Exodus 20:12 “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”
Introduction: Most of us while growing up will admit that one of the boundaries of social behavior was what we called “playing the dozens”. In most instances we were most sensitive when it came to our mothers, many fights were fought following the words “Your momma wears combat boots”. But this social violation and incitement to action could happen when you talked about either of a person’s parents. How many times have you heard a person say, talk about me, but don’t you talk about my parents.
The book of Exodus contains a series of verses that we readily refer to as the Ten Commandments. The Hebrew word “Torah” which literally means “the law” was originally used in connection with these specific commandments. These commandments represents the will and way of God delivered to Moses to govern the children of Israel once they had left Egypt and was on their way to the land that God had promised them.
It was given to regulate their behavior and cement their covenant with God who had not only delivered them but was now directing them to a place that he God had prepared for them. Scholars have divided the Ten Commandments into two sections or what they prefer to call the first and the second table.
The first table, which includes verses one through four, are those things that define our relationship to God. The second table, which includes verses five through ten, are commandments that define our social relationship with other human beings. This fifth commandment is the first commandment of the second table and interestingly enough suggest that our relationship with our fellow human beings begins at home with our family. In other words, you cannot have a good relationship with other people if you do not have a good relationship with people in your home first. If you can’t get along with the people in your home, chances are you will not get along with people in the streets either.
I suppose that is why social scientist today are saying that dysfunctional families produce dysfunctional people. What modern psychology and sociology have come to today the Bible knew centuries ago. That is why here in the Ten Commandments before you are told what not to do to your neighbor, you are told how to treat the authority in your immediate family.
Through Moses God is instructing his people on what it is going to take in order to maintain a good relationship with him and what it is going to take to maintain a good relationship with each other. If this maintenance holds fast then God will deliver to them the land that he has promised and prepared for them.
Before I leave this item permit me to point out that of all of the commandments that are found in the table of the Ten Commandments only this particular verse identifies what will happen if you choose to keep this commandment.
Notice the Bible says either do this or do not do that, but when it comes to the fifth commandment, God adds a provision in the verse by saying that if you do this look at what will happen.
Serving God comes with benefits. If you serve him:
He will take care of you
He will provide for you
He will protect you
He will guide you
He will direct you
He will make a way out of no way for you
He will make your enemies leave you alone
He will comfort you
He will console you
The Hebrew word that we translate as “honor” has several connotations and meanings. Among them are esteem, model and obey. So in fact, when the Bible says to honor your father, it is saying to esteem your father, to model your father and to obey your father.
1. Model Means to Esteem
To esteem literally means to hold in high regard. It is a word that is a little more than “ignore” and a little less than “worship” to esteem your father does not mean that you worship him, because only God is worthy of your worship but it does not mean that you do not ignore him either.
I suppose the best word that represents esteem is respect. Esteem is probably best defined as a whole lot of respect with a pinch of fear. I say fear because as a child you fear the consequences until you learn to respect their word.
I will not lie to you as a kid I could handle momma’s fusing but there was a whole different kind of feeling that came over my body when Momma or somebody else said “I am going to tell you father” or “you just wait until your father gets home”.
That was a whole new ballgame a whole new matter. Somehow, just hearing those words was enough for me to straighten up and fly right, why, because I did not want to face the consequences of my father’s wrath.
While I am on this subject, let me say, respect does not mean that you are weak, respect does not mean that you are lame, respect does not mean that you lose face, respect means that I am giving you your props, I am giving you what is due you, I am giving you what you are entitled to. And remember, you cannot expect respect from others if you are unwilling to give respect yourself.
By the Bible teaching us, in this verse, the value of respect or esteem, the Bible is saying to us that if you want to have respect when you are grown and living in the world on your own then you need to start by showing some respect while you are home under your parents roof.
2. Honor Means to Model
“Honor” in Hebrew also can be defined as model. I think that every young person that has grown up has at one time or another said, “when I grow up, I am not going to treat my kids this way or I am not going to do my kids that way”.
Listen, we all declare that our actions are going to be so markedly different than how our parents treated us. Personally, in the aftermath of my childhood whippings, I promised that when I got grown I was not going to subject my kids to the kind of discipline and corporal punishment that I barely survived as a kid. I just was not going to do it. I had this perfect picture in my mind that when I became a parent all I was going to do was just say in a calm voice “now Johnny, its not nice to do that or Johnny you disappoint me in doing that”.
