Word of Salvation - September 2010

 

HONOURING YOUR PARENTS, John de Hoog

(Sermon 6 in a series on the Ten Commandments)

 

Text: Exodus 20:12

Reading: Ephesians 5:22-6:9

Music: BOW 9, 369, “Have faith in God”, “Your grace is sufficient”

 

Many people see the fifth commandment about honouring your parents as the softest commandment. A sermon on this commandment is going to contain lots of warm fuzzies about family and good kids, and the preacher will tell us to get our act together with the way we are raising our kids, but generally speaking it will all be rather innocuous.

 

Think again! We take that kind of attitude to this commandment because we don’t have a Biblical worldview on children and their parents.

 

In Romans 1, Paul gives an appalling description of the world gone bad. Listen to what he says. Romans 1:29 “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, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” In this horrible list, Paul includes disobedience to parents.

 

Take as another example Paul’s description of the last days in which we now live. You find it in 2 Timothy 3. “But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.” Did you notice again? In that terrible list, again Paul includes disobedience to parents.

 

In times of great godlessness and decline in society, when the foundations of morality are being shaken, one of the striking signs that things are not right is disobedience to parents.

 

Our world view is so different, isn’t it! Many people see rebellion against parents as a normal stage that virtually every teenager goes through. It’s not even thought of as particularly bad, just something to negotiate on the way to maturity. But the Bible doesn’t see it that way at all. When the Bible includes disobedience to parents on the list of evidence that society is crumbling, we are meant to say: “What, not disobedient to parents too! Have things gone so wrong that children are now disobeying their parents?”

 

In the face of all this comes the simple statement of God’s will in the fifth commandment: “Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” Or as Paul puts it in Ephesians 6, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honour your father and mother’ - which is the first commandment with a promise – ‘that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.’”

 

I’d like to open up this commandment today under two headings. Here is the first heading: Honour your parents as a primary and foundational responsibility. Repeat.

 

In our society, family relationships are held to be very private. Family relationships are usually nobody else’s business, we bristle when anyone dares to stick his nose into our family’s ways. It is very dangerous to make comments about other people’s children without being asked. We have privatised the family so much that it’s almost impossible to say anything about anyone’s family, except in extreme cases.

 

But in the Bible, family relationships are a public concern. Whenever the Bible talks about children and parents, it always makes a connection between the commandment and society. “Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.” This is not meant to be a guarantee of long life for an individual; it’s rather talking about living long in the land as a community, as a society, as a nation. A community where parents are honoured is the kind of community that will survive long in the land, but a society won’t work if the family doesn’t work.

 

In Israel, the rebellion of a child against its parents was always seen as a public crime, to be dealt with publicly. Read Deuteronomy 21:18-21 some time. It’s the passage about the rebellious son. Vs 21 “Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you.” By God’s will, Israel was the kind of society where rebellion against parents was a heinous, public crime that had to be judged and dealt with publicly. Rebellion against parents was an evil that had to be purged from Israel.

 

Why? Why does the Bible see this sin as threatening the very fabric of society? Should we learn something about the way we should see our own family relationships? Here is the answer: The parent-child relationship is the primary and foundational relationship, and where it breaks down across a society, that society begins to break down as well. If the family doesn’t work, then in the long term the society doesn’t work either.

 

The Bible sees the family as the sphere of authority that is the foundation of all other authority relationships in society. That’s certainly true historically isn’t it! In the first family, Adam was the father, husband, prophet, priest, king, employer, teacher and everything else; there was no one else! As humankind developed, these roles were divided among different spheres of authority in society.

 

It’s also true in our own experience isn’t it? The family is our first experience of authority and submission. If we don’t learn to submit to our parents we’re going to find it tough to submit to our teachers, employers, police, government, church leaders and so on. We’re going to find it tough to submit to God! An elder is not fit to lead the church until he has shown that he can lead his own family well. The passage in Ephesians about parents and children is part of a wider section about relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children and masters and slaves. It’s all about godly living – a relationship of submission to God being expressed in all these other relationships.

 

An assault on the family is an assault on the public good. A society that lets the family unravel is letting itself unravel. The political party “Family First” is well-named. You might not agree with all its policies, but at least its name gets it right: In the area of society and government, “Family First”.

 

Here then is our first heading: Honour your parents as a primary and foundational responsibility. Learning to honour your parents is the first lesson to learn to help you do well in all other relationships; even in your relationship with God. When you children honour your parents, when you learn to obey them and respect them, you are not doing good only to your family and your parents, you are doing good to Geelong and Victoria and Australia as well. Your small acts of valuing your parents help to create a world that’s better for all.

 

Of course, there will always be bad families. But we can’t let exceptions control the principle. I was talking to a young person recently about driving, and he asked me if I would ever drive at 180 km per hour. I said No. But your car could go 180 couldn’t it? Not if I was driving it, I replied. But what if someone paid you $7 million to drive at 180, would you then? Well, maybe if I was on a racetrack and no other cars were around and it was OK to drive at that speed, I might try to get up to 180 for $7 million... So, you would drive at 180! Grrr!

 

Exceptional circumstances can never be used to work out principles. There will always be bad families. You might come from a dysfunctional family where you did not learn the meaning of godly authority and submission. It may be impossible for some of us to love and respect our parents, but that doesn’t do away with the general principle. Honouring your parents is a primary and foundational responsibility, one that you should take up from the beginning of your life. We should seek to support and help parents when we can; the parent-child relationship is often the key to all the other relationships of life.

