Summary: Kids WILL ask questions, won’t they? How do you handle those times? An examination of principles for training your children when they ask those tough questions.

Daddy, why do we close our eyes when we pray?

Why do we pray to God and not to Buddah?

Why do we have to go to church?

Why do we have to live so different? Why can’t we be like…

Every parent has faced them: Those innocent questions from the angelic faces of children -- or sometimes it’s the antagonistic questions flung over a shoulder as a teenager retreats to his/her room… hopefully that’s not the case with any of the parents that are here today But unfortunately, it does happen often to good Christian Fathers

But God NEVER leaves us without direction From this passage we learn a critical truth about being the fathers we need to be. That critical truth is simply this:

To answer children’s questions concerning faith, a father must know where he has been, know what God has done for him, and be commited to continual obedience to God’s Word.

INTRO MATERIAL:

One interesting note about this passage: Notice the attitude of the Father to the questioning of the child. He simply responds to the question. He does not get angry and say, How dare you question the ancient landmarks Don’t you know that we Jews have been doing this for generations?

I think the lesson that we can learn from this is:

Don’t be AFRAID OF QUESTIONS Some people might think, Not MY kids They’ll NEVER question the heritage they were raised with I’m sorry to burst that bubble… But if you are living your life according to the Word of God and striving for holiness of lifestyle, your kids WILL ask questions.

We think of babies as the little pictures of innocence, but God’s Word says in Psalm 58:3 that they too go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies. No one, apart from cooperating with the grace of God, naturally tends toward following God’s Word Isaiah 53:6 tells us that All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way… So if you are following God’s Word carefully, you are going to encounter some questions, probably even some opposition from your children -- they just naturally desire to turn to their own way.

The key, then, is not to try to squelch or dismiss the questions that come, but to answer them honestly in the light of truth as God has revealed it, and in light of your experience.

God speaks through Moses here, giving us a set of solid Biblical principles to help us deal with raising our children, specifically

In order to answer your children’s questions concerning faith, you must know:

I. Where We Have Been "…he [God] passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt…" (v. 27)

God did not want the Israelites to forget that without him, they’d still be in Egypt. Keeping that sense of where they had been would keep them admitting their dependence on God, a valuable thing that they needed to pass on to their children.

Now obviously, we’ve not been in the country of Egypt, but the principle carries over and applies to our lives. Where have we been? Where would we be without God?

- We’ve been in sin. Sometimes that’s a hard one to admit. We tend to think we’re pretty good people, overall. Although we’d never say it, it’s easy to almost feel as though we deserved God’s grace. Occasionally we need to simply pause and remember that we were hopelessly lost and without God, and could never deserve His great love and mercy, no matter what our background.

- If we forget where we’ve been, or what we would be NOW if not for grace, we will lose all sense of NEED of GOD! We’ll start to feel pretty good about ourselves. Isn’t that American mentality of lifting myself up by my own bootstraps and doing it MY way is SO ingrained in us? It can give us BIG problems spiritually if we are not very careful.

God’s Word tells us that God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

Anyone here want grace? Boy, I do So I want to stay humble: I want to remember that I was once dead in trespasses and sin.

But that would be a depressing place to leave ourselves -- because we know that although we were dead in trespasses and sin, God DID NOT LEAVE us there We must remember:

II. What God Has Done (v. 27) "…when He smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses."

Imagine for a moment that you are an Israelite in Egypt… staying inside your house, blood over the door, as you begin to hear the screams from the surrounding countryside as Egyptian fathers and mothers discover that their children are dead Something about that would imprint itself deep on your heart -- it would be hard to lose the memory of what God had done. Again, we’ve not been inside our house while God wreaked havoc on the Egyptians in our neighborhood. But the principle applies to us still:

I hope you never lose the wonder at what God has done in your life. It may not always be as dramatic a feeling as it was when you first were saved, but if we ever lose the awesomeness of Jesus…of God becoming man… of salvation by grace through faith…we’re in big trouble So for the principle to transfer to our lives, we must:

A. Be sure that God has done something in your life. If he hasn’t, don’t leave without him making sure that you have come out of your Egypt.

