Don’t You Believe It: The Myth of Self-Importance
Exodus 20:12
Morning, January 21, 2001
Pastor Don Walker
Over the last two weeks we’ve been dealing with the topic of ¡§Don¡¦t You Believe It.¡¨ The basic idea is that our society accepts a number of myths as truth. They have become accepted guides for living. However, living out of these myths brings harm to us as individuals and to our society.
God has given us ten basic truths we can use for guidance in living. The end product will be wholesome, healthy, positive living as He designed it to be experienced. The ten myths have to be destroyed by the truth of God¡¦s word to us as found in the Ten Commandments. In the past two weeds, we’ve dealt with 4 of these myths:
„h The myth of many roads to God
„h The myth of happiness is the only thing to strive for
„h The myth that words don¡¦t really mean anything
„h The myth that we don¡¦t have to take God seriously
This morning, we¡¦ll explore another: The myth of self-importance. The myth proclaims, ¡§You¡¦re your own boss, so make decisions based on what is best for you. If someone is going to lose something, let it be the other person. There is nothing worth your personal sacrifice. Make your decisions based on what¡¦s in it for yourself.¡¨
Many people look life through the lens of "how will it affect me." Undoubtedly, this has always been case to a certain extent. However in past generations, personal considerations came to the mind of most after questions about family and community.
Think of individuals who served our country in World War II. As our country entered the war, men and women had to consider their service to our country. Most people gave consideration as to the effects of aggression against our nation. They considered how this aggression would affect family, community and country. This was first in consideration. This led to a sense of duty to others even to the point of risking life and limb in the military. There was little or no thought of what a person would get personally.
In our society, the desires of the individual seem to always take precedence over authority, order, civility, honor and respect in our society. As a result, our society is failing.
The most difficult problems we face in our society are rooted in the deterioration and pain of families. Despite attention, money, and effort, our system of public education is failing to educate our children properly. There is an explosion of child abuse and neglect. Children are living in situations that are terrifying. Latch-key kids face temptations they should never have to face alone. Do you realize that children have more violence perpetrated on them than any other group? This includes children who are victims of abortion and children who live in poverty. The war on drugs is actually a battle that to save children. Newborn babies are addicted to drugs. Children turn into terrorists dealing illegal drugs. It is our children who are suffering and paying the price.
The pain and anxiety of the process, the threat to individual children, and the future of this country is grave indeed. We must reassert some of the wisdom that has been lost. A good place to start is the fifth of the Ten Commandments.
"Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you."
The first four commandments deal with the relationship between God and his people. The remaining six commandments face issues that are foundational to healthy human relationships. As healthy human relationships are established, individuals and society grow stronger.
In Ephesians 6:2, Paul notes that the fifth commandment is the first given with the promise that something good will happen if it is obey. There are two elements in the promise: (1) that you may live a long and valuable life, and (2) that the nation will also receive blessing. The individual and the society will both benefit if we hear and heed the fifth commandment to honor our parents.
The key to a stable society is found in ¡§honor your father and mother.¡¨
The only thing commanded is ¡§honor.¡¨
To honor a person is to allow them have influence, dignity, and above all, authority for you. Honoring does not necessarily mean that there must be feelings of love. Feelings of love come from memories, laughter, and anticipation of each other’s company. These are precious in a relationship of honor, but are not required. Those gifts flow out of positive choices that are made, but they are not at the heart of the commandment.
It is important to also recognize that honor cannot be expressed under duress.
Some may be bound by their parents’ rejection, misuse, and neglect and may not be emotionally free to relate to their parents. Every adult child must let the mistakes of their parents ruin their lives. It’s very easy to find people who go around with an attitude like this: "Well, because my parents were bad parents; I will never be a happy, relatively normal, functioning member of society." Don¡¦t allow your parents to be used as an excuse for being permanently pitiful, unhappy, and dysfunctional. We must move beyond our own emotional baggage to honor our parents.
It is not easy to move beyond personal negative feelings to give honor to parents who have grossly failed in their parental relationship, but we can. A little I¡¦ll explain how to move beyond these feelings.
The promise
The promise attached to the commandment has two parts.
