Gospel Invitation for Kids

Let me take a moment just to speak to the kids. Anyone that is still living under their parents roof all anywhere from five to 17.

God wants you to obey your parents. To love them, and follow them, and do what they say.

And God promises you something if you honor your father and mother. That it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.

What that means is if you honor your father and mother, you will have a blessed life. Why?

Because when you obey your mom and dad, even when you think they are wrong, even when you think they are unfair, even when you think that they don’t get it, you are really obeying the Lord.

Paul says obey your parents in the Lord. How you honor and obey your parents gives you a picture of how much you honor and obey Jesus.

So parents, when you are trying to teach obedience to your children keep the main thing the main thing.

Yes. You deserve your children’s obedience. But your primary goal in discipline is not to punish your children for sinning against you, but sinning against the Lord.

You want to help your children learn obedience ultimately so that they will learn to obey God.

This is why we need to pray for patience and wisdom because our temptation is to only care about their obedience as it relates to us, so that when they sin, which they will, we unleash our anger and our wrath on our children.

When instead, we need to discipline our children like the Lord disciplines us. Not in his wrath. Christ satisfied that. But with grace, patience, and understanding to help them learn obedience from the heart to the Lord, and not just behavior modification to satisfy us.

And kids, coming back to you. You cannot do this on your own. Before God gave any of these commands, he said we needed to be filled with the Spirit.

All of us are sinners. We don’t just do bad things, we are bad people. We don’t want to obey our parents, and we don’t want to obey God even though we know we should.

That’s why the Bible says we are slaves to sin.

And because we are sinners, we are enemies of God. We are not right with him, and instead we are under his judgment.

But God loved us, and sent his Son Jesus to live a sinless life on our behalf, and he died on the cross to pay for every single one of our sins. And three days later he rose from the dead to free us from sin and give us eternal life.

To fill us with the Holy Spirit to make us new from the inside out so that by believing in Jesus we want to love God more than we want to sin.

And God gives this salvation as a gift to anyone who believes in Jesus.

Being really good doesn’t make God forgive us. And God doesn’t want us to punish ourselves to try and convince him that we really are sorry for sinning against him.

All he wants is for us to believe in Jesus. To say, Jesus, I’m sorry for my sin. I know that you died on the cross and rose again to forgive me for everything bad I’ve ever done or ever will do. I love you. Will you please save me?

And you know what God promises to save you, and to give you the Holy Spirit to help you love God with all your heart.

So if that’s you today, talk to your Dad and Mom, or come talk to me and we will help you see what it looks like to follow Jesus.