Family Matters – Exodus 20:12
- October 24, 2021
- Pastor
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Exodus 20:12
As always, let me invite you to take your copy of God’s Word and turn with me to Exodus 20:12. I heard about a 16-year old boy who just got his driver’s license, and he wanted to discuss the use of the family car with his dad. So, the dad said, “I’ll tell you what, you bring your grades up, you start reading the Bible more, and you get your hair cut, and we’ll talk about it.” About a month went by and that dad approached his son, “Son I’m proud of you. I noticed that you’re bringing your grades up. I’ve also noticed that you’re reading your Bible a lot more. But I noticed you haven’t yet cut your hair yet.”
The son looked up from the Bible he was reading and said, “Well, you know dad, since I’ve been reading the Bible I’ve noticed a couple things. I noticed that Samson had long hair, and Absalom had long hair, and Moses, and it would seem that even Jesus had long hair. So, it seems biblical to have long hair.” And dad said, “Son, you know what, you’re right! They also walked everywhere they went.” So, you see, the only difference between walking and driving for that 16-year old was honoring his father.
Let’s read Exodus 20:12; “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” And if you look inside your bulletin at the weekly quote, then you’ll notice Ephesians 6:1-3, where the apostle Paul says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’ (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.’”
“Our Father, once again we turn to You in our need and pray that You will make Your Word live to us, that You will show us Your Son within its pages, that You will show us ourselves, and that You will renew within us solid and lasting convictions regarding the abiding authority and sufficiency of all that’s contained herein. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
What I’d like you to do for a moment is just step back from the commandment and consider once again all ten of them. Understand that the Ten Commandments essentially divide all of life into two categories. Call it the vertical and the horizontal; our relationship with God and our relationship with people. The first four commandments represent the vertical plane; the second six, the horizontal plane. The first four, all about my relationship with God; they are theocentric; God-centered. The second six are anthropocentric; man-centered. In other words, here are six ways to get along with people, and we begin with this commandment.
The Sense of the Command (Generally)
Question, why is this first on the list of commandments when it comes to the man-centered commands? The first four are out of the way. Now we’re dealing on the human horizontal level. Why is honoring parents first on the list? As if to imply it’s more important than “You shall not murder,” “You shall not commit adultery,” etc.
I submit to you that it’s because it applies to everyone. Every person has parents or has had them. Not every person is a husband, and not every person is a wife; so, not committing adultery doesn’t apply to everyone. But this commandment applies to absolutely everyone. Also, the very first people that you tend to meet in life are your parents. That’s the foundation of everything: the parent-child relationship.
What are the first words children typically say? It’s not bicycle. It’s not stock-market. It’s not dude. It’s usually mama or dada; that’s the first relationship. If you were to boil all of life down to its irreducible minimum, take away all of the fluff, all of the venire, all of the stuff, and you boil life down to its core it could be summed up in one word – relationships.
Remember how Jesus responded when He was asked by one of the scribes what the greatest commandment was. Mark 12:29-31 says, “Jesus answered, ‘The most important is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Vertically, love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. Horizontally, love your neighbor as yourself. All of life, Jesus boiled down to these two categories. And the first neighbors that you have are your parents. So, generally, we understand from this commandment that relationships are precious and family relationships are most precious.
But, here’s the twist. Here’s the irony of it. Although relationships are precious and family relationships are some of the most precious, they’re also very precarious. Relationships are shaky. I don’t know if you’d agree with this or not, but our greatest failures in life are usually in the area of relationships. If I looked out over this vast country of ours, I don’t think that our biggest weakness is technology. I don’t think it’s the economy or freedom or democracy; it’s relationships, and family relationships especially.
For the last two or three decades, our culture has unleashed this unending, unrelenting attack and barrage on the family. Family values are mocked. Even the phrase “family values” is mocked. Our world doesn’t value this fifth commandment. It mocks it; it makes fun of it. In fact, the very definition of family as outlined for us in this commandment (father/mother) has been reinterpreted to mean just about anything. And over time this unrestrained, unrelenting pressure from our culture pushes family relationships to the edge.