First, obedience will result in living a long life. This very well could be a large number of years, but quantity is not the basic meaning. Rather, the term "long life" means to have experienced a fulfilled, bountiful life from childhood to old age.
The second part of the promise also speaks of fulfillment, but this time to the nation as a whole. In speaking to the Israelites, God’s promise meant that the land he gave them in Canaan would be a place of harmony and security. Instead of deterioration at the core of the social structure, there would be inner strength because people would have learned to cooperate with each other.
If we learn to honor our parents, we contribute to our personal health, security and fulfillment, and, in addition, society prospers with security and fulfillment.
It is important to notice that the command is directed to the children rather than the parents.
The Lord could have said, "Parents be kind, sensitive, generous, and thoughtful towards to your children."
These are characteristics of good parenting. The scripture guides parents to commit themselves to practices such as these.
However, the command is directed to the child ¡V why?
First of all, none of us could choose our parents or the environment in which we grew up. I grew up in a fairly stable family, with parents who loved me and supported me. I know that others have grown up in a negative home environment in which parents have shown little if anything that is worthy of respect. Whether we are raised in a setting where respect comes easy, or a terrible setting, where it is difficult, all of us can choose to honor our parents.
Secondly, we need to choose respect for our parents so that we can be emotionally healthy, balanced, and mature people. Learning to be rightly related to authority is a significant factor in the emotional health of our lives. If an individual goes through life resisting authority and being aggressive in relationships, he will never be at rest or fulfilled.
In a similar way an individual can be so wounded by a domineering authority figure that his life will be diminished by an unhealthy fear of people in authority. Fulfillment will come from a proper relationship with authority, learned primarily through honoring the parents we have been given. Obeying the commandment will ultimately make us whole, healthy people with the inner peace and freedom needed to relate rightly to the rest of the world.
When we learn to related properly to authority we will be able to relate properly to God. The Bible speaks of a Roman centurion who understood the significance of being rightly related to authority (Luke 7:1ff). Either through his family or military experience he had learned what it was like to both command and be commanded. He was a healthy, humble and effective person who loved the truth of God. When the centurion’s servant became ill he asked Jesus to intervene on his behalf.
Listen to these words of the Centurion:
"Lord, do not trouble yourself further, for I am not worthy for you to come under my roof; for this reason I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you, but just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I, too, am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to this one, ’Go!’ and he goes; and to another, ’Come!’ and he comes; and to my slave, ’Do this!’ and he does it." (Luke 7:6-9)
This man did not resist authority nor was he fearful of authority. As a result, he turned for help to God’s Anointed, the one man in all of history who has the right to command nature. I believe that people like this centurion can lovingly bow before God because they have learned a healthy appreciation for authority.
Honor and bad parents
A significant number of Christians have had cruel and abusive parents.
Some parents have been very poor in parenting. Parents that are cold, distant and unconcerned. Parents that are alcoholics or mentally ill. Some children have been abandoned. Some have been abused psychologically, while others have been abused physically and sexually.
Some, who have been severely mistreated, are able to show respect to their parents.
Despite the circumstances of their upbringing, these adult children have cared for their elderly parents. These are the folks who have learned the lesson of honoring those whom God had allowed to be their parents, whether or not it was easy. As a result, the grown children are godly, healthy people. They are able to break whatever patterns of tragedy were in the past and give health to those around them.
There are no simple cures to a painful childhood, but the Bible gives some steps to recovery.
The biblical pattern for recovery begins with honesty. As long as there is dishonesty or misrepresentation of the situation, the journey back to health will not proceed very far. There has to be honesty before God about what has happened.
The second step involves receiving and granting forgiveness. We must receive forgiveness from God for our sins and then forgive those who have sinned against us. Forgiveness is the antidote to defensiveness and inhibition. We must forgive in response to the great gift of God’s forgiveness of us in Christ.
There are no simple cures, but there is power from God available to us.
First, God does not simply want to repair the past: He wants re-creation.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)
By the power of the Lord, we are a new creation. We are not bound by heredity or childhood environment.
"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20)
We are who we are by virtue of the cross of Christ.
