Honor Your Father and Your Mother

Scripture Reading

Exodus 20:12 ESV

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Thank you Catie.

Good morning everyone!

Illustration

“You reproduce what you honor”

My great grandmother knew her daughter’s name. She knew her face and the sound of her voice. She knew that she would see her daughter every other day or every week or so, but frequently forgot what day it was. She was cared for, fed, bathed. Her clothes were laundered. Her basic needs were met. She loved cardinal birds and kept a calendar of them on her wall.

She had trouble hearing and eventually trouble eating. She struggled to remember who was still in the land of the living and who had passed away, where her husband was, or her own age. She forgot my name a couple of times.

But she knew her daughter’s name, and she knew her face and the sound of her voice.

My grandmother cared well for her mom for around a decade. She would frequent visits to the nursing home, console anxious phone calls, and comfort her aging mother. Even among her own struggles with physical health and time constraints, she persisted to care for her dementia riddled and alzheimer battered mother. She did this, because she loved her. Because she honored her.

"You reproduce what you honor.”

I was recently in some conversations where the question about caring for aging parents came up. One of them was with Catie, recognizing that we are entering into an initial shift from our dependency on our parents, to a desire to begin caring for them. I would never call our parents “old,” since they may eventually listen to this sermon, but their seasoned years are showing. We were talking about what caring for our parents would look like. How can we honor them?

Another one of those conversations was with a group of people describing the pain and hardship of caring for their elderly parents. It included prayer for the struggle of knowing how to care for both believing and unbelieving parents. Prayer for endurance to care for them both in their physical needs and their spiritual nourishment.

The last conversation was about, “which one of your kids is going to care for you in your old age?” That took some self-reflection and some reflection on our parenting. “Did we discipline our kids well? Did we love them well? Do they know the LORD?” Questions like that make you revisit how you parent your kids. It is so strange to think about the temperament of your kids and which one of them may take the greater burden in supporting you in your old age.

But, the hope and truth is

“You reproduce what you honor.”

The scripture this morning says:

Exodus 20:12 ESV

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Propositional Outline

This morning we are going to talk about

Honoring your Father and your Mother,

What honoring them looks like,

Christ as the perfect Son of God.

But first, let’s Pray

Pray

Father, I pray that this morning we see your Word with fresh eyes. Teach us what it means to honor our parents. Teach us how to honor them in a broken world, and reproduce in us the right way to honor our parents here as a reflection of how Christ honors You. We pray this in Your Holy name. Amen.

Honoring your Father and your Mother

This morning we are looking at the fifth commandment out of the ten commandments. As I reminded us last week, they were given to Israel to instruct them on the kind of people they would be. They are to be God’s covenant people who will represent Him to the world as He dwells in their midst. Everything commanded to Israel can inform the church of God’s character, and desire for us. How are the covenant people of God to live? This is part of that answer.

I also said last week I said that there are only two positive commands in the ten commandments. The first is to “Remember the Sabbath.” We looked at that last week. This is the second. We are supposed to “do this.” We are commanded to “Honor our Father and Mother.”

I want to begin by looking at the text; asking and answering some questions about it.

Exodus 20:12 ESV

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

The first question: What is honor?

The word we read for honor is the same word we translate as “to glorify.” It can capture the sense of weight or heaviness. We use this word a lot for God and His “glory.” It’s used here to communicate that honor of one’s father and mother is to place weight, value, and glory upon them. It’s to treat them as valuable, and precious.

I want to start here because I believe that our sinful, natural desire is to define honor in a way that makes this commandment easier for us to practice. Sometimes I want honor to be something wrote or temporary. Kind of like standing for the national anthem at a sports game. I want to take off my hat, sing a song, and get on with the game. I want to trivialize honor. Many of us have had hard conflict with our parents or maybe we still do. To diminish what honor means makes it an easier command to fulfill. We can pat ourselves on the back easier. It weighs less. It’s trivialized.

