Fifth Commandment "Honor thy Father and Thy mother"

Exodus 20:12

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

INTRODUCTION

There has been many differences of opion when it comes to the division of the Decalogue, some maintain that the first four were written on one table and the other six on the second stone. Others believe it was split five and five. Both of these indicate a division between the law that governs man to God and man to man. I believe the best theory is that this fifth command is more of a transiting command as I believe we will see as we proceed through this lesson.

THE COMMAND

This command is too often taken for granted that this is a command for young children only. Nothing could be further from the truth.

i. The Addressees

· Misunderstood that this is for children only

· There is no child or children mentioned

· This command is for all

· The command, then has a twofold application—first, to the period of childhood, and, secondly, to the period, of adult life

The meaning of the word “honor” is—to attach weight to; to put in the place of superiority; to hold in high opinion; to reverence, in the best sense of that word

No matter who you are you have parents. Wither good parents or bad parents, we all have parents.

Parents are to be honored unless that obedience is in opposition to God’s Word.

There comes a time when each child must grow up. It is at this point that the boy becomes a man and the girl becomes a woman. It is now up to them to make their own choices based on the years of raising. *side note* not all children grow up to act according to how they were raised unless salvation has not occurred.

Obedience to father and mother is God’s safeguard and law of development for child-life. When the time comes for the child to move form childhood to adulthood and decisions have to be made on their own they will find it easier to render lawful and moral decisions.

(My childhood)

ii. The Assurance

The promise coupled with this command, just like most all others, applies rather to a nation than to individuals.

There can be no doubt that this command has a personal element as well. For in the majority of cases the honoring of parents results in the realization of habits and character that tend to the lengthing of days. Character molded in the atmosphere of honor to parents has within it the element of quiet power which tends to prolong life.

On the other hand, character formed in the atmosphere of insubjection has within it the element of recklessness and fever which tends to the shortening of life.

The true application of the promise is, however, to the nation, and may thus be stated. That people, among whom the sacredness of the family ideal is maintained, and children render obedience to their parents during the period of immaturity, and always honor, will be the nation of strength, retaining its hold upon its own possessions, and abiding long in the land.

iii. The Application

Before turning from the consideration of the command as given in the Hebrew economy, some word must be said as to its application to parents.

o This application is obvious. Nothing is more certain than the fact that, if parents are to be honored, they must be honorable.

o If obedience is to be rendered gladly and implicitly, it must be to a control that is conditioned in love. Love that is God-like, far-seeing, and comprehensive, love which permits of no present pleasure at the cost of possible future pain; such love can only be where character is in harmony with Divine intention.

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.

o If, indeed, the father and mother by their representation of God to the child are to prepare that child for subjection to God by choice of will in the days to come, what perpetual responsibility rests upon them that their fellowship with God should be such as to insure their correspondence to His character, and, consequently, their correct representation of the same to their children.

In brief, 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.

THE CONNECTION

This is one of the commandments of the old dispensation that no one will be prepared to say has been done away with. Paul tells the children at the Church of Ephesus to honor their parents.

In common with the rest, it is included and emphasized in a more explicit revelation of the sacredness of the relation existing between parents and children, and a more emphatic statement of the Divine purpose and thought.

The example of Christ himself is one of infinite beauty and great suggestiveness. The fact that God sent His Son into the world, not as Adam who was in full possession of the distinguishing glories of humanity, but a babe having to pass through the period of childhood, is of infinite value in the light it throws upon the fifth commandment.

o He grew and advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men, under the developing control of human love and oversight.

When at the age of twelve they brought Him to the Temple to present Him before the Lord, a picture of Him in relation to His mother is presented that is full of suggestiveness.

o The fact that she sought Him sorrowing proves almost to a certainty that He had hardly ever been outside the immediate sphere of her influence. To miss Him, not to find Him immediately at hand, was to her something new and strange; and the picture of the anxious mother, assisted by her husband, seeking Him, reveals in vivid light the exquisite relationship existing between them in that home at Nazareth.

o His question to her, “Wist ye not that I must be in My father’s house?” I use to believe this was a rebuke, but in the essence of this story, this can not be the case.

That He in any sense rebuked His mother is not conceivable. Put the emphasis upon the “ye”—“Wist ye not”—and a revelation is at once obtained of a question coming out of love and confidence, as though He had said:

“Mother, surely you knew Me well enough to know that nothing could detain Me but the affairs of that Father of Whom you have given Me knowledge and revelation.”

Then, be it remembered, there was here no breaking away from the restraint of parental control, for it is distinctly stated, “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth; and He was subject unto them.”

For Him, also, the years of obedience ended, but the years of honor never. In the last and awful hours of His human life, amid the dense darkness of Calvary’s unspeakable woe, He thought still of her whom He had so loved; thought, moreover, of her present necessity, and commended her to the loving care of the man who most deeply understood His love and the methods of its manifestation.

o in the Person and example of Jesus the fifth commandment has its most glorious enforcement.

In His teaching, also, He gave the most forceful interpretation of the fifth commandment in its application to one of the abuses that He found around Him.

o Men were excusing themselves from the duty of providing for the necessity of their parents, by saying that funds which might have been used in that way were Corban, that is, dedicated to the service of the altar.

o In the most emphatic terms Jesus declared that to dedicate funds to the altar which should be used in providing for the necessities of parents was to make void the law of God.

o According to this, then, it is a far more holy thing to use possessions for the care and comfort of parents in their age, than to present such funds to the altar of God to their neglect.

This example and teaching of the Master proves the New Testament position, a position which is unfolded and emphasized again and again in the writings of the apostles.

THE COMPLETION

(PRACTICAL)

So where does that bring us? Just look at the world today. Perhaps no sign of the present time is sadder than the prevalence of disobedience on the part of children to parents during the days of childhood, and lack of reverence and respect when once the restraints of home have been left behind. This is manifested in very many ways, and, alas! is not peculiar to people outside the Christian Church.

o the word father, has been substituted for flippant and irreverent epithets.

o Girls too often seem to look upon their mother as a household institution, provided in order that they might be free from any form of chore.

o An eagerness to be away from home, a longing for the day when the forbidding or command of the parents might be escaped, these signs are on every hand

In very many cases the children are not so much to blame as the parents. This failure to honor father and mother,

wherever it is found, is, in large measure, due to the breakdown of the parental ideal.

o The father has come to think of himself as a provider of food and raiment and education, and occasionally as a species of moral policeman, rather than as a revelation of God to his children. From the way in which thousands of fathers to-day treat their children, one would imagine that the name was a synonym for poorhouse-master, rather than a name lent in order that from it men may understand their true relation to their children, and the tremendous responsibility that rests upon them. The sin of fathers in the matter of the training of children is far greater than they have yet appreciated in this country. They must not be surprised if children cease to honor them.

o the mother makes herself the slave of her own children in all the details that make for material comfort, and forgets that she should be to them the most radiant revelation of the beauty of the Divine grace.

It should be noticed especially that the command is to honor father and mother. This is so because both are requisite to a true representation of God to the child, and consequently to the perfect development of the possibilities of the child’s nature. Let there be a return on the part of parents to the high ideals of their own holy position, and there will assuredly be a return on the part of children to the pathway of obedience to the command to honor father and mother.

Let children, however, remember that everything depends for them upon their obedience to this fifth commandment of the Decalogue.

o Their relation to the first four “Words” is proved by their attitude to this. Infidelity, sacrilege, profanity, rebellion, are all included in the sin of failing to honor parents.

o It is equally true that all the following commands are included in the fifth.

o Children that honor their parents will be saved from murder, impurity, theft, slander, and covetousness.