S1 of E101: The Fifth Commandment Honouring Your Father and Mother
Welcome to a firm foundation presented by Princeton Ministries with Dr. Ken Smith. This is Carol Smith, Ken’s wife. Please enjoy.
Let us pray. Our God and our father, we ask now that the words of my mouth, the meditations of our hearts, would be acceptable in your sight. For we ask this in Jesus’s name. Amen. Charles Coulson tells this story. In the Orient, the custom for centuries was that as a grandparent would reach an age that was defined by the local community, that it was the custom for the eldest son to take that parent and bring them up to the side of a hill. And slowly, as they would make their way up that path in the middle of winter, the harshest weather. It was understood that when they reached that quiet place, somewhere midway up the mountain, that the Son would kiss his mother. There would be a last embrace. And then he would take her shawl, and she would sit in that spot.
And the sun would leave. And then, as the spring would come, the warmth of summer, they would go. And they would retrieve the body of that parent. And that custom continued for centuries until the missionaries came. They talked about Jesus Christ. They told them to honor Father and mother. And there is one day where an entire centuries of tradition was broken. As a young christian man walked up that wintry trail to bring his mother. And as he struggled with the commitment that he had made to Jesus Christ. And as he came to that quiet place where he was to leave his mother to die. And the story is told that as he kissed her and embraced her and began to return down the mountain, he was struck with the truth of what it would mean to honor his mother and his father.
And for the first time in the traditions of the Orient, that young man returned. And he put the shawl around his mother’s shoulder. And he brought her back to the village. The impact of God’s word to honor your father and your mother. And yet, in contrast, I am struck with a conversation with a young man who told me recently, I haven’t talked to my parents in at least six months. A 45 year old man said, for the last 20 years, I have returned every Christmas present, every birthday present that my parents have ever sent to me, because I can never forget the way they raised me. I think of a teenager who says, my parents were divorced. My father always loved me, and I have always loved him.
But in the last four months since Joanne is living in the house, I have a hard time loving my father. And I think about a generation of people where the word of God to honor our fathers and our mothers is more a subject to be smiled at than it is to be taken seriously. We refer to the nuclear family. The nuclear family is defined as a working father, a mother at home, and two children. By that definition, how many families in the United States of America are there? Alvin Toffler tells us 7%. 93% of the families in America are not a working father, a mother at home, and several children. Toffler says that this vacuum of the family is now being filled by a bewildering array of family forms, to put it mildly. And who is it that’s caught right in the center?
It is children. What will characterize, according to God’s word, the last days. What’s it going to be like? Well, we read in two Timothy, chapter three this answer. In the last days, perilous times shall come. Men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, and despisers of those things which are good. Did you notice? Right in the middle. Disobedient to parents will be one of the marks of the end times of the last days. And certainly to one degree or another, these signs have always been among us. But in our own generation, it seems that there is an increasing breaking down of law, and we seem to live in a day of great lawlessness where there seem to be very few principles that we are in agreement on.
And yet, when we look at the scripture, we find the declaration coming from Mount Sinai. The fifth commandment, honor your father and your Mother, that your days might be long in the land that the Lord has given you. Now, this is not the only place where we find instruction about the place of fathers and mothers. Now we find in Leviticus chapter 19, every one of you shall revere his father and mother. Solomon the wise sage, said, the eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother will be picked out by the ravens of the valley and eaten by the vultures. And there were stern penalties in the Old Testament for those who would not honor their father and mother. Everyone who curses his father or mother, we are told, shall be put to death. So severe was this breaking of God’s law.
On two occasions we find Jesus making reference to this commandment. And at both times Jesus not only makes statement of the commandment, but he quotes the commandment as being binding upon us today and upon all those who would call themselves christians. Now the commandment tells us that we are to honor our father and mother. Now, on first blush, it would seem that this is telling us instruction about how parents are to be related to their children. But I think it’s not difficult for us to see the implications of this commandment, because this commandment is talking about authority. It is talking about that first relationship of someone who is over us. And so each of us is brought into the world with parents. How are we to see them? We are to see them as honourable, as people who we refer to with reverence.
