The Ten Commandments are theology in work clothes. They comprise the essence of ethics, the behavior of belief as God has prescribed it. We have in previous Sundays looked at the first four of the Ten Commandments dealing with our relationship with God. A vertical direction is in view. Today we come to commandment number five and the direction changes. Now God speaks regarding our relationship to other people. A horizontal direction is in view.
In commandment number five we have God's protection of the family. In number six, God's protection of life. In number seven, God's protection of marriage. In number eight, God's protection of property. In number nine, God's protection of the truth. And number ten, God's protection of motives. Today we come to verse 12 of Exodus 20, the fifth of the commandments. It says, honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you.
The home is the oldest of all God's institutions and it is the foundation of all the others. It is so essential to personal happiness, social order, and spiritual growth that Satan has opened up a broadside attack against the home such as perhaps has never been equaled before. In face of the contemporary deluge which undermines the family, the home, and ultimately society, God very simply says, honor your parents. What does this mean, honor your parents?
I think that we'll find this morning that it's very relevant and needed. Many children are growing up without knowledge of this commandment from God or even an adherence to such a principle as this. We see it, for example, in our school classrooms. Talk to many of the teachers who are here today and they will tell you of the lack of the knowledge of and obedience to the fifth commandment. Speak to those who work in daycare centers.
For some time I was meeting regularly with one of our collegiates who was working his way through college by working in a daycare center. I can recall a number of the horror stories that he shared with me of children who are two and three and four years of age whose language and attitude and behavior were all adult and not the polite side of adulthood either. For that matter you can talk to our own Sunday school teachers to find that this commandment is not being adhered to in very many homes.
Frankly, some of our Sunday school teachers in Grace Church Roseville go home on Sundays frustrated because of some of the children that come from some of the homes in our church where they have not been taught what it means to honor father and mother and other authority that is over them, including the Sunday school teacher. What does it mean to honor your parents? Let me speak first to children who are yet dependent upon their parents, who are still at home as we say it.
This is the usual application of this commandment. It is important for children to learn to respect and obey their parents in the first place for the good of society. The attitude that children have toward their parents is the attitude that eventually will be reflected in them toward authority in society as a whole. There is a sense in which the home is a microcosm of society.
So that as a child learns to honor and obey his parents in the home, he will grow up to be a citizen that will reflect those same attitudes toward authority. The opposite is also true. Without a basic respect for authority, a society is left only to anarchy. There is no free society. There is no democracy which can exist where there is not voluntary obedience of its citizens to law and order.
That is why it is so important for the good of society for children to learn to obey their parents because eventually those children are citizens in a society as adults. If they do not voluntarily obey and honor their leaders in society, that society is destroyed. The only alternative is a controlled society, a totalitarianism where the laws and the rules are enforced upon the citizenry because they will not voluntarily honor their leaders.
It is important for children to learn to obey and honor their parents for the good of the children themselves as well. Obedience to this command provides a sense of accountability for actions and as well gratitude for the blessings of the home. Woe to the child who grows up without gratitude and accountability. The very future of the child himself depends upon it. A rebellious spirit that is left unchecked will lead a child to ruin and destruction.
It is for the good of the child that he learns to obey and honor his parents. It provides a certain freedom from responsibility and care until maturity comes and character is formed. Obedience to this commandment provides certain boundaries or parameters which at the same time limit the child and provide security for the child. It is important for the child himself to learn to obey and honor mom and dad. The child that does not learn to do that is a child that is destined for a life of sorrow.
It is important for the child to learn to obey and honor parents for the glory of God. You see it is God who commands this. It is the Creator himself who speaks and says, honor your father and your mother. So obedience to it glorifies God. There is another reason that it is important to learn to obey parents for the glory of God and that is because so often a child's attitude toward the parents determines his attitude later toward God.
You see parents are in the place of God in those early years for the child. For a child to have a proper perspective of God later in life in his early years he must be taught to honor his father and his mother. G. Campbell Morgan said, what God is to the adult, parents are to the child, lawgiver and lover, provider and controller. This commandment is restated in the New Testament.
Among the times that it is restated is Ephesians 6.1 where it says, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. You notice what it says there? This is right. It is right because God says it is right. It is the obligation of the child to obey the parents. That is his obligation to Jesus Christ. Children obey your parents in the Lord. In other words, as unto the Lord himself you are to obey your parents. It is our Savior who set the example for all children in this regard.
In Luke 2.51 it says, Jesus continued in subjection to them, Mary and Joseph. Jesus himself was in subjection to his parents. The writer of Hebrews reflects on it and says that he learned obedience by the things that he suffered. That does not mean that Jesus was disobedient and had at times to be spanked or to suffer for his disobedience. He was the perfect and sinless Son of God. But as a son he had to learn obedience.
