A Return To Civility: 5 Honour Your Parents Series

Civility 5

A little change in direction here.

We started this series on the Ten Commandments, back in June and after the first four commandments, there’s about to be an abrupt turn.

Last week, knowing that this week was going to be one of our three family Sundays this summer, I spoke on Commandment # 6, which of course is found in Exodus 20:13 You must not murder. I figured that might not be the most appropriate one with kids in the room, but I don’t know your family. Maybe you were hoping for a little pastoral reinforcement on how your kids are to treat their siblings.

And now we are going back to commandment # 5.

Let’s start with The What

The first four commandments dealt with our relationship with God. They were what I think of as vertical commands. With number five they have become horizontal commands in that they deal with our relationships with one another.

You might remember the first commandment was to not replace God, the second command was to not reduce God, the third was to not mock God, and the fourth was to honour God by celebrating His Sabbath.

But now the commands take a different direction, it’s as if God is saying, “Now that you’ve got our relationship straight let’s work on your relationship with others”. And so we go from the vertical to the horizontal.

And so, the fifth commandment reads Exodus 20:12 “Honour your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

Interestingly, the child-parent relationship is the only personal relationship one that makes it into the Ten Commandments. We don’t see any reference on how to treat our spouse, other than the obvious do not commit adultery in the seventh command, or how to treat our children but we are told here that we must honour our parents.

And as I said, this is a turning point, but I also think it is a pivotal point, because how we view our parents is often coloured by how we view God. When we are little, our parents are de facto God for us. At least in the minds of little children, parents are all knowing and all seeing and hopefully loving and protecting.

They provide for us, and they take care of us, they can do what we can’t do, and we are completely dependent on them. I read once that when you feed and take care of a dog it thinks you are God, when you feed and take care of a cat it thinks it’s God.

And so, when we have accepted that we are to honour God, not reduce him and not to belittle him, that helps us to honour those that we viewed as God for so long.

And it is a circle, if you find it hard to honour and respect God, you will find it hard to honour and respect your parents. And conversely, if you find it hard to honour and respect your parents, you will find it hard to honour and respect God.

And I know, there are some of you listening today, either here in person or online, that this is really tough for.

You didn’t have a great relationship with either one or both of their parents. It may have been a physically or sexually abusive relationship. Or perhaps it was a controlling or a cold and distant relationship. And the thought of honouring those who you would consider dishonourable is tying you up in knots inside.

And I don’t want to minimize the hurt and trauma you are feeling. It is interesting that word that was used in the original language for honour, shares it’s root with the word hard or difficult. And it’s not always easy to honour someone who was dishonourable.

And God isn’t asking you to pretend it never happened. He doesn’t want you to fake it until you make it.

And he’s not asking you to put those feelings out of sight and to just get on with honouring someone who has betrayed you and hurt you.

Hopefully, some of those questions will be answered this morning.

Now that we’ve seen the what, let’s look at The How

I’ve spoken on the parent child relationship before and how it changes and evolves at different stages in our lives.

We often think that our relationship as children and parents takes a parallel path through life. But oftentimes, it looks more like this.

When we are young, we are dependent on our parents, and it is their responsibility to take care of us.

When we become adults, that relationship changes and comes closer together as we are more like peers, never quite peers but more like peers and then many times, as our parents age, their children take more of a role in the caretaking department—assuming responsibilities and making decisions.