Now, the lessons that will be learned from our relationship with our parents become the lessons that work themselves out in life. The way a person relates to their parents so often is the blueprint for the way that they relate to their employer, the way they will relate to their spouse. And so what we have in this commandment is an instruction about the place of authority in everyone’s life, and that there is a place where the authority in our life is our parents. And so honor your father and your mother. But as that has rippled out into our life, it also could be applied to students, honor your teachers, those who are in authority over you.
It also works out to citizens that we might honor the state in which we live, to church members that we might honor the church, and to everyone that we might honor God as he justly deserves. But it seems also we’re living in a day where these distinctions are becoming blurred. And anyone who has taught knows how difficult it is, if not impossible, to teach a student who has never learned to honor their father or mother. And so throughout our schools, there is massive difficulty in simple areas of discipline, of maintaining control so that the teachers are free to teach. And I think one of the greatest problems that has caused this is the initial breakdown of the understanding of parents to live their lives in a way that is going to be honouring, that their children would look upon them as honourable parents.
My observation that people who have difficulty in life, few of them are having difficulty simply because of lack of knowledge. But more often than not, the problems that people face is a lack of being able to relate to other people. And so we have problems. And whether it is relating to a coworker or relating to a boss, so often that becomes the focus of difficulty. The Houston Police Department several years ago gave this list of how you can make your own juvenile delinquent. If you would like to know how you can do it, here is their suggestion. First, begin infancy to give the child everything he wants. He will believe the world owes him a living. When he picks up bad language, smile. He will think it’s cute, never give him any spiritual training.
Wait until he is 21 so that he can decide for himself. Avoid the use of the word wrong. It may develop a guilt complex. And when he’s arrested for stealing a car, he’ll think it’s society who’s really against him. Pick up everything he leaves lying around. Do everything for him so he will develop throwing all responsibility on others. Let him read anything he likes. Quarrel frequently in his presence. Give a child all the spending money he wants. Never let him earn his own money. Satisfy his cravings for food, drink, and comfort. Take his part against neighbors, teachers, and policemen. When he gets into real trouble, apologize for yourself by saying, I could never do anything with him anyway. And finally, prepare for a life of grief, for you will have it.
Many of those rules have become the rules for many parents in the raising of their children today. It’s unusual to find a family that has taken all of those rules and is following them. But I have heard more often than not in discussion about how I will raise my child, those types of principles being articulated. Contrast that to cotton Mather, Puritan from the 17th century. Mather went ahead and raised some great children. He had these principles, which I have put into more contemporary language, but he has these ten principles as to how you might raise your children and see how you’re doing. He said, first, for my children, I pour out continual prayers to God that he will be a father to my children and that he might guide them to Christ. Secondly, talk often with your children about christian things and Bible stories.
Third, when children accidentally cross your path in the course of a day, use that opportunity to speak briefly to them about some truth or value that is important to you. I encourage my children to learn to pray in secret. I encourage them to do acts of kindness for one another and for other people. I Endeavor that my child will be guided by reason and honor. I met a man just this week from Georgia who told me that he lived his life concerned about the honor of his family name, that his name went back for generations, and he would never do a thing to dishonor the name of his parents. Cotton Mather goes on and says, remind them that the eye of God is ever watching. Remind them of the love of Jesus Christ.
Remind them that there is a heaven, that there is a hell. Spend time one one with your child, and remember that your children are a gift of God and that they shall live for eternity. Honor your father and your mother. Parents have an incredible influence over the lives of their children. I know some adults who are still living their lives in reaction to something that happened when they were eight years old, and they have never gotten over it because of some inappropriate behavior on the part of their parents. The example of your parents and of you as a parent to your children has incredible power. We read in the Old Testament in two Chronicles, chapter 22, about Athaliah. Athaliah was the mother of the wicked king Ahaziah, and we read of this mother. She encouraged him in wrongdoing.
