Honor Your Father

Honor Your Father

Ephesians 6:1-7

Introduction: In God’s Word we are commanded to honor our fathers. To honor someone is to give them particular attention; high or special regard. Someone has said, “Honor is, therefore, the exact opposite of thoughtlessness and neglect. It conveys a sense of enormous importance to the thing to which it is given. It is an expression of value and worth.” (Copied) Honoring both our earthly fathers and our Heavenly Father is not meant for just the third Sunday in June but is to be done everyday of our life. Allow me to give you three ways to do this.

I. Show respect for who he is

A. Ephesians 6:1-3 “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”

B. It's the father's duty to be the head of the family.

C. 1 Corinthians 11:3 "But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.”

D. Being the head is not about being a tyrant or dictator. A father has great responsibilities to his wife and to his children.

E. Ephesians 5:25-27 “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.”

F. Ephesians 6:4 “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

G. Being the head of the family is about lovingly providing for and guiding the family in the will of God and into a closer relationship with God.

H. "One night after my fifteen-year-old boy had been sent home for insubordination to college authority for the second time, I slept but little. Then next morning after breakfast I cut a good switch and rehearsed to my boy his course of disobedience. I told him to take off his coat. He replied, 'I won't do it.' I looked him in the face and said: 'My boy, I am your father; you are my son. I promised God Almighty on my knees last night that I would control you, and I will whip you here this morning or you and I will die in this woodland. Take off your coat, sir.' He saw in my eye for the first time in his life the spirit of authority. He drew his coat in a moment, and I gave him a sound thrashing, at the conclusion of which I said, `Now kneel down with me.' We knelt together, and I told God of my own neglect and of my boy's sinful conduct, and promised God in the hearing of my boy to be faithful to my duty the remainder of my life, and prayed God's blessing on my wayward child. When we arose, he put his arms around my neck and his head on my bosom. We wept together for a long time. Then he looked up and said, 'Father, I will never give you any more trouble.' And from that day to this I have never had a care about him. He has been the most obedient son a father ever had. He is married now, an official in the church, and no truer, nobler Christian man walks the earth than my precious son."—Christian Life.

I. The respect for authority or the lack thereof of begins in the home and carries over to school, the streets, society, and in the church.

J. Deuteronomy 27:16 “Cursed is the one who treats his father or his mother with contempt.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’”

K. God expects us to respect our father and recognize his position in the family.

L. Jesus Christ set the example when as a young man of twelve he is found teaching in the Temple. Fully knowing that His father is God and that Joseph is merely His step-father note what the Scriptures tell us: Luke 2:48-51a “And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? Behold, Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, ‘How is it that ye sought Me? Wist ye not that I must be about My Father's business?’ And they understood not the saying which He spoke unto them. And He (Jesus)went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them (Mary and Joseph).”