The fifth commandment is the probably the most important to observe. Because this commandment focuses on the family unit. Let me be clear, a family is NOT a child or a group of children who have 2 parents of the same sex! That is an abomination and a disgrace! The family unit consists of a mother, a father, and their children, period! There is no other! But this commandment is being trampled under the feet of socialist, dictating politicians who want to legalize abortion and same sex marriage. They have no regard or respect for God or the Commandments of His Word. And mark my words, THEY WILL stand before God on the Great Day of Judgment to answer for their sinful travesties against this country! Believe that!
Deuteronomy 5:16 says, "Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord is giving you". God is saying in this commandment that if you honor your father and mother, you will have long life and much prosperity. This is the only commandment God gave that comes with a promise. That promise is long life, prosperity, and with that you will have joy, peace and happiness all the days of your life.
When I think about all the young people I have seen over the years being disrespectful to their mothers or fathers, it sickens me to no end. I have seen children throw the Christmas present their parents got them back in their face! I have seen children blatantly disobedient and disrespectful to their parents in public! I've seen parents and children argue with each other over the pettiest issues I've ever heard in my life!
Our society has allowed acceptance where acceptance should never be given. Our society has allowed abominations such as homosexuality to become normal in this day and age. Our country has turned its back on God and His Commandments and this is the result of our choice! There was a time when this was a God-fearing country. We stood on the Word of God, and we held these Ten Commandments dear to our hearts every day of our lives! But now, we have tossed them aside like yesterday's newspaper! We have given in to peer pressure to have prayer and the bible taken out of our schools! The Ten Commandments that once hung so glorious in our government buildings, have been ripped off the walls by atheistic, God hating, self-centered people who have no idea the wrath that awaits them on Judgment Day!
Satan has always targeted the young people and the family unit. Don't you see what's happening out there? Think about all the mass shootings that have happened over the years. How many of them were committed by a young person? How many times have we heard about the transgender movement, the LGBTQ movement, celebrities claiming to be homosexual, bi-sexual, or transgender? Hollywood and social media have made heroes out of these people making them out to be brave and courageous for "coming out" as they say as what they claim to be. That is beyond an outrage! That is a sheer act of defiance to Almighty God! And if these people do not repent and renounce this satanic lifestyle, they will stand before God Almighty Himself to answer for their so-called "heroic" acts!
Why does Satan attack us this way? Why does he influence men to be like women and women like men? Because we are created in the image of God. Satan sees that in us. He looks at us and sees the very face of God in our spirits. Because that's all he sees! He doesn't see out physical appearance, he sees our spirit man. And that's what he's after! The spirit of man. If he can distort that, he can distort our thinking, our mindset, and completely pull us away from God! Why would he do that? To take as many people to hell with him as possible! Satan knows he's doomed to be cast into hell's everlasting fire! His plan is to take as many of us with him as possible. The more people he can lure to hell, the more people there will be who will not be going to Heaven. That's his objective. That's what he plans. He knows his fate is sealed. This is the only objective he has left. Take as many of God's people to hell with him as possible. Why? To take from God what He values most! Us!
So, he targets the family. He targets the children, the mothers and the fathers. His intent is to divide and conquer. He figures if he can destroy the family unit, he can destroy God's plans for His children. The family has always been his target. That's obvious in the Garden of Eden. Satan didn't go to the man first, that wouldn't have worked. He went to the woman instead. Why? Because he knew the man would never listen to him. But he would listen to his wife. Wouldn't he? And that's what Satan did. He enticed the woman to eat of the forbidden tree and take it to her husband and entice him to eat.
Look at how this all unfolded, Genesis 3:1-8, "Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” Notice how Satan first tries to twist what God said? We all know that God did not tell the man nor the woman that they can NOT eat of EVERY tree in the Garden, just the one. But Satan will always try to twist and manipulate God's Word to us to make us believe something other than what God actually said. We need to be very careful of this. Read on.
"And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Notice what Satan is trying to do here? He's trying to insinuate that God would feel threatened by man if they were to know what He knows. That's not it at all! God is being a true Father to us by keeping certain things from us. We don't know all that God knows and we're better off for that. If we knew everything God knows, we wouldn't be able to handle it! We'd be consumed to the point of self-destruction! Our feeble minds could never handle everything that God knows. There are just some things we are better off not knowing. But I believe we will know all when we get to Heaven. Why? Because when we get to Heaven, we will have our new bodies, indestructible and celestial. No more sickness. No more disease. No more weakness. So, don't worry about the things you don't know or understand. We'll soon know when we get to Heaven.