What that means is that he did not need to learn how to obey because that was natural with him. But he had to learn what obedience involved and that included the suffering aspects of it. He had to learn what it meant to obey so that he could then act as a faithful and sympathetic high priest on our behalf. Jesus himself has set the example, boys and girls, teenagers, for your command to obey your father and mother.
Now I want you to notice that it does not say honor your parents when you agree with them. Do you notice that? Because there are going to be times that you will not agree with your parents. You see they have not yet arrived at that pinnacle of wisdom where you are. They'll grow up someday. I remember what one little girl said. She said, it's no wonder we have such a hard time with our parents. We get them so late in life. It does not say here honor your parents when you agree with them.
Recognize that there are times you will not understand why your parents set the rules they do, why they say what they do, but God says nonetheless honor them and obey them. Notice also that it does not say honor your parents if you get what you want. Now there may be times you will get what you want. There will be other times when you will not get what you want or you will get what you don't want.
The point is that irrespective of what it has to do with what you want or wish, God says honor your mother and your father. Do what they tell you to do. Now for a sober person there is a question that comes to mind at this point because what I have said is very broad and general. But in a society like we seem to be living in today we have to ask this question. Is a child to obey a command from his parent which is wrong or immoral? The answer to that is absolutely not.
A child is not obligated by this command from the Lord to obey his parents if the command from the parent involves a violation of his personal purity, a law of God, or the rights of another person. If a parent tells the child to do something that is wrong, the child is not obligated before God to obey his parents in that instance. You would say that should never happen among Christian people and that is true. It should never happen among any people. But it does happen.
And that is why I say this. A child needs to be careful how he or she would say no. It must be done with the right attitude and frankly there has to be on the child's part an understanding before God that he will have to perhaps suffer consequences for saying no in those times. The boys and girls, teenagers, if someone who has authority over you asks you to do something wrong or which is a violation of your personal purity, you do not have to obey that person before God.
That person is wrong who is commanding it of you. But the general principle nonetheless is children obey your parents in the Lord. That's the right thing to do before God. That is the will of God for your life. Let me say a word now of application to children who are independent of their parents. Those who have in some measure shall we say grown up into adulthood. Those who have gone beyond the home, perhaps to establish their own home. There is an application here to you and me.
It does not say honor your mother and your father when you are a child. It says honor your father and your mother. That includes the adults who are here this morning as well. Because you see if God extends the life of our parents, there comes a time when the parent becomes the child and the child becomes the parent. I think you understand what I mean. In those situations where the parent is no longer able to care for himself, the child is not to forsake his parents, but to honor.
And yet so often this is done, isn't it? So often parents are shunted off to a home where they are left to waste away the rest of their days on the earth and ignored by the children that they have raised. I have seen it with my own eyes. I have wept over it. Let that not be done among those who understand God's word. God says honor your mother and father. That is to be done financially if they need it, physically, emotionally support them.
But once again there is a word of balance that must be said. God expects us to care for our parents as they grow older, but on the other hand parents are not to take advantage of their children and attempt to manipulate them for selfish purposes. That kind of manipulation does not call for an obedient or honoring response from the children. Sometimes that does happen. There have been homes and marriages wrecked because of parents making demands that are unreasonable upon married children.
There is not an expectation on the part of the Lord for a child in that situation to break up his own home, to cause division between the husband and wife because of a parent's attempt at manipulation. And yet we are expected to care for our parents. We have government programs to help us do that and we pay taxes to pay for those things. And it's okay to use them. It's okay to use them. But you know parents who grow old need some things more than money.
If you were to take a survey of the elderly people in our community, you would find that money is low on the list of their needs. There may be some exceptions where money would be very high, but for the most part that is not the main priorities, one of the main priorities. In addition to money to support themselves, parents need some other things in their elderly years because you see old age can be dehumanizing. One can be stripped of his dignity or her dignity in old age.
Are the very issues of life as one declines in health and in strength. Mom and dad also need to have their worth as human beings affirmed once in a while. They need to be shown that they are still dignified as a man or a woman. They need to be shown loving consideration, affection, and gratitude for past years of sacrifice and hard work even though maybe now they can do none of those things. They need to know that they are still loved, children.
I would ask you to remember that Jesus as a 33 year old man cared for his mother as he died upon the cross, committing her to the care of John. Once again we find in him an example of honoring our mothers and our fathers. I believe the word of God teaches that if we fail to care for our parents in their needs as they grow older that we are worse than unbelievers.
If one fails to honor his parents in a situation like that it's likely that he will reap what he sows because his own children will grow up to treat him exactly the same way and he will deserve it. I can say to you that if you treat your parents with disrespect in their old age there will come a day when you will grieve and you will wish you could turn the clock back a day or a week or a month and say the things that you should have said. I guarantee you that.