Honor implies glory, value, and importance. The opposite of honor is to curse. Look with me at Exodus 21:17

Exodus 21:17 ESV

17 “Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.

This idea of cursing implies the concept of invoking harm, or speaking obscenities. Maybe even worse, it can also be translated as trivializing something or making it insignificant. It steals the weight away from honor. When we redefine honor we trivialize it and make it something less. When we dishonor our parents, we trivialize them. We curse them. We make them something less in our hearts.

This is a pretty serious consequence too! Death? Let’s look at a more explicit application here. Deuteronomy 21 draws some context for us.

Deuteronomy 21:18–21 ESV

18 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

This son has been disciplined yet rebels. He will not listen to the voice of either his father or mother. This isn’t a minor infraction, this is a determined will to sin egregiously against one’s parents. The son’s rebellion is so complete that he forsakes his obedience to his parents, a sign of honor, for gluttony and booze.

Jesus knows this all too well. In Matthew 15 we read the story of Jesus rebuking the Pharisees and scribes for taking advantage of their parents. Here’s the story.

English Standard Version Chapter 15

15 Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2 “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat.” 3 He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 5 But you say, ‘If anyone tells his father or his mother, “What you would have gained from me is given to God,” 6 he need not honor his father.’ So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. 7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said:

8  “ ‘This people honors me with their lips,

but their heart is far from me;

9  in vain do they worship me,

teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”

The pharisees are claiming that the money that they should be using to take care of their parents is instead being given to God. It would be like if I were supposed to be taking care of my parents and I told them “I’m sorry mom, it was either paying your gas bill this month or being holy and tithing to the church,” where I happen to get my paycheck.

The pharisees made up ways to get around honoring their parents so they could benefit from this commandment and honor themselves. They transform honor using the traditions of men, and instead turn it into dishonor.

Real honor requires more of us. It requires a weight that stresses a value or importance on the belief, conviction, item, person being honored. It requires sacrifice and love.

The second question: Why my parents?

Why is honoring our father and mother so important to God? Why does He command all of Israel to honor their parents? Shouldn’t that be a family matter?

Augustine, the early church theologian, saw the importance of this commandment. He once asked a rhetorical question, “If anyone fails to honor his parents, is there anyone he will spare?”

The answer he is expecting is no! Like the relationship between a husband and a wife, the relationship between a parent and child is a primary relationship for a society to flourish! If we fail to honor our parents, why would we expect our own children to succeed in honoring us as parents? No one is spared.

Parents have the awesome responsibility of representing God to their children. They are the first authority over a child and bear an immense responsibility to represent what good authority looks like. They are to reflect and represent God’s good authority to their children. How a parent teaches, loves, corrects, punishes and disciplines their children should be representative of how God works in shaping our character to bear His image.

Parents are to instruct their child in the ways of the LORD. This sets the pattern not only for their home, but for the people they live among. Look with me in Deuteronomy 6. This is one of the passages that Israel would recite in their homes for generations as it shows the responsibility that parents have to God to raise their children and the honor it produces:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

6 “Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

This command is given to Israel because God is placing a weight on the family. He is prescribing honor to it. The family unit is to be a microcosm of the whole nation. What happens in the home will affect the nation. Dishonor in the home will dishonor the nation. Honor in the home will honor the nation.

But, “You reproduce what you honor.”

Pause

The reasoning for this command is on the back end of the verse. Let’s look at it again:

Exodus 20:12 ESV

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

The purpose given for this commandment is that so the Israelites may dwell in the land a long time. Honor of parents will honor the nation. This isn’t necessarily a promise that they are going to have a long life span, but it promises that Israel will be able to dwell a long time in the land God gives them if they obey it.

How do we honor?

The apostle Paul identifies something spectacular about this commandment. In Ephesians 6 we read:

Ephesians 6:1–4 ESV

1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” 4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Paul, writing to the church in Ephesus sees the value in this commandment. He sees it as God’s provision that “it may go well with you and you may live long in the land,” if you honor your parents. If parents, as authority figures within the home, are respected by children, then respect for authority figures within society at large will also follow.

