Planned Parenthood Series

What If They’re Wrong Series Exodus 20:12 “Planned Parenthood”

We’ve been looking at the Ten Commandments in a series called "What If They’re Wrong."

So far we’ve looked at the first four Commandments.

These first four Commandments deal with our relationship with God.

Once Jesus was asked by an "expert" in the law what the greatest commandment was.

Jesus summed up those first four commandments and placed what was at the heart of those commandments into one profound commandment.

He said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;"

(Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27)

That’s the essence of the first four commandments.

Our culture says we don’t need God - that we can do just fine taking care of ourselves

What we’ve seen over the last four weeks is that we do, in fact, need God.

We need God because He not only gave us as standard to live by, He is that standard.

We need God because we travel down some dangerous paths in our search for fulfillment in life.

God provides all the joy, peace, and fulfillment we could ever hope to achieve.

We need God because He is a relational God.

His name describes His character.

He is a personal and loving God who desires the best for His creation.

He’s a God who gave the best for His creation.

We need God because we need someone good and wholesome to focus on as we live in the rat race of life.

We need God.

Today we start looking at those commands that focus on our relationship with each other.

When Jesus was giving his answer to that "expert" in the law, he went on to say that the second great commandment was similar to the first, "...Love your neighbour as yourself."

These next six commandments teach us how to relate to each other.

This morning we’ll look at the fifth commandment, "Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you."

It’s not by accident that the first commandment dealing with our relationships with each other focuses on the family.

God ordained the family, so family is extremely important to him.

There’s an old Jewish story about a Rabbi who was sitting next to an atheist on an airplane. The Rabbi’s family was also on the plane. Every few minutes, one of the rabbi’s children or grandchildren would come by and him ask if he needed anything - more food, a blanket, etc. The atheist remarked, "The respect your children and grandchildren show you is wonderful. Mine certainly don’t show me that kind of respect." The rabbi replied, "Well, think about it for a minute. To my children and grandchildren, I am one step closer in the chain of tradition to a time when God spoke to the whole Jewish people from Mount Sinai. To your children and grandchildren, you are one step closer to being an ape."

The command says that if we honor our father and mother we will live long in the land the Lord our God is giving us.

Have you noticed how mobile our society is these days?

I don’t think we’re getting the promise attached to this command.

Fact is, we don’t honor our fathers and mothers.

In fact, we don’t really honor anybody!

Our culture says we don’t have to.

Our culture tells us that we must do whatever is in our best interest.

We are individuals.

We don’t have to answer to anyone.

Our culture tells us to answer the question, "What’s in it for me?"

If there’s nothing in it for me, then why bother?

But God says you need to ask, "What’s in it for somebody else?"

That’s hard for us to do, but the result of not asking and acting on that question is that we have raised a culture that has no respect for anything or anybody.

Respect is a learned trait.

It doesn’t really come naturally.

I want to share with you two causes of lack of respect in our culture today, then I want to share with you some tips on how to regain the respect of our children.

I. Over-discipline causes lack of respect.

What I mean is this: how much discipline is enough?

My father’s idea of discipline, when I was spanking age, was to smack me 25 times with a belt. I had to count each one. He gave me 3 tries to get the next number out. If I "struck out" he started over. Now, I’d almost always get to 23 or 24, but just couldn’t seem to get that number 25 out of my mouth. At some point he’d stop, but I can tell you I was in pain for days. When I was past spanking age, he would send me to my room for a month at a time. I usually didn’t have a clue what I’d done wrong. That’s over-discipline.