Ten(der) Command #5: Respect and Love Your Earthly Parents

Well, good morning.

Today is Sunday, September sixth, twenty and fifteen, and God is still on the throne.

He was all week long.

He will be in the week to come, and today he is on the throne.

God is good.

God is gracious.

God is kind.

God is patient.

And God has spoken to us.

And when God speaks, he neither misleads nor stutters.

Our God has spoken.

And among the things that he has spoken to us is the fifth of the tender commandments.

And when he speaks, he neither misleads nor stutters.

And he has said, Honor your father and mother that the days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

The fifth of the tender commandments.

I'd like you to open your Bible, please, if it's not already open, to Exodus chapter 20, verse 12, which is the primary text that I have just read.

Exodus 20:12

I want you to also, just for a moment, turn over to Deuteronomy chapter 5, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, Deuteronomy, where the law and the tender commandments are given a second time.

Deuteronomy 5 · chapter mention

And there we hear something almost identical: honor your father and mother as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long in the land.

And then interestingly, he adds, that it may go well with you.

Does that sound familiar?

We've been talking about the commandments of God that are given that it may go well with us.

And he says, honor your father and mother, that it may go well with you.

And this applies not only to kids, it applies to all of us.

And then if you would turn please to Ephesians chapter 6, verses 1 through 3.

Ephesians 6:1–3

Ephesians 6, 1 through 3, where the fifth commandment is repeated again.

So we hear it in Exodus, we hear it again in Deuteronomy, as we've just read.

And now in Ephesians, Paul, under the inspiration of the scriptures, says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Honor your father and mother.

This is the first commandment, with a promise, that it may go well with you, and you may live long in the land.

What Paul does is he takes the uh the Exodus passage and the Deuteronomy passage, he blends them together, and there he is speaking specifically to children.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, and he goes back to the fifth commandment.

The fifth commandment, however, is not limited to kids.

Kids?

Hello, you awake there.

I saw these kids in the grocery store yesterday or the day before, I guess it was.

It's not just for them, it's for all of us, as I trust that uh that you will see in the course of our time this morning.

You may remember that in the Gospels, Jesus summarized the law of God and the commandments of God with two statements.

He summarized the Ten Commandments and all of the law of God in two statements.

First of all, you could use some of that.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And then he added, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And in these two, the Ten Commandments and the moral law of God are summed up.

You shall love God, it's talking about the vertical relationship between us and God, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself, talking about the horizontal relationship.

To be rightly related to God is to be rightly related to one another.

To be rightly related to one another is to be rightly related to God.

You can't be rightly related to God and not rightly related to one another.

You can't be rightly related to one another and not be rightly related to God.

There is a vertical and a horizontal dimension of all of this.

Those of you who went to a good Lutheran catechism will have learned that the Ten Commandments reflect this division.

What we've been seeing up until now has been focusing on the vertical relationship, being rightly related to God.

So we, as we saw it, you shall, you are to put God first, the very first of the commandments.

You should worship God as He is, not just as you want Him to be.

No God of our own making, the God who is.

We should make sure that God really makes a difference in our life.

If we took all of the words and all of the Christian activities out, would there be any difference in our lives?

And then as we saw last week, we need to stop, re-create, get aligned with God, refocus on God.

Those are all talking about the vertical relationship with God.

Beginning here in the fifth commandment, the focus is on relationships with other people.

And it's so very interesting that he begins with the child-parent relationship.

It's actually very instructive.

The child-parent relationship.

We have all kinds of other relationships.

We have husband-wife, we have members of the congregation, one to another of the church, we have work relationships, we have.

Many of you, some of you at least, may not really have even had a great relationship with your parents.

Some of you didn't know your parents, some of you didn't have parents that were particularly honorable.

But you've all had parents.

You're living proof of the fact that you've all had parents.

It is not the only relationship that we have, but it is the first relationship that we have.

And it's very interesting that when God starts talking about relationships, he begins with that first informative relationship of child to parent.

What happens in that first relationship, child and parent, has a far-reaching impact on the rest of our lives.

Those of you who have been privileged to have a wonderful relationship with your parents, and for some of you that was a long time ago.

For some of you, not so long ago.

If you had a good, healthy, positive relationship with your parents, it helps you in life.

If the relationship with your parents is not good, then it's much more difficult in life.

If children have been abused or mistreated in various ways, that has impact on their lives often throughout the course of their lives.