Second, we must apply what Paul said about his own past:
"Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things." (Philippians 3:13-15)
Our present relationship with Christ should dominate our lives not the bad relationships of the past. It is the goal of becoming more like him that should consume our lives. No doubt, this process is complex, but it will enable those with painful childhood memories to work through them. Honoring their parents in spite of their worthiness is the most healthy and mature course for the individual to choose.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger made these comments: "It is possible to maintain cordial contact, assist a bad parent with such basic needs as food or housing and medicine, and not spend a lot of time marinating in negativity in front of them or behind their back. It may not be ideal, and it may not salve your feeling, but that small something you do ennobles your soul anyway."
Free advice to parents
Although the fifth commandment is written to children, it nevertheless has relevance to parents.
The most helpful thing we can do for our children is to be the kind of parents who are not difficult to honor and respect. Paul wrote to the Ephesians:
"And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." (Ephesians 6:4)
Notice the two parts of what is said, one negative and the other positive. First, do not provoke your children. Then, bring them up in the admonition of the Lord. Get involved with your children. Care about what they are doing, what they are thinking and how they are feeling. Teach them by being with them. In short do nothing to hurt them, but do everything to care for them. Strive to be the kind of parent that your children will desire to honor.
None of us have a corner on parenting and at times our young children may accuse us of bad parenting.
Here¡¦s an innocent prayer of a youngster unhappy because her parents had refused something she desired. "Please, Lord, don’t give mommy and daddy any more children, cause they don¡¦t know how to treat the one they¡¦ve got now!"
Everyone will make mistakes and sometimes we will feel guilty about bad parenting choices. This is all part of parenting, but we ought not to allow these failures to make us a failure as parents. All of us can learn to be better parents and with God¡¦s guidance we will succeed!
Conclusion:
The fifth commandment instructs us in the basis for human relationships. It is foundational to all the other commandments. Obeying it will produce mental and emotional health, allowing us to live a long, full life. It is the only hope for any society to succeed.
Respect for others and respect for authority is vital to a good life. But no law by itself has ever been able to give life. This commandment serves as a means by which we can evaluate our attitude toward authority. If we detect an incapacity to honor others, beginning with our parents, there is only one thing we can do: call out to God for mercy. The commandment will serve, guide and enhance society, but it cannot save society.
Ultimately, if the totality of society is to be saved, it will not be through this commandment, nor will it even be through improved respect for authority. The salvation of mankind begins as we are adopted into the family of God. That adoption process comes through Jesus Christ and you become a child of the Heavenly Father.
This father is perfect unlike earthly parents --fathers or mothers.
He is a parent who lives and loves perfectly, in a way that we can always count on, reach to, and trust. He is the ultimate authority figure who reaches out to His children on earth to:
¡P comfort and console
¡P encourage and equip
¡P guide and guard
¡P hold and heal
¡P inspire and instruct
¡P listen and love
¡P provide and protect
Under His care, in His time, with He will develop in you that which overcomes the trials of the past. By His grace you can be brought to the point where you can begin to let go of hatred, apathy or a desire to get even with the one that hurt you. By His power you will be able to ¡§honor mother and father¡¨ and receive the blessings that are promised in this commandment.
For other sermons by Pastor Don go to www.gotojesus.org
Resources:
This sermon and sermon series is based on a series written by Derek Helt with the same theme and titles found on MinistryNow.com.
Other resources found on SermonCentral.com: ¡§Required of Humans: Appreciation of Authority,¡¨ Exodus 20:12, Steve Zeisler Copyright (C) 1995 Discovery Publishing, a ministry of Peninsula Bible Church, Discovery Publishing, 3505 Middlefield Rd. Palo Alto, CA. 94306-3695. ¡§Ten Lies That Shatter Lives: Authority Doesn’t Count,¡¨ a sermon on Exodus 20:1-17, by Ken Gehrels, Pastor, Calvin Christian Reformed Church, Nepean, Ontario.
Anyone may use this sermon in part or in whole without permission of the author, but if it is to be published for profit, written permission must be obtained from Don Walker, Twentieth Street Baptist Church, Huntington, West Virginia.