Also, those who build a society, such as the home, in which old age has an honored place can be confident that they will get to enjoy that same honor one day.

So where do we start? We’re all trying to honor our parents at different stages of life so let’s start small and work our way up.

Children

Honor looks like obedience in the Lord. “In the Lord,” means, that we obey our parents up to the point where obeying them is denying God. Children, obey your parents when they ask you to clean your room, apologize, do your chores, and do your homework. These things are good for you! However, once a parent asks you to make fun of the neighbor kids, steal money, or cheat on an assignment, you should disobey your parents. Those kinds of commands are not displaying obedience in the LORD.

Teens

The same applies to teens, but it looks different doesn’t it? We don’t use the same kinds of discipline that we use on younger children as we do on teenagers. Solomon, writing for his son, teaches him to “heed his instruction.”

Proverbs 1:8–9 ESV

8 Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and forsake not your mother’s teaching, 9 for they are a graceful garland for your head and pendants for your neck.

Proverbs 2:1–5 ESV

1 My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you, 2 making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding; 3 yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding, 4 if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, 5 then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

Proverbs 3:1–2 ESV

1 My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, 2 for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you.

In all of these instructions, Solomon is prompting his son to embrace the commandments that have been taught to him by his father, King David. Even this last verse sounds so close to the promise in our verse this morning.

Exodus 20:12 ESV

12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

The truth is that it is hard for kids to honor their parents. One man complained: “Youth today love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, no respect for older people, and talk nonsense when they should work. Young people do not stand up any longer when adults enter the room. They contradict their parents, talk too much in company, guzzle their food, lay their legs on the table, and tyrannize their elders.”

Who was this guy?

It was Socrates, the philosopher who lived 400 years before Christ!

His words describe what young people are still like today because they describe what young people are always like. Including me! I’ve been this way too.

Young people, to honor your parents is to listen to and remember their instruction. Remembering isn’t mere acknowledgement, it’s practiced knowledge. You have to do it. It’s obedience.

Adults

Adults, at what point are you no longer under your parents authority? I know what Genesis 2 says.

Genesis 2:24 ESV

24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

A husband and a wife are a new family unit. They leave their father and mother and in a sense, leave the authority of their parents to establish themselves as parents. That doesn’t mean that their parents are deserving of less honor, but the relationship has changed. Where they were to honor their parents primarily through their obedience as children under their parents’ protection, they are now their own family unit and will establish the same relationship with their own children.

Honoring our parents as adults is protecting their name against falsehood. It is respecting them when they speak into our lives. It is caring for them when they can no longer care for themselves. It’s to be obedient in the Lord.

As we grow, the nature of our relationship changes with our parents, but we still honor them because this is the nature of God’s covenant people. The way we honor our parents informs how we will be treated by our own children and how they will view God.

You reproduce what you honor.

Difficult Parents (Excursis)

This is easier to do with parents who are believers in Christ. Many of us have a hard relationship with our parents. Either we were treated unfairly by them, abused, or manipulated by them. Maybe we were abandoned by them. They may claim Christ as their savior but act just the opposite or they may not want anything to do with Jesus or with you because of your faith in Him. Jesus knows this. Read with me in Matthew 10.

Speaking to the disciples as he commissions them he reminds them of His purpose in coming to the world.

Matthew 10:34–39 ESV

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

We should not honor our parents over God.

Our homes may break over the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Yet, we should still seek to honor our father and our mother in whatever capacity we can. We don’t cast them aside!

This may be in the way we speak about them in front of our children. Does the way we talk to them communicate honor? Maybe a text on a birthday. Or a prayer. Or in awkward family gatherings. Or having family reunions. Or sharing the gospel.

When the Israelites received this command they didn’t get to argue about what honor looked like. In all likelihood many of them had to deal with the same parental baggage we face today. They did it because they believed in the promise that they would live long in the land that God gave to them. We do it because of similar reasons with the hope that our children will see the value we place on our parents, emulate it, and display it to their children as well. That they will honor God through this commandment.

