Exodus 20:12
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
In our series on the ten commandments we come today to the fifth. In my mind, when I have considered the two stone tablets of Moses, I have always assumed that since there were two tablets and ten commandments, there were five written on one and five on the other.
The truth is that the two tablets could well have been two copies with all ten commandments written on each one. This is consistent with ancient practices. If they were divided into two sections, there were probably four on the first tablet and then six on the second. At least this is how they are best organized.
The first four commandments deal with our relationship with God. They are vertical commandments instructing us how to relate to God. The last six commandments are horizontal and instruct us how to relate to each other. So we are instructed to honor our parents, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to covet.
There is one more important piece of information that helps us understand these last six commandments. Each one represents an area of Mosaic law. So this fifth commandment, honor your father and mother, represents family law and when you read the commandments, the worst case scenario for each area of law is listed. So for all the things you could do that would violate family law, the worst would be to dishonor your father and mother.
Does that seem a bit strange to you, that this is the worst thing you could do to a family member?
The importance of honoring your parents can be seen in some of the lists of evil behavior in the New Testament. When Paul wrote in Romans to talk about the behavior of those who God gave over to a depraved mind, he included disobeying one’s parents. Listen to how this fits into the list.
Romans 1:30
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
You can find similar lists in I & II Timothy when Paul talks about a list of behaviors of lawbreakers and when he lists behaviors of the end times.
It seems strange to have disobeying parents included in a list along with so much wicked behavior. Is dishonoring your parents really that bad?
Listen to this part of Mosaic law from Deuteronomy 21:18-21
If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
All Israel will hear of it and be afraid. You bet! Especially the sons!
I put on the cover of the bulletin a picture of Moses holding the ten commandments and a look of fear of the faces of people as they hear what he is saying. I did that on purpose because there is something terrifying about the way this law was presented. The ten commandments were presented in such a way that Israel was forced to take them seriously. We cannot skip past these commandments because they do not seem that important or relevant to us.
Three questions came to mind when I contemplated this commandment.
Why was the punishment for dishonoring parents so severe? Why is it so important to honor our parents?
What do we do if our parents do not deserve to be honored? What if our parents were abusive? Do we still have to honor them?
How is it we are to honor our parents?
Let me address those questions one by one.
Why was the punishment for dishonoring parents so severe? Why is it so important to honor our parents?
At the heart of this commandment is the understanding that God made a covenant with a people chosen by him. The continuation of this covenant is his desire and it is parents who bear ultimate responsibility for passing on the covenant God made with his people.
Toward the end of his life, Moses spoke to Israel to remind them of their history and covenant with God. How was Israel to carry on the covenant God made with them? (Deuteronomy 4:9-10)
Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. 10 Remember the day you stood before the LORD your God at Horeb, when he said to me, “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.”
In Psalm 78:5-7 this instruction is affirmed:
[God] decreed statutes for Jacob
and established the law in Israel,
which he commanded our forefathers
to teach their children,
6 so the next generation would know them,
even the children yet to be born,
and they in turn would tell their children.
7 Then they would put their trust in God
and would not forget his deeds
but would keep his commands.
The consequences for a breakdown in this chain of God communicating to parents and parents to children are dramatic. It is not just a family that has difficulty but the whole of society is affected.
This is the way God designed it to be. God reveals himself to his people. Parents teach their children what they have learned. Children grow up to be married and have their own children to whom they pass on what they have learned. This results in strong families which are the fundamental building block in society. When this process is followed, a long, blessed, abundant life is lived. When this process is not followed, society begins to crumble.
In the thought of the Near East at the time of Moses, it was not the religious heritage that was threatened when parents were not honored, it was the fabric of society that was threatened. And we seen this clearly in our modern world as well. When parents no longer teach their children about the ways of God, families break down. When families break down, society breaks down.
Why was the punishment for dishonoring parents so severe? Why is it so important to honor our parents?
The live and health of society rests on obedience to the fifth commandment.
There is another way of viewing why honoring your parents is so important and taken so seriously and it is well illustrated by a story from the Grimm Brothers Tales.
Once there was an old man whose hands trembled and who, when he ate, spilled food on the tablecloth and his clothes. It seemed as much food was spilled as he ate. His daughter-in-law never really liked him and finally had enough. She told her husband this could not continue and they put the old man in the corner where he could eat out of an earthenware bowl without messing up the table.
One day his trembling hands dropped and broke the bowl and the daughter-in-law exploded. “If you are a pig,” she said, “you must eat from a wooden trough.” And they made a little wooden trough in the corner where he now ate his meals.
