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East Ridge SDA Church

Eric Nelson

Rachel Nelson

Child Raising Tips: First Time Obedience

A family of 4, a mother, a father, and a six-year-old girl and a two-year-old girl were out walking 1 autumn afternoon.

The mother and the six-year-old were enjoying playing in the leaves, kicking the leaves, picking them up, letting them fall down.

The two-year-old wandered between the mother and her father, who had just gotten himself a new camera and was enjoying trying to photograph the leaves up close, as well as a few trees and other random objects that he thought were camera worthy.

The mother and six-year-old were wandering up ahead and saw a nice pile of leaves across the road, decided that they would go across the road and see if they could jump in the leaves.

Looked both ways, started across the road.

As sometimes happens in families, the mother thought the two-year-old was with the father and the father thought the two-year-old was with the mother.

In actuality, the two-year-old was sort of somewhere in transit between 2 parents.

She saw the mother and sister cross the road and just as they got to the other side she decided she wanted to catch up to mama.

It would be much more interesting to go play in the leaves than sit and try to bother daddy with the camera.

So she started to toddle across the road.

Dad looks up just as she's getting ready to step across the road and to his horror sees a huge black SUV coming far above the 25 mile per hour speed limit in their neighborhood headed right for the two-year-old where she was going to step across.

He had just seconds to save her life and he yelled for all he was worth, Suzy, sit down!

Is obeying your parents important specifically?

I believe that submitting to authorities in your life is probably 1 of the most important determinants of success or failure.

If you're not able to submit to your parents' authority, will you be able to submit to a boss's authority?

Will teaching your children obedience affect their eternal destiny?

What we'd like to do this evening is, first of all, look at a few Bible passages because it turns out the Bible says a lot about parenting.

And we're going to briefly look at those, and I'll lead out in that section, and then Rachel will talk about some very practical tips on how to implement some of the principles that the Bible outlines.

So first of all, let's look at some of these Bible passages together.

Now, I believe that you will know almost all of these.

If you do have a Bible, feel free to look some of them up.

You all remember what's in Exodus 20, right?

It turns out right in the middle of the 10 Commandments there's something about parenting, isn't there?

The Fifth Commandment says, honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long, etc.

And this is a very important command, in fact it's so important Paul quotes it twice in the New Testament, once word for word and 1 place he paraphrases it.

You all know Ephesians chapter 6 verse 1, Paul interprets the fifth commandment by saying, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is, this is right.

That's what he says the fifth commandment means.

And then he quotes it and then he points out that this is the first commandment with promise.

So, parenting and obedience to parents is so important, it's in the 10 Commandments.

But does honoring your parents go beyond obedience?

Doesn't it seem like it's a word that suggests an attitude of submission.

It's like honoring your parents, not only obeying them, but it's more than obeying them.

Proverbs 22 verse 6, that's train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Does the Bible say to tell a child the way he should go?

I don't know what you think when you think of that word, you know, training up a child.

How many of you have ever raised, I don't know, either beans or cucumbers or grapes or any other sort of vine in your garden.

At least in my garden, when you plant a seed and it's gonna be some sort of vine, the vine goes everywhere, doesn't it?

Without training, it climbs this way, that way.

Some of the tendrils will climb up the trellis, but a lot of it will just climb out of your garden and go across your yard, right?

Do you wait until the vine is, I don't know, 3 or 4 feet long and then try to make it stand upright on the trellis like it's supposed to?

You have to start very early and very gently, very consistently, and persistently take these little tiny tendrils and wrap them around the trellis to train the vine where it is you want it to go, right?

It's a very consistent, persistent process that starts very, very early, and I think the same is true for kids.

We don't want our kids just to go everywhere, right?

We don't want them to grow all the other places they might grow.

Genesis 18 verse 19 is talking about Abraham, and it gives us 1 reason that God saw that He could trust Abraham to be the father of the faithful, 1 reason He gave His covenant to Abraham.

God said, I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him.

That's 1 reason, and then he explains, this is why I'm going to give him the covenant.

I will, I know him that he will command his children after him.

Do you kind of sense in that phrase that it wasn't just that Abraham was telling his kids what to do, but he was giving them an example?

He would never ask them to do something that he wasn't doing himself.

And this, I think, is 1 of these keys of parenting that is highly convicting for Rachel and I as we think about it.

It is not possible to ask your children to do something that you're not willing to do yourself.

If you are not surrendered to the authorities in your life, it will not work to ask your children to surrender to your authority as their parent.

Children, especially as they start to get a little older, are very sensitive to hypocrisy, right?

We know teenagers, they just hate hypocrites, right?

Our kids will know it and they will not respect us.

Deuteronomy 6, verses 5 through 9, this is a fascinating passage about parenting.

You know verse 5, this is what Jesus called the greatest commandment, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength.

And then it follows up with advice about parenting.

I'm not going to go off about Bible memorization tonight, although I could, because that's what verse 6 is about.

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and look it up.

It says, these words which I command thee this day shall be in thy heart.

If you love God with all your heart, what do you think you might put in your heart?

You might put his words there, wouldn't you?

And the reason God's Word needs to be in your heart is because of what verse 7 says.

Verse 7 says, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto your children.

And then it lists a whole bunch of times that you're supposed to talk about God's Word.

And these are the words that the children of Israel had memorized, they were in their heart and they're going to talk about them to their children.

And I think it's, I don't even remember it, they're walking by the way, you're sitting down, you're rising up, you're lying down, it's pretty much all the time you're going to talk to your children about the Bible.

And then the next 2 verses, verses 8 and 9, tell you 4 places that God's Word needs to be a controlling influence in your life as a parent if you want to be successful in training your children.

God's Word needs to guide every single thing you do.

God's Word needs to guide everything that you look at and everything that you think about.

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Child Raising Tips: First Time Obedience

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