But there’s another reason that our family relationships are precarious, and it’s untended priorities (not unintended, but untended). We tend to take our families for granted. We don’t nurture them. We don’t maintain them. We end up like the steamboat captain that was racing a fellow captain down the Mississippi River to see who would get to New Orleans first. In his hast to win the race he discovered that he could go faster if he lightened his load. And rather than toss it overboard, he burned it for fuel. Indeed, he won the race, only to discover that he had no cargo to offload when he got to his destination. How many of us have burned the cargo of family relationships in our attempt to win a personal race?
So, we have unrestrained pressure and untended priorities, but there’s at least one more issue that makes for precarious relationships and that’s unsteady parents. Now some of you are thinking, “Wait a second, Lee, this is a commandment for children, not parents.” And that’s true, but every parent begins as a child and grows up to have children that become parents – and they grow up and have children that become parents. So, there’s a perpetuated cycle. What adds to the precarious nature of family relationships – and violates this fifth commandment – is in many cases parents don’t make the proper spiritual commitment. Remember Joshua, “[I]f it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).
Loved ones, hear me, our children need to see their parents as people who also bow the knee and respect and honor their heavenly Father. There’s a steadiness that comes to a home when that type of honor and respect are given to the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Scope of the Command (Specifically)
That’s the sense of the command, generally. Now I want us to consider the scope of the command, specifically. Notice that verse 12 doesn’t say, “Honor your father or your mother…” No, it’s both of our parents. There’s interaction with two parents that’s implied here.
In fact, as I mentioned a moment ago, you might say that this is a strong rebuke against homosexuality and transgenderism. We don’t read honor your two fathers, or honor your two mothers. We don’t read honor your father who really biologically ought to be your mother, and your mother who really biologically ought to be your father. No, God’s design from the very beginning was a home with two parents: biological father and biological mother.
All of that notwithstanding, there’s a clear interaction of two parents implied here. And that means that even if one of your parents (or both) were less than honorable, you’re still called to honor them in the way you approach them. I’ll talk about that more in a minute, but the point is we don’t get a pass on this fifth commandment just because one of our parents was less desirable than the other.
Not only is there an interaction of two parents, but there’s a repetition of this command in two testaments. This fifth commandment is mentioned not once, not twice, but eight times – twice in the Old Testament and six times in the New Testament. I’m sharing that simply to make this point, if God says something once, then that ought to be enough. If He says it eight times, then we really ought to listen carefully and ask ourselves why is He so emphatic on telling us this again and again and again.
The answer is because God knew our tendency to discard His law. In the days of the Old and New Testament the Rabbis developed a commentary, their own technical interpretation of what these commands actually meant. Now, the intention was right and good. They wanted to keep the Mosaic Law. Really, they wanted to be faithful to God and His instructions. But just like us, there were all kinds of real-world scenarios that came up that touched on these commandments and so the Rabbis created the Mishnah. This was their running commentary trying to provide direction and clarification about things.
Well, as you might imagine, over time some of those commentaries and traditions became more significant than the instructions themselves. And we have an example of this exact commandment and its commentary in the pages of Mark’s gospel, in the New Testament. You don’t need to turn to it (Mark 7), but in a nutshell Jesus is rebuking the Pharisees and He quotes from the prophet Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me…” And then He says, “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. And He said to them, ‘You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ [that’s Leviticus 20:9] But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ (that’s and offering to God) – then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do” (Mark 7:8-13).
Jesus says, “Hey guys, you’ve created this tradition, this man-made law the excuses a child from honoring his father and mother by letting him give an offering to God. Thereby allowing him to claim that he can’t financially take care of them. That’s wrong. You’ve elevated your tradition over the Word of God.” And we do the same thing. We reinterpret God’s Word. We say things like, “Well, that verse doesn’t mean that anymore.” Adultery isn’t adultery anymore. It’s pursuing personal happiness. Stealing isn’t stealing anymore. It’s redistribution of wealth and improving the life of the working class. That’s the position of Vicky Osterweil in a book she released last year titled In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action.
So, there’s a scope of the command that implies it’s for fathers and mothers, Old and New Testaments, and people then and people now who seek to supersede God’s intentions with their own.
