AG: A corrupt businessman once told Mark Twain: "Before I die I mean to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud at the top."
To that Mark Twain replied: "I have a better idea. You could stay in Boston and KEEP them." (Moody Bible Institute’s Today in the Word, September, 1991, p. 32. - Found at Sermonillustrations.com)
TS: With the start of the fifth commandment, we move from a framework of our relationship to God and start to focus on the relationship we have with ourselves and others.
When Jesus summarized all the law and prophets this way:
Love God
Love Each other
This evening, we move from the commands which spell out loving God to the commands which deal with loving each other.
Verse 12 in particular is dealing with our family relationships.
Specifically the child’s duty to the parents.
“Honor your father and mother.”
This includes respect to their persons (esteeming them inwardly and out, expressed by our conduct toward them),
Obedience to their lawful commands, submission to their instructions (rebukes and corrections),
And trying to be a comfort and help.
RS: The Bible is tells us that we are responsible for giving honor to those God has put over us. Our parents are the 1st of many in a child’s life to whom we owe honor.
What God is saying, is to treat our father and mother like we would treat Him.
The intention of the Heavenly Father is that our earthly father would provide an example of who God is and how God loves.
Our fathers make lots of mistakes and sometimes can even skew our perception of the Heavenly Father. But we are responsible for what we do and how we react.
Since God knows our hearts as well as our actions, we cannot comply with the framework for our family relationship with just what we do. Our attitude needs to be one of submission.
Our inner feelings need to be respect and love.
Okay, maybe we can do that with good parents but what about the bad ones, the ones that abuse or are lost or confused on right and wrong?
Let's look at another passage to get a feel for this:
Proverbs 23:22-25
The New King James Version Chapter 23
22Listen to your father who begot you,
And do not despise your mother when she is old.
23Buy the truth, and do not sell it,
Also wisdom and instruction and understanding.
24The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice,
And he who begets a wise child will delight in him.
25Let your father and your mother be glad,
And let her who bore you rejoice.
Again, we see no exception made for quality of parents.
We must bestow honor to whom it is due by virtue of their position.
That is counter to today’s culture!
The key to societal stability is reverence and respect for parents and for their “high status” ???, cabad, is nothing else but to pay due honour to God, and to men who are in authority
Calvin, J., & Bingham, C. W. (2010). Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony (Vol. 3, p. 7). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.authority
The habit of submission to authority begins in the home.
Honor- to hold in high regard, give great weight to, hold as valuable
respect
Hold their authority in high esteem
By virtue of the fact that they are our parents
They gave us life
They deserve our honor
It is honor owed them by virtue of their position
Ephesians 6:1 NKJV
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Colossians 3:20 NKJV
Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleasing to the Lord.
It is a simple matter:
Doing what you are told to do!
Living inside the rails established by them
curfews, house rules (no running, don’t hit, etc.)
Shouldn’t have to think: just do!
It is a difficult matter!
We want to argue against this
Our rebellious nature rears its ugly head
Why?
I don’t want to....
I don’t feel like it
When the tables are turned, and they need our care, we must not withhold it.
1 Timothy 5:8 NKJV
But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
In the Bible, there was Family Security, instead of Social Security
Families took care of each other.
It was also that way in US for many generations
EX: Think about the Waltons
When that failed, the community stepped in
My Dad told me of an incident when they were young
brothers going fishing
saw a house burning
Lost all- next day, all people swarmed and rebuilt.
This is the plan God had for Israel and is a good plan still today
especially for us and our parents
This promise refers primarily to Israel’s dwelling in the promised land.
They would live long lives in the promised land
Both living long to a ripe old age
and living in the land of promise a long time (probably chief meaning).
As they kept the word of God, society would be stronger
They would be blessed with peace
They would learn to obey
They would submit to parents and in turn submit to God
Romans 13:1–2 NKJV
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.
This is were the training and practice in the home, pays off for society
We will always have authority over us
Employers
Boards
Governments
If we cannot submit at home where our parents have our best interests at heart, how will we submit to others who probably don’t.
Parents have an awesome responsibility to teach respect to children
Submission doesn’t come naturally for the human heart.
Adam and Eve demonstrated our rebellious spirit
Israel repeatedly rebelled against God
unfortunately, they didn’t learn this and their days were troubled
ONE Exception: if they command us to disobey God
Daniel and the den of lions illustrate this for us
Except for commands to disobey God- submit to authority!
That leads to the most important reason why:
Is it any wonder that people can’t accept God’s word today?
I just read of an actor who brags about tearing out Lev. 18 from Gideons Bibles in hotel rooms. Why? he is homosexual and lev. 18 which condemns all sexual immorality makes him feel guilty.
Look at what The Lord says:
Leviticus 18:24–29 NKJV
‘Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. For the land is defiled; therefore I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its inhabitants. You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations, either any of your own nation or any stranger who dwells among you (for all these abominations the men of the land have done, who were before you, and thus the land is defiled), lest the land vomit you out also when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you. For whoever commits any of these abominations, the persons who commit them shall be cut off from among their people.
Instead of ripping pages out of God’s word
or ignoring His word
or Skipping inconvenient passages
or “reinterpreting” things
we MUST Submit to God!
God didn’t want them to tolerate juvenile delinquencies which would lead to adults who were rebellious
Severe consequences for delinquencies:
death!
Deuteronomy 21:18–21 NKJV
“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and who, when they have chastened him, will not heed them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his city. And they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall put away the evil from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear.
Disobeying this command still had deadly consequences.
NO, I’m not advocating a stoning for rebellious kids.
Hmmm maybe, no, NO stoning the rebellious!
It brings devastation to homes and society
We are seeing the impact in our society
There is a rise of people who can’t accept authority
at home, at school, at work, and in the world
1 example: the people today who will do anything, break any law, destroy anyone’s property thinking if they throw a big enough fit, President Trump will somehow not be president
Can you see their inner 3 year old who manipulated their parents through fits coming out?
I have seen the same thing in a classroom:
Make a simple request to put away a phone
That inner 3 year old comes out and after they try to make a scene they end up in worse trouble and get to spend a whole day without their phone!
Just because we throw a fit and cry and break things, it doesn’t change the world around us!
If only people would have learned that at home.
As Parents:
we have an awesome responsibility to teach our children.
On a life application note, we need to recognize the great blessings that our parents are to us. And realize that of all the commandments, this one has a limited time for us to act on it.
Some of us have already lost a parent, or both. We can only honor their name now.
If you have a parent still alive, act now. Love them, honor them. Comfort them. And know that God will remember those actions that bring honor to His Word.