It's not surprising that if many times at least, counselors will help us begin to get in touch with what our family of origin was, particularly our relationship with our parents.

Because those early years teach us something about life and they teach us something about relationships.

And we carry that, the good or the bad, through the decades of our life.

There's an old phrase, some of you will recognize, charity begins with at home.

That phrase is not talking about giving handouts, it's not that kind of charity.

It's the old-fashioned biblical term for love.

Charity begins at home, love begins at home.

And what we experience at home goes with us for many years.

That's just the way life works.

You see, the commandments of God get in touch with what really works in life, the way life is, the principles that God the Creator has put into the universe.

And when we go against those basic laws, those basic principles of how life works, it has negative consequences for us.

And when we go with the grain of the universe, as it was, as it were, then it goes well with us.

If we go against the grain of the universe, we invariably get splinters.

It's really just that simple.

So it's of great importance for us that we think about the child-parent relationship.

It's of great importance that we think of family values.

Do we care deeply about family values?

You better believe it.

Not because of our political association, but because God cares deeply about what happens in the home.

And when he starts talking and giving horizontal commands, it goes to that very core.

We know that when the family starts out in a wrong direction, our lives begin in a wrong direction.

And when society tries to change the nature of the family, then society is going against the grain of the universe.

And it will not be without consequences.

How tragic that the media, that the TV shows, that the movies portray unhealthy families as normal.

That's not right.

That's not right because God wants healthy, normal families.

That's why he begins talking about the child-parent relationship.

How terrible it is that when inappropriate, ungodly forms of living become the norm and accepted, that's the difficulty with that is not just that we don't like it, but it has an impact on our society.

What is going to happen when homosexual marriage is now considered a right?

What's going to happen with the children?

It will not be without its consequences.

We care about family values because God does, and God cares about families because it's at the core of human society.

We will not escape as a nation or as individuals or as a culture going against the grain of the universe.

So what we're talking about is incredibly important.

When God says, honor your father and your mother, he's going to something very, very central to human experience.

What I'd like to do is to try to bring this simple text, actually, to light.

You know, there's some passages that are pretty complicated and a little bit difficult to rightly interpret, to figure out exactly what is meant.

This is not one of those passages.

It just isn't.

There's two little points that I want to surface by way of helping you make sure that you're understanding it correctly.

The difficulty with this text, with this thought, is not what it says, but how we live it out.

And how we live it out in the whole course of our lives.

It applies to children, it applies to teenagers, it applies to adults, but in different ways.

So what I'd like to do is just mention a couple of simple things to help bring the text to light.

And then I'd like to spend the time that we have trying to apply it to the different phases and stages of life.

The first thing that I want to mention is that when we read this text as it appears in Ephesians, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul was led to write that this is a command with a promise.

And it is indeed a command with a promise.

But what I want to do is make sure that we are understanding the promises of God in the right way because there's a lot of unfortunate, incorrect use of the promises of God.

So it is a command with a promise, but many of the promises in the Bible, now listen to me carefully here.

Bear with me.

Many of the promises in the Bible are not to be understood in a simplistic, mechanical, if this then that way.

But many of the promises of the Bible are saying, in effect, I promise you this, folks, this is the way life is, are describing basic principles of reality, their laws of reality.

They're not necessarily name it and claim it type promises.

When we hear the word promise, we think, okay, God has promised it, so I will name it, I will claim it, and I will get it.

And that is ridiculous.

That's not understanding the scriptures.

If we're not careful, we approach the promises of Scripture, maybe the way we approach a vending machine.

Okay, let's see here.

Which what I okay, this is what I want.

How do I get it?

Okay, I push G6 and I put a buck and a half in, and out comes what I want.

There it is.

It's promised to me.

If I'll push G6, I'll get what I want.

Bingo, I've got my whatever it is.

Now, we wouldn't probably consciously approach God that way, but is there not a risk that we look for the promises of God and we say, I'm just going to claim that promise and I'm going to get what's given?

God says He wants people to be healthy.

He promises to heal our wounds.

So I'm going to claim that and I'm going to get well.

It's a promise, after all.

Or is that a vending machine, if we approach it that way?

Or God wants to make me wealthy.

So I'm going to claim it, I'm going to name it, I'm going to claim it.

Bingo, G6, mine.

But then what happens?

What happens when it doesn't quite work that way?

Well, what happens is either we think we screwed up or that God did.

Because after all, it's a promise.

I'm claiming the promise.

It's not happening.

So either there's something wrong with me, or there's something wrong with God.