I recall being called from my home late one night, a number of years ago, to come to a hospital where a woman was dying. I had visited her earlier in the week and knew that she had cancer and would likely not live very long. I had ministered to that family in some ways although they were not a part of our church and some of them were only professing Christians but there was no fruit whatsoever from their lives.
As I got to the hospital they were all gathered around her bed and she was unconscious. These are children who are in their 20s and 30s and you have never heard such remorse, such grieving, such sorrow, such words of bitterness and anguish as came from those children who realized that their mother was dying and they had never said in all their years words of kindness and appreciation and love to her.
You stand beside one bed like that my friend and it will teach you a lesson about life you will never forget. God was gracious in that particular case. That woman aroused from her coma quite unexpectedly and they had perhaps 10 minutes with her somewhat in a rational state of mind when at least a few of them could say things that they needed to say and then she died. What a terrible way to watch a loved one die.
I implore you children who are grown up honor your father and your mother because the day comes altogether too quickly when you don't have them to honor anymore. I think there are a couple of other implications in this commandment that are worth noting. The first is that parents should be honorable to be honored. Parents should be honorable and worthy of the respect that this verse commands from their children. I believe that's what God wants. Campbell Morgan has a probing comment here.
He says, if obedience is to be rendered gladly and implicitly, it must be to a control that is conditioned in love. No father or mother can think right thoughts or plan pure programs for their children unless they in their turn are living the life of subjection to God and are receiving from Him the ordering of all their ways. The surest way to ensure that children shall honor parents is for the parents to live the life before them which reflects the glory and grace of God.
Parents should be honorable to be honored. You see in God's plan parents are not just the providers of roof and food for children. It is God's plan for parents to be the very revelation of His likeness to children. You see in the early years of childhood a child's concept of God is formed and it is formed not from his reading the Bible he doesn't even know how to read. His earliest concepts of God come from watching mom and dad. What a responsibility that is.
And may I say what a privilege it is. What a joy it is to be able to live the life of God before your children and to develop within them the right concept of what God is and who He is. Yet if parents fail to honor their children by properly nurturing them in the things of God and enriching them in matters of life long and eternal importance and fail in taking time to instruct them in word and action as to what life is all about and what place God deserves in it.
I say if parents fail to honor their children in these ways they should not be surprised if their children refuse to obey this command. John Locke said parents wonder why the streams are bitter when they themselves have poisoned the fountain. That is a sharp comment but it is right on target. Parents should be honorable to be honored. Now children understand that even if your parents are not honorable God says in His word to honor them.
But to parents who are here I challenge all of us to be honorable parents. Are you an honorable father? Mom, what do your children understand about God from your life? Is your parenting a reflection of the love and the mercy of Jesus Christ? I believe we also see an implication in the first part of this command where it says honor your father and your mother. What that reminds us is this that it is important for a home for there to be a mother and father. Now there are exceptions to that.
I grew up in such a home. My father died when I was eight and there was not a father in our home until my mother remarried when I was fifteen. Why God sometimes chooses homes to be that way and causes it to be so only He understands. But I am speaking to the norm now, to the majority. It is the normal thing for there to be a mother and father in a home. We are living in a day when moms and dads too quickly forget that.
I believe it is the will of God for a mother and father to keep their home together. This last week I along with some of you undoubtedly saw a news report of a young boy that had been found somewhere in Alabama. Do you remember reading about that or seeing it? His mother was from Covington, Kentucky where I lived for ten years in my first ministry. Her ex-husband had taken the child away from the home and after two long years of search he was finally discovered. But I want to tell you I wept.
I literally cried because with a camera on that little boy they were trying to get him to decide, do you want to be with mom or with dad? No child should have to make that decision. That is not the will of God. God's commandment is not honor your father or your mother. The word of God says honor your father and your mother. Father the best thing you can do for your children is to love your wife.
Mother the best thing you can do for your children is to love their father and keep that home together. One says I don't love my husband like I used to. Then you learn to love him again. It is a matter of your will. You say I no longer love my wife. Then you find out what has robbed that love of your wife. You get it out of your life and you learn to love your wife again. Away with these silly ideas regarding divorce for any cause.
No child should have to be put into a position of wanting or having to be with mother or father. That is not the will of God. I recognize that there are times when that cannot be helped. I recognize that. My friend, don't you be the guilty person in causing that to happen. There is a promise in connection with this commandment. A promise in the sense of a beneficial result. It is the only one of the Ten Commandments which has a statement like this.