 

As families we also need to take some steps to resist the great temptation to privatise family life. Gary Ezzo, the “Growing Kids God’s Way” man, advises that we should never offer advice to anyone else about their families unless we are asked. He says, “Never volunteer criticism or even friendly advice, rather live with your family in such a way that people will ask you for advice; then you can give it.” Ezzo’s recommendation is valuable; bitter experience has taught me that!

 

But it’s actually very rare to hear people asking for advice. Maybe you’re an exception; maybe people are constantly asking you how you do it! Great! We who have younger children should be more open to asking for advice from trusted godly friends. Society tells us to clam up, to make everything very private, to never admit to having some struggles. But the Bible encourages us to confess our weaknesses and to be willing to learn from others.

 

First heading: Honour your parents as a primary and foundational responsibility.

 

Now let’s move on to our second heading. Many of us see the Fifth Commandment is being the one that applies mainly to our kids. But again, think again! The Fifth Commandment applies to all of us. Here is the second heading: Honour your parents as adult children. Repeat. If we do not honour our own parents, we can’t very well demand that our children honour us.

 

Let’s think about how we should honour our parents, especially when we are adults. What does “honour” mean? The word “honour” derives from a root that means to be weighty, to be heavy. To honour someone is to give them weight in our lives. You are important to me, you have weight in my life, you are significant to me, I value you, I esteem you, you make a genuine difference in my life, without you my life would be poorer. It’s an attitude of the heart. But it’s not something that wells up in us spontaneously; it is under our control. We must do the honouring. It’s not an emotion so much as a decision, an action. God commands us to take that heart attitude, honour, and to extend it to our parents.

 

Now let’s be practical. Many people dislike their parents. And many parents are, in fact, hard to love and honour. Maybe they still try to control you, even though you are an adult. Maybe they can’t handle your kids, or maybe they interfere with your ideas about kids. Maybe you wish they would hurry up and die.

 

As Christians, we can apply the gospel to the relationship we have with our parents. Paul says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.” There is a relationship that is more important for Christians than the relationship with their parents, and that is their relationship with the Lord Jesus. Think about that relationship you have with Jesus. It is a relationship of grace, forgiveness and acceptance. It’s not: “Until you get your act together, you’re on the outside.” All who come to Jesus find full forgiveness and full acceptance.

 

If you are fully forgiven and fully accepted, that’s going to change the “flavour” of all your other relationships. If you have been forgiven so much by your heavenly Father through the work of Jesus, if all your offences are pardoned freely and fully, can you seriously hold on to the very small offences that others, including your parents, have committed against you?

 

Grace in Jesus radically changes everything, doesn’t it? God the Father accepts and loves you now like he accepts and loves Jesus. Do you still need to get your “pound of flesh”, your sense of worth, your revenge from someone else? No, the gospel of Jesus Christ radically changes the way you think about yourself and the way you think about others. Now your parents, no matter how much you might personally dislike them, are people you can extend grace to, people you can forgive. No longer will they offend you; grace is now the air that you breathe, and you can rest easy even in difficult family dynamics.

 

The first thing we can do to honour our parents is to forgive them. Even the very best parent-child relationship needs forgiveness, and complicated and difficult parent-child relationships need it even more. If you are in the Lord, his grace will give you the power to forgive your parents.

 

How else can we honour our parents? The Bible places great stock on looking after our parents and grandparents as they get older. Paul puts it this way in 1 Timothy 5. “If a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God...If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

 

Have you really denied the faith if you fail to care for your elderly parents? Yes, because you are denying the plain law of God in the Fifth Commandment.

 

Is someone who fails to look after an elderly parent really worse than an unbeliever, as Paul puts it? Yes, that was certainly true in Paul’s day, for in Paul’s day unbelieving pagans held their elders in very high esteem. They practiced ancestor worship; and they also expressed great honour for their elderly living folk. How terrible it would be for a Christian, released from the yoke of pagan religion and ancestor worship, that he should now do less for his elderly parents than someone who makes no Christian profession at all. That would place the Christian faith in a very bad light even in comparison to paganism!

 

Would the same thing apply today? Yes, certainly. One very important strategy of witness for us is to let people know that we are Christian, and then to let them into our lives with the aim that people might say, “Hmm, so that’s how Christians treat their elderly. That’s pretty good!”

 

Many Christians fail to apply general Christian commands to family ties. Take a verse like Philippians 2:3-4. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” That’s such a radical demand; we’ll spend a lifetime working it out!

 

But some of us have a blind spot when it comes to applying that to those closest to us. But it is to those closest to us that this command should be most closely applied.

 

Husbands and wives should apply this command to each other. And adult children should apply this command to their ageing parents. Let me repeat it; think about whether there’s anything you need to change in your relationship with your parents. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

 

How this works out is different for all of us. For some of us, one or more of our parents have died, and all we can do is honour their reputation. Some of us have parents who live interstate or even in other countries. But with modern means of travel and communication, there is more than one way to fulfil this command, and we who are adult children with surviving parents need to think carefully about how to take up this responsibility.

 

The Fifth Commandment is the only one of the Ten Commandment with a promise attached.

 

It is a promise which creates a culture where honour is important, and where the weak are looked after.

 

Ultimately our culture doesn’t stand a chance if this commandment is not obeyed.

 

Part of being salt and light in this world is wrapped up in serious attention to the Fifth Commandment.

 

Amen