Do you remember the story of Job?

Job was a righteous man, a man with wealth and a great family, and a man who loved God.

And as we read the book of Job, his world fell absolutely apart.

So his friends and his wife approached him.

And the friends, in effect, said, There's problems in your life.

It must be that you're sinning.

If you have problems, do you automatically assume you're sinning?

Don't automatically assume that that's not the case, but there's not a one-for-one correlation.

But Job's dear friends, one by one, came to him and they said, You're sinning, that's why there's problems in your life.

His wife, oh, not to be married to Job's wife.

She looked at the situation and she knew the character of Job, but she concluded there must be something wrong with God.

And so she said, just curse God and die.

It doesn't work, does it?

Oh, poor Job.

As though when things go wrong in our lives, they're automatically our fault, or God just isn't fulfilling his promises.

That's a misuse of the promises of Scripture.

Don't make the Bible into a magical book or the promises of God into something that they may not be.

And I just want to suggest to you, as you read the scriptures and think, that you would ask yourself, is this promise for me that I just name and claim?

Or is it telling me, son, this is the way life works?

I promise you, this is it.

This is the way the universe, my world is put together.

I'm God, I'm the creator, I know how it works.

And if you transgress this, if you go your own stubborn way, it will not go well with you.

And if you go the way I'm showing you, that's the way life was meant to be.

So just take one simple example and we'll move on.

Proverbs 22, 6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

That's describing a basic principle of life.

But my friends, that is not a promise that if you send your kids to Iwana, if you send your kids to Sunday school, if they memorize scripture, if they go to church, then they will walk with God the rest of their life.

That's not what that verse is saying.

That's a vending machine view of God.

If I do this, then this will automatically happen.

It is not that, that does not work that way.

Some of you may have children who are far, far from where they need to be.

What's gone wrong?

Have you messed up or did God mess up?

Or is it maybe not quite that simple?

The promises of God, the fact of the matter is that a child who grows up in a believing home, a child who learns right and wrong from his parents, a child who is encountering scripture and building scripture into his life, that child stands a far better chance of having his life go well than someone who doesn't have those advantages.

But do not take the promises of God to be something that they may not be.

Many of them are more principles than some kind of a mechanistic machine where you just punch this or that button.

He's saying here, folks, this relationship with your parents is of critical importance.

And when this is right, that's the way life was meant to function.

One other little simple observation.

It does not here say obey your parents.

It says honor your parents.

Now, Paul, when he's talking to children, he says that this command, he puts it in the context of obedience, and that's absolutely true, as we shall see.

The honoring of parents is different in different ages and stages of life.

So what is the command here?

The command is to honor.

The word honor, the root meaning is weight, heaviness, or value.

The relationship with your parents is to be an important one, a valuable one, a weighty one.

To honor is to attach weight or importance to something.

To honor is to hold a high opinion of.

Well, I'll leave it at that.

We honor God when we show respect that is due to Him, when we value Him, we give weight to what He says, we care about Him and the things He cares about.

And the same is true for honoring our parents.

So just two thoughts.

The command is with a promise, but we better understand what the promises of Scripture are.

And the command is to honor, which can include obedience, but goes far.

Far beyond it.

So, what do we do with this?

I'd like, I don't know that I'll have time, but we could talk about what it means for children.

I'd like to talk about what it means for teenagers, and I'd like to talk about what it means for adults to honor their parents.

As it relates to children, it's relatively simple.

Now, don't mistake me, I didn't say raising children is simple.

Nobody who has had kids would claim that it is simple.

But the principle of what this commandment says to little kids is very clear.

It's primarily a matter of simple obedience.

You know, we don't pop out of the womb knowing that a stove is hot and it can burn us.

So somebody has to tell us, don't put your hand on the stove.

Because we don't know that as kids.

Kids are very naive in a positive sense.

They're very inexperienced.

They don't know how life works.

They don't know that you don't take a paper clip and stick it into a light socket.

I actually one time took my finger and stuck it in a live light socket.

What a stupid, stupid little boy I was.

Now God graciously protected me, but I didn't know how it worked.

So somebody needs to say, stop, don't do that.

So kids running out in the street, going chasing after a ball, doesn't realize what's what the deal is with cars that pass by.

And mom and dad say, stop.

And you know what the child needs to do?

You know what you guys need to do?

When you're told very clearly, don't do that, stop.

What are you supposed to do?

Stop.

Simple obedience.

