60-90%) OF DROPOUTS FROM CHURCH. Sadly, the vast majority of this number were never raised to appreciate the worship service. Throughout history, including Biblical history, one of the major ways of church growth was through children being raised by godly parents and then added to the number of the saved. Even the most godly households have raised ungodly children, but the expectation is that they will hold to the faith of their parents. But nowadays the expectation seems to have changed, with children regularly not being a part of worship in the family and in the church. Although Proverbs 22:6 is not a promise, it is still a proverb and general truth: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
CHILDREN’S CHURCH DOES NOT WORK BECAUSE 2. IT IS NOT BIBLICAL. When you look in the scriptures to see what the children were doing when adults gathered together for worship, it is clear that they were present and participated with the adults. 2 Chron 20:13 records that when Jehoshaphat stood at the temple, “All the men of Judah, with their wives and children and little ones, stood there before the Lord.” When Jesus fed the 5000, the Bible tells us in Matt 14:21 that “The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children,” which makes it clear that children were a part of the long day’s gathering. This text from Ephesians 6:1, which expects children to be present when Paul’s letter is read, is yet another example. On the other hand, if you look for examples when children were excluded from public worship, you cannot find any case. In fact in Matthew 19, we see Jesus rebuking His disciples for hindering them from coming to Him. We sin when we push aside our children and prevent them from coming to Church. It does not mean that children need to be included in everything that the church does, but they should be there when we gather for worship.
REQUIREMENTS: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother.”
Scripture recognises three forms of government ordained by God—church, state, and family. Each form of government has its own God-given scope of authority as well as limitation to that authority.
The CHURCH’s purpose and scope of authority is to fulfill the great commission, to appoint elders to teach and deacons to serve, and to bind and loose through church discipline. The authority of the church is limited in that it cannot impose anything not permitted in scripture nor condemn what is not condemned in scripture.
The STATE’s authority is to make laws that are for the common good of the people and to punish evil doers. The state has no authority over the worship of God’s people, to prevent us from doing what God has commanded, or to force us to do what God has forbidden. (The government’s greatest corruption is its failure to protect the unborn, the most vulnerable among us.)
Similarly, the FAMILY has its own God-given scope of authority and limitation of that authority. The family has the authority to have children, exercise authority over them, and raise them up in the instruction of the Lord. As with other forms of government, the family’s authority is also limited. It cannot command a child to do something that is contrary to scripture or prevent the child from doing something that is commanded in scripture. When a believing child has unbelieving parents, the situation is similar to that of a believing wife with an unbelieving husband. For example if the wife were asked to stop going to church, she must submit in everything to her husband from Monday to Saturday, but she should go to church on Sundays. Similarly, if in the providence of God, a child should come to a place where they place their trust in Jesus as their Saviour, and if the child has the age and capacity to get to church on a Sunday, then ideally, they should go to church even if the parents do not want them to. But they should be obedient and submissive in everything else. A parent who teaches their child to do something immoral should be disobeyed.
What does IN THE LORD mean? Does it mean that children should obey their parents only if they are believers? No, it means that they ought to obey primarily out of a sense of service and love for the Lord. Col 3:20 “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” Children must not be firstly motivated by love for parents or fear of discipline from parents. But it should be out of love for the Lord. It is true that parents have done much for children, but there is One, far more worthy, who loves the child more than parents can. Children do not obey parents because they deserve it, but because it pleases the Lord.
UP TO WHAT AGE DOES THIS COMMAND APPLY? It is limited to the time when children are living under the parent’s authority. However, it must be noted that Paul quotes from Ex 20:12, the passage about honouring parents for which there is no time limit. In Matt 15, we read how Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for having tampered with that commandment. Jesus expects that children honour their parents and take care of them in their old age. The honouring of parents was high on the Lord’s list, as we can see in Lev 19:2-3, which records some of the instruction the Lord gave Moses, that would set God’s people apart from other nations, “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am the LORD your God.”
REWARDS: “(this is the first commandment with a promise), that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.”What land is Paul referring to? In the original passage in Exodus 20, ‘land’ refers to the Promised land. The church in Ephesus did not live in that land nor were they expected to. Some have thought that this scripture simply promises long life for obedient children. But we see some of the godliest children do die, which would make this text more of a proverb than a promise. In fact, the ‘land’ mentioned here refers to our promised land, which is the land of which the promised land of the Old Testament was a type and a shadow. It refers to the new heaven and new earth that we await. It is the land that Abraham looked forward to. “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. . . But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” (Heb 11:10,16). In Hebrews 4, it is spoken of as the ‘rest’ that remains for God’s people. As the kingdom of God from the future breaks into the present, we start to enter this land.
Children, obeying your parents is more than keeping them off your back, or earning their praise. It is literally about heaven and about worship to our God. It is what heaven-bound children ought to do, because it pleases the Lord.