B. Be certain to share what God has done. It doesn’t do any good if God has done something in your life, and your kids don’t know it Well, what God did for me is between me and him NONSENSE Your children need to hear you testify Your children NEED to hear you pray to the God who has answered your prayers before I’m not pulling that out of the air, I am drawing that from this verse of Scripture, where God COMMANDED parents to testify, to repeat to their children what God had done in their life

So if you know WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN and you know WHAT GOD HAS DONE, you have laid a firm foundation for our last principle from the text:

III. What We Must Do (v. 24) "…ye shall observe this thing…forever."

We are to observe this thing , God says. This thing of course, is the Passover celebration that God had instituted in the earlier part of this chapter. Now the ceremonial law being done away in Christ, we no longer observe the Passover in the same way that they did, with the bitter herbs, the blood on the doorposts, etc. But just as before, the principles CLEARLY transfers to our lives:

We must:

A. Obey the Word of God carefully.

Now where do I draw carefully from this verse of Scripture? It is not explicitly stated

Let’s look at this word observe and see how it is translated other places in Scripture:

Exodus 21:29 But if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner and he hath not kept him in…

Judges 7:19 says that Gideon set the watch or the guard

Judges 13:4 says that we ought to beware…and not drink wine -- the word beware is the same word translated observe .

Do you see the implication of such a command? WATCHING -- BEWARE -- GUARDING -- FENCING IN -- OBSERVING the commandments of the Lord is not something that happens automatically or accidentally

Our children are looking for something that is so real that it requires us to give ourselves completely to it! Something -- I use this word carefully -- RADICAL!

The kind of Christianity that makes God something more than a nice feeling I get sometimes… something more than a divine grandfather that I take out of the box and go to church with on Sunday… I mean something more than a religion!

I’m talking about a consuming relationship with God through Jesus Christ that gets outside of the walls of church and into your music rack and your entertainment choices, and your literature choices and your time usage and your budgets and your attitudes!

Whatever questions our children have, and however much they may oppose our directions, the one thing that cannot change is this: OBEDIENCE TO GOD’S WORD IS NOT UP FOR GRABS (so to speak) It’s NOT DEBATABLE or OPTIONAL Your children, sir, whether they show it on the surface or not, will respect a man that is committed enough to what he believes to square his jaw, and say, Whether it feels good or hurts, whether I feel like doing it today or not, whether I fit in with others or not -- I WILL obey God’s Word Fail in this area, and you lose the battle, and stand a good chance of losing the war

A friend of mine who lives in another state related a story to me. He was driving too fast, children egging him on -- when he got stopped, he just laughed at the police officer. "I’ve got a relative that works in the courthouse, he told the officer. I’ll just get this taken care of." And he did.

Now natural desires at that point might want to say, Way to go -- HA HA HA -- way to beat the rap But if we get honest with ourselves, we’d have to say… ???What ungodliness! My Bible says, "Obey them that have the rule over you!" And if you don’t -- recognize that the ability to punish lawbreakers has been given them by God

My heart BLEEDS for that friend of mine! For now I can look at the lives of his children and see how that philosophy has taken them down a road that has led to the total rejection of their parents lifestyle. They have broken homes, and wrecked lives -- because their parents had not given themselves completely to following the Word of God!

B. Obey the Word of God continually. Forever is the way our text put it.

There’s no EASY way to do that -- it’s a day by day, moment-by-moment, grit your teeth and do it commitment

The GOOD NEWS is that we CAN obey God’s Word Though God doesn’t promise here that your kids will automatically say, OH, OK. I get it, God always honors loving obedience Gal. 6:4 tells us Don’t be deceived, ANYTHING you sow you’ll reap We look at that so often as a negative, gloom-and-doom threat… that is one of the GREATEST promises God ever made

Sow loving obedience to God’s Word, and you’ll reap the benefits. The Bible also tells us that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children to the third and the fourth generation. But I don’t think we do wrong to believe the converse of that statement -- God visits the loving obedience of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations

Fathers, you can obey God’s Word You can be faithful to the task You can be consistent models by the grace of God

I’m reminded of the story of a scientist who was conducting an experiment to observe the laws of transfer and conservation of energy. He hung a huge iron ball from the ceiling of his laboratory with a thick cable supporting its massive weight. Next to that iron ball, he hung by a string a small ball made of cork. He hooked a small electrical motor to that string, and began the small cork ball swinging and hitting the side of the iron ball. Day in and day out, consistently, that little cork ball swung and struck the huge side of the iron ball. At first, there was no evidence that it was doing anything at all. Then after some time, you began to see -- the iron ball was moving in harmony with the little cork ball. It began to swing wider and wider, those many pounds of iron moving because of the consistency of a little cork ball.

Fathers -- I know that sometimes, the parenting job looks WAY to big to overcome. Sometimes our children will raise questions. Some days you may not see progress, and you feel like you are beating your head against a brick wall.

BUT - -

Just keep tapping. Consistently. Without missing a beat. Know where you’ve been. Know where you’d be without the grace of God. Know what God’s done in your life. Don’t be afraid to share it. Faithfully…without apology…continually…carefully… obey the Word of God. It won’t be long before you find that God has used your faithfulness to begin to harmonize YOUR child’s life with what He wants for them.

To answer our children’s questions concerning the faith, we have to know where we’ve been, what God has done for us, and be committed to careful, continual obedience to God’s Word.