Series

God gave the Ten Commandments as a way of helping people lead the life He intended for them. In their setting it lays out for Israel what it means to live as God’s “special possession.” It gave a profile of what a “kingdom of priests” and a “holy nation” looks like in everyday life.

Traditionally the first four commandments are distinguished from the last six. The first table of the law consists of the four commandments that govern our response to God. The second table consists of the six commandments that govern the way we treat one another. Obviously, our human relationships cannot be separated from our relationship to God, but there is a distinction: The first four commandments teach us to love God, while the last six teach us to love our neighbor.

Love for God must come first. We cannot truly love one another unless we love God. If we do not respect God, we will not respect one another. So, we can hardly begin to keep the last six commandments until we learn how to keep the first four.

With that in mind, today, we look at commandment #5

The Command

God commands each person to honor his or her father and mother. The word for “honor” means “to give weight to.” It implies acknowledging the “weight” of something. In this context, it implies that people give the proper “weight” or “respect” to their parents’ position.

It means to hold in high esteem, to even reverence, and certainly obey.

The real issue in this commandment is the authority of God in our lives.

The first four commandments specifically call us to recognize God’s sovereignty and authority over our lives as His children.

This commandment calls us to recognize God’s authority over our lives by respecting the authority of our parents over the children, because parents are representatives of God in a child’s life.

Seriousness of the Command

This is serious stuff – Some of the most frightening curses in the Old Testament are reserved for children who rebel against their parents. Here are two examples:

'If there is anyone who curses his father or his mother, he shall surely be put to death; he has cursed his father or his mother, his bloodguiltiness is upon him. Leviticus 20:9 (NASB)

18 "If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them,
19 then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown.
20 "They shall say to the elders of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.'
21 "Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it and fear. Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (NASB)

That is how serious the sin of disobedience is. One who did not honor his parents was in danger of being put to death, in some cases by stoning. Thus, respect for parents, and for authority figures in general, should be taken seriously.

In the New Testament, disobedience to parents is listed as one of the characteristics of a depraved heart and one of the signs that we are living in the "terrible times" of "the last days.” (Romans 1:28-32; 2 Timothy 3:1-5)

It is interesting that this command is repeated in Ephesians 6:1-3 and Colossians 3:20.

In these two passages Paul gives us a two-fold application of this command: Obedience & Honor

Ask yourself this question, “Does your relationship with your father or mother bring glory to God?”

The Promise

This commandment is so important in that it is one of the only commandments in the entire Bible that gives a reason for observing it: that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you.

Note that when you are given a promise – implicit within the promise is a warning, “if you don't obey this command, then your days will not be long.”

The primary meaning of this promise was to the nation of Israel concerning the land of Canaan. It was a national promise to Israel, that if they would be obedient to this command, God would bless them with long life in the Promised Land. They would be creating a culture that creates a society that is lasting.

I think there is a two-fold application of this promise today. (Much the same as it would have been to the Israelites)

1. Long Life
2. Creating a Society that Lasts

Why?

So, then, why is honoring parents so important? Why does the Ten Commandments believe that society could not survive if this commandment were widely violated? There are basically four reasons:

1. PARENTAL. A father and a mother who are not honored as parents are essentially adult peers of their children. They are not parents.

2. MORAL. Honoring parents is how nearly all of us come to recognize that there is a moral authority above us to whom we are morally accountable. And without this, we cannot create or maintain a moral society. Of course, for the Ten Commandments, the ultimate moral authority is God, who is therefore higher than even our parents.

3. SOCIETAL. Dennis Prager says it this way: “…honoring parents is fundamental to a good society. Honoring parents is the best antidote to totalitarianism. One of the first things totalitarian movements seek to do is to break the child-parent bond. The child's allegiance is shifted from parents to the state. Even in democratic societies the larger the state becomes, the more it usurps the parental role.”

4. SPIRITUAL. There is one more reason to keep the fifth commandment, and it may be the most important reason of all: Parents have a God-given responsibility to teach their children how to know and serve God. But children will not learn those lessons if they do not respect their parents; so keeping the fifth commandment is essential to God's plan for passing down the faith. Of all the ways children honor their parents, the most important is listening to what they say about God and the way of salvation.

HOW?

So, what can we do about this? How can we better obey this commandment?

God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage was a constant reminder that He who could do that could do all things – including helping us to follow this command. So, certainly we can ask God to help us be better in this area, trusting in His strength where we are weak. But even still, like the rest of God's law, the fifth commandment is impossible for us to keep. The fifth commandment is part of God's law, and like the rest of God's law, we have broken it. No one is the perfect child.

Except Jesus. When Jesus died on the cross, he paid the penalty for our breaking the fifth commandment as much as for any other sin. But Jesus has done more than that: He has also kept the fifth commandment in our behalf. It was not enough for Jesus to pay the price for our sin—he also had to offer God the obedience that his law demands. And Jesus did that. He honored his earthly parents, and His heavenly Father.

Everyone who trusts in Jesus has His perfect obedience to the fifth commandment credited to their account, because when Jesus obeyed his parents, he was keeping God's law on our behalf.

TRUSTING JESUS!

God does not accept us on the basis of what we have done but on the basis of what Jesus has done. And one of the things Jesus has done is to keep the fifth commandment. So instead of looking at what we have done—all the times we dishonored and disobeyed our parents—God looks at what Jesus did when he obeyed his parents perfectly.

Trust Him today.

PRAYER REQUESTS

Because we believe in the power of prayer, we count it a privilege to pray for you. Please feel free to submit any prayer requests by e-mail to:

fourteenthave@aol.com