Saints, it did not take me long to discover that the picture I had in my mind was just that, a picture and when my kids came along I found myself doing the exact same things with my kids as my father had done with me.
And now I hear them saying the same thing that I used to say when I was a kid, but guess what, in a few more years they will be doing their kids the same way they were done.
You see friends; your handbook on what to do when you are grown is being written right now in your parent’s house. The day will come when you are going to have to make some decisions on your own, and even though you don’t think so right now, when the time comes, you are going to discover that you are just like your daddy or you are just like your mother. You see, someday you are going to have to:
Pay the light bill
Pay the water bill
Pay the cable bill
Pay the car note
Pay the rent or a mortgage
Put food on the table
Take care of a family
Work for a living
Raise your own kids
Help your children get an education
Provide transportation for the family
And when those things come up in your life and you are not sure how to handle it, guess what? You are going to reach back into your memory and pull out the very same things that you saw your parents model, and you are going to end up doing some of the same things because that is what your parents have put down in you.
Listen you are watching even when you do not think that you are watching. One day you are going to wake up and say to your self, hmmph:
I wash the dishes the same way I saw mamma do it,
I make up the bed the same way mamma did,
I wash the car, or don’t wash my car the same way daddy did,
I repair things the same way daddy did,
I solve my problems the same way my old man did
3. Honor Means to Obey
Finally friends the Hebrew word honor can also mean obey. The Apostle Paul who was an expert on Old Testament Law and therefore very familiar with exactly what the Ten Commandments said, had this in mind when he wrote the “household codes” found in the book of Ephesians, he says “Children obey your parents”. This is just another way of saying honor your father and your mother.
Let me tell you something, obedience begins at home. Now I know that there are whole lot of theories and suggestions on childrearing today, but in this area I believe that the Bible is correct, obedience begins at home and the failure to teach obedience is the highest form of child abuse. You see there are some fundamental basic behavior that all children must learn if we are going to expect them to survive when they get on their own and live from under our roof. My daddy used to say to me “the reason I beat you at home is so that somebody else won’t have to do it in the streets”.
You see friends it really is rather simple. When we fail to teach our children obedience at home we are setting them up for failure and hard knocks in the streets. If a child will not listen to a parent at home then:
He is not going to listen to a teacher in school
He is not going to listen to an administrator in the principal’s office
He is not going to listen to a coach on the field
He is not going to listen to a director in the band
He is not going to listen to an instructor in the arts
He is not going to listen to a choral master in the choir
He is not going to listen to a pastor in the church
He is not going to listen to a doctor in the hospital
He is not going to listen to the policemen on his beat
He is not going to listen to a lawyer in the courtroom
And he is not going to listen to a judge on or from the bench
When a child fails to honor or obey his parents at home they are setting themselves on a course that will end in disaster because that pattern of disobedience will follow them the rest of their life.
But friends I refuse to close on such a sour note let me close on this note. I mentioned earlier that only this fifth commandment has attached to it the consequences of compliance. The Bible says here “that if you honor your father and your mother your days will be long upon the land thy God hath given thee.”
In other words people who honor their parents live longer than people who do dishonor their parents. The reason for this is simple, if you treat your parents right, esteem and respect them, then perhaps you won’t suffer from all of the high blood pressure, stress, anxiety and other psycho somatic ailments that comes along with the guilt that you feel over not treating your parents right. There are a number of people suffering from tumors, ulcers, depression and bi-polarism that were triggered from the guilt and stress they have in their lives because they know that they did not treat their parents right.
But watch this people who honor or model their parents behavior live longer because think about it your parents did not live as long as they did being no fool. Obviously they must have been doing something right. For them to be able to survive this world for as long as they did, there must have been something in what they were doing that preserved them. And if you model what they were doing then chances are that you will reap the same benefits as them.
But finally saints, if you honor or obey your parents you will live longer because you won’t end up in some places that you have no business being.
A lot of people are dead today because they just so happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but if they had listened to their parents they would not have been there in the first place. Listen to the people today in wheel chairs and on canes who say I would not be in this fix today if I had just listened to what my parents had told me.
So if you honor or listen to your parents you increase your chances of your life lasting longer than it would if you are hardheaded, stubborn and disobedient. But listen carefully to what the Bible says “If you honor your parents then your life will be long in the land that God has promised you”. The land that God has promised you is not just life here on earth. Included in the land that God has promised is life eternal in the heavens. So, if I honor my father and my mother, I increase my chances on not only having a long life down here, I increase my chances of having life eternal in the heavens.