The Substance of the Command (Practically)
Practically speaking, let’s consider the substance of this fifth commandment. Notice the first word of verse 12. It’s the word “honor.” What does it really mean to “honor” someone? Well, the Hebrew word is kabad and it means “to be heavy” or “weighty.” I was telling the boys that the other day and they both busted out laughing and said, “We must be doing a pretty good job. You’re gaining weight, for sure.” That’s not what it means.
Well, what does it mean? It actually has the same root as another Hebrew word kabowd, which means “glory.” So, just as there’s a weightiness and heaviness to the character and nature of God in His majestic glory, there’s to be a weightiness and heaviness in the way that we treat our parents. Let me put it to you another way. How you treat the parents you can see will be an indicator of the way you treat God, whom you can’t see. That’s why we also read Ephesians 6. In the Ephesians passage we’re given two actions that are part of honoring father and mother – obey (that’s an action) and honor (that’s an attitude). Honor is the attitude that forms the basis for the action of obedience. It’s when we consider our own obedience (or rather disobedience) to our parents that we realize we haven’t done as good a job of honoring our fathers and mothers.
There are two implications of honoring: respect and appreciation. Respect. When you address your parents, how do you do that? When you talk about your parents to somebody else what words do you choose to use? Those of us that grew up in the South were taught to answer our parents “Yes sir, no sir and Yes ma’am, no ma’am.” Many of us were also taught to stand when elders entered the room.
And if you attended a particular college in the South (as some of us did) one sir wasn’t good enough. It was a sir sandwich: “Sir, yes, sir. Sir, no, sir. Sir, no excuse, sir.” Those were the only acceptable responses for a low life freshman learning honor, respect and duty. And you had to stand whenever an upperclassman entered the room. I can’t tell you how many injuries – twisted ankles, banged heads and knees – we had as a result of someone jumping down off the top bunk or standing from the bottom bunk when an upperclassman came barging into our rooms.
Now, certainly, just because you say the right words and stand the right way doesn’t mean that the attitude of your heart is honoring. There are plenty of times in my own life where I said the right things and stood, but in my heart, I was sitting in defiance. Or when I was standing in arrogance and pride when I should have sat in humility.
And there’s also an implied appreciation. Every child learns this the very moment they become a parent. There’s this immediate revelation, “Man, it takes a lot to raise a child. Oh, I so appreciate what my parents have done for me.”
For example, according to the latest US Dept. of Agriculture data from May 2020, parents who have a child today will spend, on average, $284,570 by the time the baby turns 18. That’s a middle-income husband/wife family with two children. The majority of the expense is housing, then food, then childcare and education (not counting college). And that’s just the financial picture. Don’t forget to add the nausea and pain of pregnancy, the sleepless nights of feeding, the worry, the concern, the prayers… If you can’t think of any reason why you ought to honor your father and mother, then that alone should be sufficient. One of the quickest and easiest ways to honor your parents is by a simple word or gesture of appreciation.
And can I just add this into the mix – in the Bible, honoring your parents also extended to your in-laws. Now I know some of you are thinking, “Lee, you just crossed a line. You were preaching before, but now you’re just meddling.” No, hear me out. May I remind you that we have an entire book of the Bible that proves my point. Do you know the name of that book? (Ruth) Some of you might remember that we studied that entire book in 2019, and the beautiful commitment of loyalty: “[F]or where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you” (Ruth 1:16-17).
Now, just so you don’t think it’s all respect and appreciation, there’s obviously a balance here. If your parents instruct you to do something that’s opposed to God’s Word or His character, then there’s room for disobedience. Remember Acts 5? We must obey God rather than men. It’s the same in the home. If parents forbid prayer or Bible reading or church attendance, then there’s room for disobedience. It should be loving and gracious, but disobedience nevertheless. So, there are boundaries, but let’s not allow those boundaries to crowd out the command to honor father and mother.