When we honor our parents, no matter how good or terrible they were, we honor God. It’s His command that we practice in the scriptures. It came from Him, and He is Good. And He loves His children.

Adoption

If you remember with me, the Israelites, just before receiving this command were enslaved to Pharoah. They lived by his rules and his statutes. They lived by his hard labor and reproach. He oppressed them and killed their sons. He was no father to this people.

Yet God redeems them. He knows what it means to be a good Father and He delights in parenting Israel. He even goes so far as to say that Israel is His firstborn. Look with me at Exodus 4.

Exodus 4:22–23 ESV

22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’ ”

God’s children are the Israelites. His covenant people. This God who calls them His firstborn, calls them to honor their father and mother that they may live long in the land that He gives them. He will protect them even to the point of bloodshed. He cares and loves His children.

This is the same God who calls us His covenant people. In love,

Ephesians 1:5–6 ESV

5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.

To honor one’s father and mother is to honor God. He is our adopted Father. And He is Good. And He loves His children.

Christ shows the example

There is a story in Luke where, as a young boy, Jesus displays obedience to both His heavenly Father and His earthly parents.

Luke 2:41–51 ESV

41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. 43 And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, 44 but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, 45 and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” 49 And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. 51 And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.

He is quick to the obedience to His heavenly Father. He knows where He is supposed to be because He is to be with His Father! Yet, He displays obedience to His earthly father and mother fulfilling this commandment.

He honors His heavenly Father and his earthly mother

Before we turn to the table, I want us to look at one more example of Christ’s obedience. He honors His heavenly Father and His earthly mother even at His death.

In the Garden before His arrest, we see Jesus pleading with His father about the trial before Him.

Luke 22:41–44 ESV

41 And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, 42 saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” 43 And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. 44 And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Jesus honors His heavenly Father by submitting to His will out of obedience. This is an impossible task for man, but Jesus submits to His Father to take away the sins of His covenant people.

Later, Upon the cross, He sees John and His mother. Here’s what happens in John 19.

John 19:26–27 ESV

26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

He honored his mother on the cross by providing someone to care for her after His death. He doesn’t stay dead for long, but the provision for her is made.

Christ’s work on the cross honored His heavenly Father and his earthly mother as an example for us to reproduce.

You reproduce what you honor.

For those who believe in this great work, Christ calls His brothers and sisters. As we turn to communion, let’s remember Christ’s fulfillment of this command and honor our earthly parents to show honor to our heavenly Father who created them.

Communion

Let’s turn now to the table. If you have received Christ as your Lord and Savior from sin and expressed that faith in Him through baptism, then this is for you. This is an opportunity to fellowship with one another as sons and daughters of God to remember Christ’s sacrifice. His body broken for us. His blood shed for us. That our sin would be covered by the mercy and grace of God.

If you have not received Christ as your Lord and savior and expressed that through baptism I would ask you to refrain from communion. Instead, pray that God would make known the truth of His Son known to you and to teach you true obedience.

I would ask the Ushers to come forward.

Be sure to give elements to the ushers and music team.

1 Corinthians 11:23–24 ESV

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Eat the bread.

1 Corinthians 11:25–26 ESV

25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Drink the cup

Would you pray with me.

Prayer

Father, In our broken world, we are prone to be cynical when it comes to our parents. Convict our hearts and teach us the mercy of Christ. Teach us obedience and honor. Let our lives reflect a world that honors those who raise children. Just as Christ is obedient to the Father even to the point of death, let our lives display a love for you above all others. Just as Christ cared for His mother on the cross, let our lives reflect a care for our parents. Thank you for the adoption into Your family God. We praise Your mighty works. Amen

Would you stand as we sing our last song together.

Benediction

It’s hard to be a child and a parent in a broken world. But as Christians, God’s covenant people, we honor our parents because we honor God. If anything lies between you and honoring your father or mother, seek God’s help to bring restoration for the glory of Christ. You are dismissed.