We also read in Ezekiel that the sins of the father have great influence upon the children. Will you defile yourselves the way your fathers did and lust after vile images that as our fathers would do that, the chances are ever increasing that the children will do that. Martin Luther, as he reflected upon the images of his father, he had a very difficult time calling God father because it reminded him of his stern and harsh father who raised him. What does it mean to honor your parents? Well, it means simply to esteem them, to hold them in high value, to see them as people who should be reverenced, honored. Jesus was aware of a very slippery trick that had been developed, and unfortunately, it was developed within the context of the temple and those who were religious. It was referred to as Corban.
Corban is the money that would be given by a person going to worship, money that properly should have been given to their parents to help them in their old age. But there was a very clever trick that was developed. That trick. Take that money and declare it as Corban, dedicated to God, a gift. And when your parents are in need of it, you simply declare to them, it is Corban. It has been devoted to God for godly purpose. And when those parents would die, you were free to take that money and use it as you liked. In our own culture, sometimes we have developed our own core ban, our own way of looking at parents and our responsibilities to them, so that as a period of time goes by, we really have no responsibility to them.
We may in mind, say, I honor my father and mother, but in practice do nothing to show the substance of that honor to father and mother. And Jesus chastised those Pharisees and scribes who would take religion and turn it upon its head that they would not truly honor their father and their mother. Now a very real question comes, what if my parents are not honourable? What if they have raised me in such a way that I am suffering emotionally from their harshness? What should I do? Well, in the Old Testament, Noah, having come out of the ark, raised the vineyard. You remember, he took those grapes and he made wine and he drank and he got drunk, and he was naked. And he laid there in a naked stupor, passed out. And his son Ham saw him. And what did he do?
He went and he told others about the dishonourable condition of his father. And when his brothers, Shem and Japheth, heard that their father was naked and drunk, they came into that tent backwards, so that they would not see his nakedness. And they covered him honorably. And the curse of God was placed upon ham for having gone ahead and dishonored his parents. Now, I would think to find a parent in that case would be a highly dishonorable case. And yet, even if you have a dishonorable parent, the example says to us that we are still to honor our fathers and our mothers, and that the words that come from our mouth should always be words of honor and reverence and thanksgiving.
And that those things that hurt, those things that have through the years caused you to separate yourself, that first you would see that is something that God would ask you to change, to see your parents as honourable. If you say, I have not honored my parents, I hold resentments, then I would encourage you today to call them, to write them, to tell them of your love for them, to tell them of the breach that has been made over these months or years, that you might be restored, to be able to honor your parents. Because more often than not, when those parents have died, you would give a million dollars to have five minutes with them, to ask them forgiveness, to clear the air.
And I would encourage you that as you think about this commandment, if it has been something that has convicted you, then realize that the purpose of those commandments is to convict us and to draw us to the cross of Jesus Christ. And as we would come to the cross of Christ, there we would find forgiveness and a new beginning, because never was there one like Jesus, who perfectly obeyed the Father in a way that you and I will never do.
And that when we would dishonor our parents, that we would come to Christ, that we would confess, and then we would make restitution, and that we would reach out a hand of christian love to our parents to tell them, I honor you, I love you, and I will pray for you, and I will help you, and I will do all that I can to show that I truly believe in honouring my parents. May it be so in your life and mine that each of us would take this commandment to honor our Father and mother, that our days might be long in the land that the Lord has given us. Let us pray. Our God and our Father, we feel the sting of this commandment, for none of us has perfectly obeyed.
And Father, we ask that these your laws would drive us to your cross, that they would propel us to Jesus Christ, and that there we might find forgiveness, that there we might find one who perfectly obeyed. And Father, we pray that our trust would be in him and that then we would go and do those things to make restitution. And we thank you in Jesus name. Amen.
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