The Security of the Command (Personally)
Let’s conclude, this morning, by considering the security of the command (personally). As Paul mentions in Ephesians, this is the first commandment with a promise. There are benefits to doing this, and the first is a quality of life. Notice the second part of verse 12, “…that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”
Now, I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. There have been plenty of children that have loved God and sought to honor their parents and they died tragically and rather suddenly. Then there have been those children that didn’t have a care in the world for God or parents, and yet they lived to a ripe old age. Yes, you’re absolutely right. But that’s why I was careful to say quality of life and not quantity of life. Here’s what was originally intended by this fifth commandment. Follow me closely.
In the Old Testament, shortly after receiving the 10 Commandments, Moses received a lot of other instructions about how the nation of Israel should conduct itself. The 10 Commandments are what we refer to as the moral law, but there was ceremonial law and judicial law and civic law that was also given by God to Moses. When you hear Christians today talking about not living under the law but under grace, what they’re referring to are these other codes of law: ceremonial, judicial, and civic.
When the apostle Paul contrasts the law and grace in Romans, this is what he’s talking about. He’s not suggesting that Christians don’t need to keep the 10 Commandments. The moral law of God, which is what the 10 Commandments are, is inextricably tied to God’s nature and character. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection didn’t set aside the fact that we’re still commanded not to take the name of God in vain, or that we shouldn’t murder, or that we are to honor our parents. But Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection absolutely set aside the need for continued sacrifices. Do you see that?
Ok, so right after receiving the 10 Commandments, one of the other laws that Moses received from God was Exodus 21:15, which says, “Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death” and Exodus 21:17 says, “Whoever curses [or dishonors] his father or his mother shall be put to death.” Now, if it was lawful to kill a child for striking his/her parents or dishonoring his/her parents, then it makes sense why this fifth commandment says to honor them so that our days may be long. If failing to honoring them could get you killed, then honoring them at least meant for a longer life, if not a better quality of life.
Yes, generally speaking, if I listen to the direction of my parents and don’t put this knife into the wall outlet, then I’ll live longer. Generally speaking, if I obey my parents and not consume alcohol with my high school buddies, or do drugs, or go to certain places in town after dark, then I’ll live longer. Generally speaking, if I honor my parents by obeying them, then I can avoid painful scenarios in my childhood and even adulthood. But again, it’s not an absolute quantity, but rather quality of life.
Let me close with this. Did you know that almost every culture, every nation, every people group – both modern and ancient – say that it’s right for children to honor and obey their parents. It’s good for society. It communicates law and order. To obey, to honor, to respect, to appreciate mom and dad is right, not because the Romans said it, not because the Americans say it, but because God said it. The best way to live is with a clear conscience; to do something because you know it’s right before God; it pleases the Lord.
There’s only One person in the entire world that’s ever kept this commandment perfectly – that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. You say, “Well Lee, look at who His Father is. You don’t understand my situation. I was abused by my father. I was abandoned by my mother.” You’re right. I don’t understand, but Jesus does. He knows what being forsaken feels like: My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? There’s no such thing as a perfect earthly parent. Nor is there such a thing as a perfect earthly child; but there is a perfect heavenly Father who sent His perfectly obedient Son to die on a cross for your sins and mine. If you don’t know God as your perfect heavenly Father, then I pray that today would be the day that you repent and receive His free gift of grace by trusting in the life, death and resurrection of His Son.
“Our God and our Father, once again, Your book pierces our hearts, challenges our minds, and calls for a response. We know we’re sinners and we need a Savior. We’re not going to make ourselves acceptable to You by keeping the fifth commandment, or even keeping all of them. We can’t do it. We’re flawed. We need a Savior.
And I pray that as a result of studying these first five commandments, as a result of being confronted by who we are before a holy God, that there will be people, even here this morning, from where they sit, who say, ‘I want to settle the matter of my eternal destiny. I need to trust in Christ.’
And for those of us who name the name of Christ, I pray that You will close the gap between what we know and what we verbalize and how we live. Make us zealous this week for the truth of Your Word in a society that’s completely crazy when it comes to these issues. Give us bold sensitivity, genuine love, and may we honor our fathers and our mothers.
May the love of the Lord Jesus draw us to Himself, the peace of the Lord Jesus guard and keep our hearts and minds, and the joy of the Lord Jesus strengthen us as we seek to serve Him. For we pray in His powerful name. Amen.”