Back to the text, "So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings."
I find it interesting that before the woman gave the fruit to her husband, she ate it first. Why? Because now that she has tasted the fruit of sin, how it feels and how it tastes, and it does taste good. Sin will never taste bitter. Satan will never try to entice you with something you don't like. But now that she has tasted sin and felt its "sweetness", she gives it to her husband and entices him with it. I can imagine how that conversation went. "Honey, you've got to try this! It's sweeter than any of the fruit from the other trees! God wouldn't keep something this good from us, would He?" See? Now they're questioning God. They're beginning to doubt God's Word. That is the enticement Satan was looking for with man. Get him to doubt God's Word. Sound familiar? Notice how that seems to be the very same pattern we see in the world today?
Continue, "And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden."
So, now they have sinned. And even though it was sweet to the taste at first, now they're eyes are opened, the Bible says. And they see that they're naked. That doesn't mean they became aware of their physical nakedness, but rather, their spiritual nakedness. What happened? The Glory of God that shone on them was now gone. The very covering of God was no longer with them. Sin had entered their bodies and the Glory of the Lord left immediately! Why? Because God's Glory cannot be where there is sin! If there is sin in your life, REPENT OF IT!!! God's Glory CANNOT BE where sin is!
They sinned, they knew they sinned, and when they heard God coming, they tried to hide from Him. You can't hide from God. He sees you no matter where you are! He sees you in the dark as well as the light. He sees you in the darkest moments of your life and he sees you in the brightest! There is no where you can go where the Lord cannot see you and find you. Psalm 139:8 says, "If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there." There is no place God will not be there with you. Psalms 23 says, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
But God will not let sin go without its punishment. There will be consequences to our sins. Look at the text and see what God did about the sin of man in the Garden. "Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So, he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” Then the man said, “The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” And the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” So, the Lord God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” To the woman He said: “I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
This is why there is sin in the world today. When man fell in the Garden of Eden, he brought sin into the world that has spread throughout the world and is still spreading to this day. And when it spreads, it gets worse. Look at the shape the world is in right now. Look at all the chaos happening in the world today. Every problem we are facing in this world today is the direct result of man's fall in the Garden! This is why the Ten Commandments are so important to us today. These commandments are direction for our lives in the sin ridden world. Without the guidance of the Ten Commandments in our lives, we will be vulnerable to the influences of this world and the evil that lies within!
Satan targeted the family unit that God designed. He started with the woman. He enticed the woman to eat of the forbidden fruit and when she tasted its sweetness and found it pleasurable to her, she turned and enticed the man with it as well. Again, notice that Satan went to the woman first instead of the man. Why? Because God's institution of marriage and family hold the man as the leader. The woman and the children are the body of the family, and the man is the head of them. Meaning, the man is the spiritual pastor of his home. He is responsible for his wife and family. Anything that happens under that roof, the man is held accountable by God for it. The family is his responsibility, it is his charge to keep his home in order as God intended.
But that's why children and young people are running wild like they are. Fathers are not being responsible for their children. They're not stepping in and teaching their children the ways of the Lord. The Bible says in Proverbs 22:6, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Men need to start taking responsibility for their children and what their children are doing! They need to step up as fathers and dishing out some discipline, so these kids learn from the get-go that life is full of choices and consequences!
Our young people need to learn this fifth commandment especially well! They need to learn to honor their mother and their father. Because without Mom and Dad, you wouldn't be here! God blessed your Mom and Dad with you! The Bible says in Psalm 127:3-5, "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth. Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed but shall speak with their enemies in the gate." You are a blessing from God to your parents and God blessed you with them as parents. You are a result of their love for each other and of God! How dare you disrespect them! Friends come and go, boyfriends and girlfriends come and go, but you only have one Mom and one Dad! Cherish them!
So, honor your mother and your father. And God will bless you richly with long life and prosperity in your life. Honor your father and mother, and you honor God Himself. Disrespect them, and you disrespect God! Disgrace them and you disgrace God! Love them and you love God. Respect them and you respect God. Ultimately, how you treat your parents is how you treat the Lord God Almighty Who created the heavens and the earth. The same God that parted the Red Sea so the nation of Israel might escape being captured by the army of Pharoah. The same God that appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The same God that rose Jesus from the dead after He was crucified for your sins and mine. The same God that Paul encountered on the road to Damascus, is the same God that loves you, protects you and keeps you safe from the evil of this world. How you treat your parents is how you will treat God! So, honor your parents so you may honor the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob!!!
