Honour Your Mother

Introduction

I want to start by having everyone who is not a mother stand. Now all of us who are standing, let’s give a cheer and a round of applause for all the mothers in the room! You may be seated.

I wanted to do it this way, because of a verse I read in this week’s Torah Portion which we will get to later, but to begin this morning let’s read from Eph. 6:1-4

Ephesians 6:1–4 TLV

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

I think that in the context of tomorrow being Mother’s Day, we can all agree that every one of us has a Mother, and in this passage Rav. Sha’ul is quoting from the 10 Commands given at Mt. Sinai in Exo. 20:12 ““Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long upon the land which Adonai your God is giving you.”

What is Honour?

The word used by Adonai for “honour” is the word :

Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 3: Exodus Comment

כבד means “honor, give weight to, glorify, esteem,” in the sense of giving a place of precedence, of taking someone seriously. This verb is so used both of human beings, as here, and of Yahweh

Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 3: Exodus Comment

To “give honor” to father and mother means more than to be subject to them, or respectful of their wishes: they are to be given precedence by the recognition of the importance which is theirs by right, esteemed for their priority, and loved for it as well. As Yahweh is honored for his priority to all life, so father and mother must be honored for their priority, as Yahweh’s instruments, to the lives of their children.

I want to follow up this definition by also covering the word that is used for “honour” in this week’s Torah Portion. Lev. 19:3 states:

Leviticus 19:3 TLV

“Each one of you is to respect his mother and his father, and keep My Shabbatot. I am Adonai your God.

The word used here for “respect” is the word ירא, or “fear.”

Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 4: Leviticus Comment

When ירא, “fear,” is used to express respect and devotion, God is usually the object. In this commandment, “fear” means a child is to acknowledge his parents’ authority.

What is also important to notice from the passage in Lev. is that the Mother is given preference by being listed first.

So from both of these passages we see that we must honour and fear our Mothers (and Fathers) which means:

Give weight to what they say

Esteem them highly

Give preference to them

Take them seriously

Fear and respect them

Obey your parents

Acknowledge their authority

What the Bible doesn’t say

I find it interesting that no where in Scripture does it explicitly say “Love your Parents” or “Love your Father” or “Love your Mother.” There are many cases that refer to the love of a Mother for her children, and even some commands in the New Covenant, but not the other way around.

The first time I heard of this was a fireside chat that Dennis Prager gave. He said,

A society in which children do not honor their parents is doomed to self-destruction.

In our time, this connection between honoring parents and maintaining civilization is not widely recognized. On the contrary, many of the best-educated parents do not believe that their children need to show them honor, since “honoring” implies an authority figure, and that is a status many modern parents reject.

In addition, many parents seek to be loved, not honored, by their children. Yet, neither the Ten Commandments nor the Bible elsewhere commands us to love our parents. This is particularly striking given that the Bible commands us to love our neighbor, to love God and to love the stranger.

The Bible understands that there will always be individuals who, for whatever reason, do not love a parent. Therefore, it does not demand what may be psychologically or emotionally impossible. But it does demand that we show honor to our parents. And it makes this demand only with regard to parents. There is no one else whom the Bible commands us to honor.

Without a father and mother to honor, children lose out on having one of the most important things they can have — mothers and fathers exercising parental authority.

Why honor my Mother?

Long Life

From Sha’ul’s commentary in Eph. 6:2-3 ““Honor your father and mother” (which is the first commandment with a promise), “so that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth.”” We read that this is the first commandment with a promise, and that promise is that it will go well with us and we will live long on the earth.

So if you want to live a long time, the first thing to do is to honour your Mother and Father. This is why Prager said that a society that does not honour their parents is doomed to destruction.

I don’t often quote President Obama in a sermon, but here goes.

The absence of fathers is important, Obama continued, because "children who grow up without a father are 5 times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; 9 times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison."

The reality is even worse for those who do not grow up with their Mothers.

Children need to Honour

Children need to honour their Mother and Father. This becomes the basis in our lives of honouring any authority, from the local police, to the federal government, and even to God Himself. We see that Rav. Sha’ul says is his last letter to Timothy: 2 Tim. 3:1-5

2 Timothy 3:1–5 TLV

But understand this, that in the last days hard times will come— for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, hardhearted, unforgiving, backbiting, without self-control, brutal, hating what is good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to an outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people!

Wow! Doesn’t that describe our society today? And one of those characteristics that we are to avoid is “disobedience to parents.” We now live in a culture that seems to glorify all of the wrong things. And as much as this is true for the world out there, the real question is, “Do any of these attributes describe us?” I hope not.

Fundamental to a Good Society

Dennis Prager also points out that:

There is one more reason why 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.

God established the Family Unit as the core of every good society. There is reason why Abraham is call the Father of many nations, not the political leader, but the Father. It does not take a village to raise a child, it takes a Mother and a Father.

How do I Honour?

We mentioned a variety of different ways to honour our parents, when we talked of the definitions of the Hebrew words used. Generally speaking, Parents get special treatment; they are unique and need to be treated in a unique way. For instance:

Don’t talk to them the same way you do anyone else.

For example, you might use expletives when speaking to a friend, but you don’t with a parent.

Don’t call them by their first name.

When you leave their home and make your own, maintain contact with them.

Having no contact with parents is the opposite of honoring them.

This brings up a sad reality. What if a parent has behaved cruelly, not annoyingly, but cruelly? Well, while it may be very difficult to respect them, and obviously not expected or necessary to obey everything they ask, there is still a way that we can honour them.

We can live honourably! We can bring honour to the Family name. In many of these cases, we need to go through a process called by some “re-parenting”.

So, we did not have a good example of a Mother, or we did not know our Father. We now have a new Father. Eph. 1:5

Ephesians 1:5 TLV

He predestined us for adoption as sons through Messiah Yeshua, in keeping with the good pleasure of His will—

And Rom. 8:15

Romans 8:15 TLV

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall again into fear; rather, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

This is one of the ultimate blessings of Adonai, that He puts us into a new family, and adopts us as His own children. Regardless of what sort of family we had growing up, we can all know that we now have a new Father, we can all honour our parents by living honourably, and we can all pray for our parents, if they are not yet Saved, that the Lord would do for them what he has done for us.

For those of us whoes Mother is still living, I encourage you all to follow my example and say, “Happy Mother’s Day, Mum!”