The pride and joy in their lives was their little four year old son. One night at suppertime the father noticed him building something with pieces of wood. He asked his son what he was doing and the boy looked up with a smile and said, “I’m making a trough to feed you and Mama out of when I get big.”
The husband and wife looked at each other not saying anything. Then they cried and went to the corner and brought the old man to the table and never again said anything when he spilled his food or broke a dish.
They had learned that the way you treat your parents is how your children will treat you.
You may say that this is a selfish reason for taking care of your parents but another way of looking at it is that you are simply doing what God intended for you to do. We model behavior for our children and they follow our example. When you honor your parents and care for them, you are slipping comfortably into the pattern of behavior God has designed. His design is good for society and good for you.
What do we do if our parents do not deserve to be honored? What if our parents were abusive? Do we still have to honor them?
When parents are as wonderful as Annie and I, honoring parents is very easy. (OK, we were not perfect parents. We behaved in ways that gave our daughters something to talk about with counselors, but all in all, we have been good parents.)
But what do you do when your father or mother were emotionally abusive? Or physically abusive? What do you do if your father sexually abused you? What do you do if your parents rejected or abandoned you? Your mother dies and your father remarries someone not much older than you. He has a child with this young woman and then proceeds to cut you out of your inheritance. How do you honor him?
There are a lot of parents who do not deserve to be honored. There are a lot of parents who were intentionally or unintentionally cruel. Are we really supposed to honor them?
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
Notice that nothing is said about honoring only parents deserving of honor. The fifth commandment says only that we are to honor them.
You may have to forgive your father or mother for how they treated you. You cannot honor your father and mother by cutting them off and never seeing them or talking with them. You have to be in contact with your parents to honor them and that may be painful.
Remember that this commandment and the ones that follow all stand on the first four. We cannot honor our parents in a vacuum. We honor our parents in light of our relationship with God. Because God has loved us, revealed himself to us, pursued us, forgiven us, we can honor our parents even when they clearly do not deserve to be honored. Before we can forgive we have to know we have been forgiven. Before we can love those who hurt us, we have to know we are loved by God.
Parents were once children and the way parents treat their children reflects how they were treated by their parents. There are cycles that are passed down from generation to generation. When it is a destructive cycle and you were the victim of unfair and inappropriate behavior, you have the chance to break the cycle and create a new model for your children.
If your parents did not treat you well, honor them and create a new model of parenting. Break a destructive cycle.
Honor your father and your mother not because the idea appeals to you and not because they deserve it; honor them because this is how God created us to live in society. It is not a matter of what our parents deserve, it is a matter of what is good for you and good for the welfare of society.
We serve a holy God and when we seek his glory by obeying his desires for us, everything else in life falls into place. Honoring parents who do not deserve to be honored will bring glory to God and bring to you a rich and abundant life.
How is it we are to honor our parents?
Honor comes from a Hebrew word meaning heavy or weighty. It is the word used for the glory of God, the weightiness of his divine majesty. To honor your parents is to give due weight to their position. To honor your parents is to respect and value them.
My mother died fourteen months ago and I have been back to see my father twice since then. He is 85 years old and is losing a bit of his mobility and short-term memory. I love taking care of my father. On this last trip we went down to the New Jersey coast and in the house we rented, I took his luggage upstairs. I made his bed. I brought him food and drink. When I go back I sit with him while he reminisces about the past. I did his laundry and folded it. I love taking care of him. I find a strange fulfillment in doing this, not because I enjoy doing those things but because I love him and enjoy taking care of him. His memory is slipping and he asks the same questions over and over but I do not mind. I am patient with him. I love taking care of my father.
My mother was a different story. I had a difficult relationship with my mother. She was a manipulative woman. She could be very caring but she could also be hard and cruel. She was not reliable. From month to month I did not know how I would be treated. If you had met her, you would probably have liked her. She had many admirable qualities. But she was a difficult woman to have as a mother.
When I went back to the US to visit my parents, my mother and I always went out for breakfast and talked. She asked me the last time I was back before she died why it was that we did not have a closer mother/son relationship. I told her, “Do you think it might have anything to do with the fact that you refused to see me or speak with me for the year and a half before I left to go to Morocco?” (We lived twenty minutes away and she would be furious with my father when he and I got together in that year and a half.)
When I told her she had not spoken to me, she said, “I didn’t do that,” and I had to add some details of that painful time for her to remember. My mother was always true to her feelings in the moment and when her feelings changed, so did her behavior. She had a strange sense of integrity.
It is easy to honor my father; it was more difficult to honor my mother.