It says honor your father and your mother that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. This does not necessarily mean that every child that obeys this command is going to live a long life. That is not what it is saying. There are good and obedient children who die young. How well I remember Bobby, raised in the inner city, the first of his whole family to trust the Lord.
His greatest desire was to grow up and have enough money to buy a farm and to move his mother out of the inner city. Bobby died at the age of eleven of cancer. This command is not promising that every child that obeys his parents is going to live a long time. Really what it is saying here is to the nation of Israel. It is saying to them as a people that as the children are brought up to obey this command, their culture, their society will be strong. There will be moral fiber to it.
As a result of that, they as a people will dwell in that land for a long time. That is what this verse is saying. However, I believe that there is a personal application that can be derived from this. Character that is shaped in a warm atmosphere of love, honor, and obedience to parents gives a child direction in life, which tends to enrich and prolong his life.
On the other hand, character that is formed in a vacuum of these, but rather is shaped with dishonor and rebellion and insubjection to parents, tends to give a child a direction of life toward trouble, crime, and pursuits that will shorten and waste the life. I believe with all of my heart that is true. I want you to notice that the Bible doesn't say who it is that is to honor us, but it does say whom we are to honor. From where each one of us fits into this command.
The Word of God says for us to take the initiative and to begin honoring. What can you do personally to make your home more of the place that God wants it to be? Children, teenagers, what about you? Are you honoring your parents by obeying them with the right heart attitude? You see it's not enough just to go through the outward motions. God is looking at the heart. He wants the heart attitude to be right and agreeable. You may not be able to agree with them in what they're asking you to do.
You may not think that it's for your best, for your pleasure, but with the right heart attitude will you determine to obey your parents as unto the Lord? Moms and dads, do your children find it easy to honor you? Are you an honorable parent? It may be that your home is wracked today with dissension and unhappiness. Children are not obeying parents. Mom and dad, why might that be so? Is it that you have failed to teach them in their younger years to do it?
Has there been some failure on your part that has created rebellion in them? I have talked to enough rebellious teenagers to understand that often that rebellion is rooted in a failure of the parents somewhere back down the line. If you're facing that today in your home, do you love your child enough to go to that child and say, my son, my daughter, where have I failed you? Where have I failed you? What do I need to correct? What can I apologize for?
I'm not trying to throw a guilt trip on you, my friend, that you shouldn't have to bear. That's not the purpose for this sermon. But my point is that God tells children to honor their father and mother. Are you making it impossible for them to honor you? By the sin, the blatant, open sewer of sin that runs through your life, will you today get that cleaned up and ask God to give you a pure and honorable life? Teenager, are you willing to let God deal with that spirit of rebellion in your heart?
You children that are growing up and you're watching an older teenager in your family who's rebelling, will you determine in your heart that you will not grieve your parents that way and dishonor God by following the example of that older brother or sister? Honor your father and your mother. An unknown author has penned these words, if Jesus came to your house to spend a day or two, if he came unexpectedly, I wonder what you'd do.
Oh, I know you'd give your nicest room to such an honored guest and all the food you'd serve to him would be the very best. And you would keep assuring him you're glad to have him there. But when you saw him coming, would you meet him at the door with arms outstretched in welcome to your heavenly visitor? Or would you maybe change your clothes before you let him in? Or hide some magazines and put the Bible where they'd been? Would you turn off your radio and hope he hadn't heard?
And wish you hadn't uttered that loud, last, hasty word? Would you hide your worldly music and put some hymn books out? Could you let Jesus walk right in or would you rush about? And I wonder, if the Savior spent a day or two with you, would you go right on doing the things you always do? Would you go right on saying the things you always say? Would life for you continue as it does from day to day? Would your family conversation keep up its usual pace?
And would you find it hard, each meal, to say a table grace? Would you sing the songs you always sing and read the books you read? And let him know the things on which your mind and spirit feed? Would you take Jesus with you everywhere you'd planned to go? Or would you maybe change your plans for just a day or so? Would you be glad to have him meet your very closest friends? Or would you hope that he'd stayed away until his visit ends? Would you be glad to have him stay forever, on and on?
Or would you sigh with great relief when he at last had gone? It might be interesting to know the things that you would do if Jesus came in person to spend some time with you. Let's pray. May I remind us all that he has come and he is there in our homes every day. Mom and Dad, what is God telling you today? What do you need to do in your home? What steps do you need to take? What conversations do you need to plan? Children?
What do you need to say to your mother or father when you get home today? What note do you need to write? What telephone call is there that should be made? All of this so that we can obey the command, honor your father and your mother. Come to the end that we may be obedient and walk in such a way as to please you and walk in such a way that we'll be happy. Bless our endeavoring to obey what your word has said to us on this Lord's day. In Jesus' name, Amen.