Sometimes, as you get a little bit older, you begin to realize that your parents don't know everything.

But for children, especially young ones, it's pretty simple.

Obey your parents, because you need somebody who's older and wiser and has a little bit more experience in life.

And God says, obey.

For children, it's mostly an issue of simple obedience.

For teenagers, wow, this gets a whole lot more complex.

You see, what happens is you start out as a child.

I know you didn't realize this, you start out as a child, eventually you, eventually you get to be an adult, and in between, there is this very strange, complex, and perilous phase in which you are no longer a child and you're not yet an adult.

And you know that yourself as a teenager, you just don't want to admit it.

So obedience or honoring the parents, better said, for a teenager, is related to this issue of transition from childlike obedience, jump how high, yes, sir, to a more mature adult honoring.

And it is not simple.

It's a time of transitioning from one aspect of honoring to the next.

So, teens, how does this apply to you?

Perhaps somewhat differently than you might think.

It's not so simple.

In fact, there's nothing simple about being a teenager.

I have friends who talk about their high school years as though that was the high point of their life.

I think they're nuts.

It's not easy to be a teenager, and teenagers, it's not easy to be a parent of a teenager.

You're both trying to figure it out as it goes along.

But you must find a way to traverse this perilous path from childlike obedience to adultlike honoring.

And they need to figure that out as well.

And it is not so simple.

No, your parents do not understand you.

You're absolutely right.

How could they?

They grew up.

And they lived in a different age.

Your parents were never your age.

And parents, please don't say to a kid, when I was your age, because you were never their age.

You were never facing the issues that they have to face.

You don't know what their life is really like.

And don't pretend that you do.

Now, you do know some things, and don't hesitate, but but it's not so simple.

And teenagers, uh, they are not perfect, but please don't write them off as dimwits or a huge embarrassment.

All three of our kids went through a stage in which they were just incredibly embarrassed by who I was.

Just incredibly embarrassed, and occasionally they had right to be, because, you know, I do crazy things and do embarrassing things and so forth.

But don't write your parents off.

Mark Twain wrote, When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.

But when I got to 21, I was astonished how much he had learned in seven years.

Young people, what I would encourage you to think about is not waiting until you're 21.

Your parents don't have it all figured out.

They don't know how to handle you properly, they're not understanding, but they're not dimwits and they do care.

A number of years back, uh one of our sons was in high school and he had signed up for AP biology.

I was telling somebody about this.

AP biology was really, really hard.

And frankly, Jane and I weren't really sure that this was a good move to make, but he wanted to do it.

He signed up.

Two weeks into the course, he came back to us and said, Mom, dad, I'd like to quit.

I'd like to like to cancel and drop AP biology.

Can I do that?

And we said, No.

And he said, but I really and he started as this whole litany of arguments as only a Barrett teenager could do.

And we just listened, we really did listen.

But basically we said, No, you signed up for this, you follow through, it's gonna be hard, but you can do it.

Well, he wasn't the least bit happy.

So he ran to his high school guidance counselor and he said, Miss Bash, I'd like to drop AP biology.

And the first words out of her mouth was, have you spoken with your parents about it?

Miss Bash was a good friend of ours, that helped.

Well, a couple of years later, Peter came to us when he was a freshman in college, and he said, Mom, dad, I I just want to thank you for making me uh take AP biology.

It was kind of those words that as a parent you just long for.

Someday when you've said to your to yourself or to your kids, one of these days you'll thank me for that.

He actually did.

What he was saying was, I thought I knew what was best and I didn't.

Thank you, thank you for helping me because you knew a little bit more in this area than I did.

Um I don't really have time, but I would encourage teenagers to study the only passage in the Bible that describes Jesus as an adolescent.

It's a and parents, study that as well.

That ought to be required curriculum of student ministries here.

Greg's not here right now, but I'll have a chat with him later.

It's very interesting because what we find is that Mary and Joseph were not perfect parents.

They lost Jesus for three days.

Mary and Joseph were not perfect parents.

They neglect, they didn't even know that Jesus was gone for three days.

And then Mary comes up to Jesus and said, Why did you do that to me?

When we say that to our kids, we know we're just scared.

Kids, your parents don't know how to be good parents of teenagers.

It doesn't come natural.

But Jesus was traversing this path from childlike obedience to adult-like honoring, and there was a world of experience and things going on in the mind and heart of Jesus that his parents didn't understand.

He was sitting in the temple talking with the teachers of the law.