I know I was not a perfect son but this is how I tried to honor her. Well, let me start with what I did not do.
If you go to the zoo and stick your hand in the lion’s cage and get it bitten, you are not likely to stick your hand in the cage a second time. So I did not once again open myself to my mother so that she could hurt me. I kept some emotional distance. I told her I loved her, which was true, but I kept a bit of distance. I was friendly with her but I was always ready for her to try to manipulate me and I backpedaled as fast as I could when she tried. I was always able to tease her in a way my sisters could not. I think we both missed what could have been wonderful.
I did not allow her to control me. Honoring your parents does not mean you do everything they tell you to do. (I’m speaking now of adults. If you are under the age of 18, you have to wait for this liberation.) If God calls you to work overseas and your parents object, they cannot stop you from doing what you are being led to do. It is the responsibility of parents to let go of their children when they become adults and if they have difficulty doing that, their children have to help them.
I did call my mother, especially on her birthday and mother’s day. She kept track of who called and who did not and let you know if you failed in your duty as a son or daughter. I did make a special point to go out to breakfast with her. I brought her gifts she might like. I tried to understand her.
One of the things that has helped me when I relate to difficult people is a quote from Philo of Alexandria, a teacher in the Jewish school of Alexandria at the time of Jesus. He said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.”
My mother had her battles she was fighting and I tried to understand her, tried to see what battles she was fighting, tried to see why she acted as she did.
Many years ago I talked with my father and I promised him he would never go into a nursing home. We do not honor our parents when we put them in nursing homes. Sometimes it might be absolutely necessary but it is an absolutely last resort. Fortunately, my youngest sister and her family are moving back from Dubai in the UAE to the US and will be staying with my father. If they were not doing this, my father is getting to the point where some difficult choices would have had to be made. I might have taken a sabbatical from RPF to go home and care for my father, but I would not have let him go to a nursing home. I know I would have kept my promise to my father.
In the Welsh Revival of 1904 that transformed the culture of that country, one of the effects of revival, along with gin mills shutting down and crime being radically reduced, was that people took their parents out of nursing homes and brought them home.
We are meant to be born, live and die in community. The family is where God intended that to take place. When we find it difficult or inconvenient to care for family members and ship them out to some institution, we violate God’s intentions for us to live together and care for each other. Again, sometimes there is no other choice for a family but to have a parent go to a nursing home, but that always needs to be a last resort.
In this sermon I have been talking about having children as a central part of obedience to this commandment and I know there are many in our church who are single. Let me say that I believe that there are those who are given a gift of celibacy but I also think that it is the exception rather than the rule. We are meant to get married and have children. If celibacy was the rule and marriage the exception, how would the human race survive?
If you are single, then you need to involve yourself in the lives of children. Teach a Sunday School class or become friends with a family and when there is a mutual enjoyment with each other, befriend the children of that family. Become an adopted aunt or uncle.
Each of us has the responsibility of passing on to the next generation the covenant God made with us.
If you are married and want to have children but for some reason cannot, then adopt. This is such an easy issue for me. You don’t have to have biological children to pass on the covenant God set up with us. I see couples struggle to have their own children and not succeed and wish I could tell them what to do. We are meant to have children. Adopted children can pass on the knowledge of the covenant God made with us just as well as biological children so if you are physically unable to have children, adopt.
When you have children, I believe you should have lots of children, certainly more than one or two. We are instructed in Genesis to be fruitful and multiply. My father’s generation had no choice. If you had a healthy sexual life, you had children. But technology has allowed our selfish human natures to restrict the number of children we have.
We use contraception and surgery to limit the number of children we have. We might do it because we are concerned about the cost of having another child. We might think it would be inconvenient to have more children. We might think we do not have the capacity to parent more children. We might think it would restrict our lifestyle and freedom and we would think correctly. But God provides for us and having children is part of God’s plan for us. God has unlimited resources and can help us where we fear we will be unable to go.
Part of our obedience to this fifth commandment is participating in the process and that means getting married and having children.
If you are here in Morocco illegally and trying to get to Spain, aside from the illegality of what you are doing, you have placed yourself in a situation where it will be difficult to get married and have children. How can you start a family in this situation? You need to return to your country and begin living a life of obedience to God where you and your family can be blessed.
What we need to understand is that this world is not all about us. There is a larger plan into which we need to fit. When we make God most important and live obedient lives, we fit more smoothly into his plan. When we submit to God’s plan, despite our fears and apprehensions, we discover what is best for us. We serve a holy God and when we seek his glory, everything else fits into place and we find what we deep down are most hungry for.
Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