He was interacting as an adult, but his parents only saw him still as a kid.

But it wasn't, he didn't become a rebel.

He, it says very clearly, he was in submission to his parents.

He came and he went with them.

And then the next thing that was said is that Mary treasured these things in her heart.

Nothing more treasurable than that.

No wonder Mary pondered them.

Jesus was going through this phase where it was not all just slavish obedience.

Parents of teenagers, it's really not enough to just say, because I said so.

You can say that.

Part of that is true, but that's not enough.

A teenager needs more than just, as long as you're in my house, you're going to do it this way, because I say so.

It's not enough.

That doesn't help them.

Don't provoke your children to wrath.

They're no longer little kids, they're not yet where they will be, and they're all messed up, and you're just as messed up as well.

And by God's grace, we can make it through and come out the other end.

It's just not that simple.

For adults, there's a whole lot more that I could say here than I have time to say, but I would like to make it very clear that it's primarily a matter of honoring your parents.

I'm talking about adults with their parents, if they're still alive.

This is a command to honor them.

You are not responsible to obey them.

That's not the same thing.

In fact, as an adult, you have the child-parent relationship is no longer the primary one.

If you're married, then it's the husband-wife relationship that must take precedence.

You have a relationship to your parents, but it must not control your life and control your family, nor can it be ignored.

The issue for honoring our parents as adults is largely a matter of showing respect, treating with dignity, expressing appreciation, being sensitive to and caring for and about them.

And parents or adults relative to their parents, write this passage down.

It's Jesus and Mary when Jesus was on the cross.

This was the darkest hour in Jesus' life.

He was about to go to the cross.

He was on the cross at this point.

And the pain of the cross was not the crucifixion as we understand it or has been portrayed in all of the movies.

The awfulness was much more than the physical pain.

He had never once in his life been separated from his Father.

And because your sins and mine were about to be placed upon us, there was an anguish of soul that came from separation from God that is far more profound than anything that we have ever experienced.

In that his darkest hour, Jesus turns to Mary, and he turns to John and he says to John, behold your mother.

And to Mary, he says, pointing to John, behold your son.

And it says, from that time on, Mary, in effect, was taken into the family of John.

He cared for his mother in profound ways.

For most of us, it may be as simple as a phone call.

I wish I had understood far earlier than I did how much my mother just wanted to hear from me.

I was so busy.

I was busy raising a family.

I was busy raising, uh doing all kinds of things.

I was trying to win the world for Christ.

And my mother just wanted me to call and say, Hi mom, how's it going?

It took a long time for me to realize how much a thoughtful, kind word would have meant to my mother.

It took my son, um, being much wiser than I was at his age, got a couple of things one of our boys wrote to me.

Dad, happy Father's Day, or happy birthday.

I want to take this opportunity to tell you how much I love you and appreciate you.

I especially appreciate your godly wisdom and your consistent encouragement.

Thank you for your prayers and love.

I'm truly lucky to have you as a father.

Now, do you think I paid that semester of tuition or what?

Wow! I what a gift to me.

Uh, Dad, Merry Christmas.

Thanks for the wisdom and integrity of you you have portrayed in your life.

It's been an amazing example.

I love you lots and lots.

Have a happy Christmas.

Dad, thank you for being my father.

Happy Father's Day.

Even though this is two weeks late, I still want to let you know how much I love and appreciate you.

Every year I realize this more and more, and I realize how important it is to communicate this to you.

You have much to be proud of in thinking of your influence on your children's lives.

If I had had one-tenth of the maturity that our son had to just honor and care for emotionally, and in that way, my parents' life would have been a whole lot better.

In the last years, we walked very, very intensely through my mother's last couple of years of life.

And we cared for her, and we were to I was torn between Jane and our kids and my mother, but Jane wisely allowed me to honor my parents and didn't hold it against me that I was taking time to love and serve them.

Well, there's a thousand things more that we could say, haven't even touched on those who have been deeply hurt by their parents.

I just want to say honoring our parents is different as a young child, as a teenager, as an adult.

But this is the way life works.

And as we learn to honor, it goes well with us.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, um probably nothing that I have said is new.

Father, it's just so hard to find our way through all of this.

And I pray, Father, that you would give the enablement, that you would give the enlightenment of our mind, open the eyes of our hearts to know how to honor our parents.

Lord, we desire to follow you.

You've given us a new heart, you've given us a new nature, you've given us a different set of desires.

Help us, Father, to honor our parents.

I pray in Jesus' name.