Honoring Parents (Exodus 20:1-20)

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1 Honoring Parents (Exodus 20:1-20) I The Law truly reveals our need for Christ. (If we consider Christ's interpretation of the Commandments in the Sermon on the Mount, we recognize guilt under the Law, for even our thoughts, even if we do not follow thought with actions. We seem to think that if we can avoid overt sins of commission, then other people will think well of us; and so we reason that if we have not hurt anyone else, then God is pleased by our restraint and selfdiscipline. Fear of opinions of people has replaced fear of God. Vs 20 introduces a different standard for conduct. The Law describes sins as God defines them, but fear of God does not keep us from sinning. That should make us conscious of our need for redemption. Relativism helps us make excuses, and churches, in general, no longer have the moral authority to insist on separation from all of the varieties of worldliness.) A The Fifth Commandment demands that we honor our parents. (Lack of honor, and of love, follows from several varieties of worldliness: namely, materialism, secularism, and individualism. Parents must accept some responsibility for infecting children with these spirits (spirits cause thoughts and actions). Parents who leave their children in government schools sacrifice their children's moral character and intelligence to un-christian government education policies. And Christian parents have pursued materialistic success instead of godliness. Individualism, the mantra of progressive educators, is now considered to be the best pathway to material success. It may be; but it is also the pathway of rebelliousness against all authority, beginning with the authority of parents.) B This commandment contains a promise. (The promise is of long life. We have no competency to address the relationships between strife and stress, or between these and life-threatening health problems. We can, however, identify a time when parents took care of children before they were old enough to take care of themselves, and when adult children took care of aged parents who could no longer take care of themselves. Government solutions to problems that follow after abandonment are both expensive and unnecessary. God's plan is for parents to love children, and children to love parents, and for the power of His love in our hearts to overcome all of the problems that we blame on inconvenience.)

2 II Honor for parents includes love and loyalty. (The time surely arrives when conflicts of wills arise between people, to separate the hearts of the parents from the children and of the children from the parents. This begings as an education problem, caused by what parents teach children, and how parents demonstrate the importance of the lessons in their personal lives. Yet even with the best of intentions, children will rebel against authority, and parents will resent the rebellion. There is a Biblical solution. It is described in Psalm 78: 1-4. Note that the King is the teacher (and his government was godly), and note the role of History lessons. When people forget their history, they lose their identity.) A Love and loyalty makes a cycle for the benefit old people. (Perhaps most of us have heard stories from parents and grandparents, about how adult children used to care for aged parents; and how many of us actually witnessed the care? Did we see love and compassion, or see (and hear) impatience and resentment? When, precisely, do parents take time to teach honor, love, and loyalty to children? The Bible clearly puts the responsibility for this on parents, and on fathers in particular. Surely there is a way to instruct children, by which children learn the lessons God intends them to learn, and lessons that cannot be unlearned, regardless of the corrupting influences of modern society.) B Honor for parents is an extension of obedience, beyond their lifetimes. (Perhaps the most efficient use of the Fifth Commandment is the demand for obedience from children. Honor begins at obedience. Love and loyalty come later. Now if we were to bestow sufficient honor on spoken words, we could also transfer honor to written words. So Kings and Queens of England still honor the Magna Carta, 900 years after it was signed. Nations honor treaties for trade and defense long after the people who negotiated them have left the political scene. Can we also bestow this kind of honor on the Word of God? If a parent makes this kind of example for his children to see, he has more reason to expect his children to honor his words, than the parent who renders only lipservice to scriptural principles. God can extend His Covenant throughout thousands of generations of people who love and obey Him; and He can visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to

3 the third and fourth generations of those who hate Him (and with God, there is no position between love and hate). Honor is a lesson that should produce love and loyalty. The demand for love, without the teaching of honor, might (and might not) yield empty promises of future loyalty, but we are not likely to change the hearts and minds of rebellious teenagers by showing disregard for the Word of God, for them to remember and imitate.) III The New Testament treats all human authority as an extension of the authority of God. (All authority ultimately derives from God. Jesus said as much to Pilate; and Paul repeated the principle in Romans. Now we need to distinguish the delegation of authority from divestiture of it. God delegates certain kinds and degrees of authority to people, but the only time He divests Himself of any authority is when Jesus returns to earth, to inherit His Kingdom. For the moment, authority over human society rests in secular government, and authority over the Kingdom of God rests in the Church (with a Capital C); and God gives parents authority over their own children. In modern society, neither government, nor church, nor home, exercises godly authority properly. Let us remember the relationship between authority and responsibility. If you delegate authority over children to a school, you remain responsible in front of God, to teach your child to obey God.) A Hebrews 13:17 extends authority from God through those to whom it is delegated. (We should note that God is still Lord of all. He is watching carefully to see how well we to whom He delegates authority exercise it. He knows how to hold governments and politicians accountable for injustice. He also knows how to bless a church that understands its role as the Body of Christ and performs His Will, and how to withhold blessings from hypocrites. He knows how to turn the hearts of children and parents, either away from, or toward, each other. We have to do things God's way. We cannot have authority over you and demand obedience and servility, without ourselves being under the authority of God. We serve God by our obedience to His Law. That means being faithful with responsibility. God can delegate authority, and withdraw the investiture. Government, home, church, and school must serve God and perform His Will, not be masters over subordinates.)

4 B If authority can be extended through delegation, then the warning against abuse of authority is also extended through delegation. (Let us read Colossians 3:21 and Ephesians 6:4 together. If we retain the spirit of these warnings, we can paraphrase them, as a warning against any abuse of power. Governments should not provoke citizens to armed rebellions, pastors should not provoke church members to resentment, and teachers should not provoke students to disaffection, either. Provocations come anytime there is an unfair advantage for someone who is unworthy of it, or an unreasonable expectation, or injustice, or someone who is unrecognized for his efforts and successes. Let us note that all of these things are inevitable in human interactions. Problems, and their solutions, follow after our reactions to troubling interactions. Godly authority must then demonstrate godly responsibility, because Godly subordinates are obliged to honor God, through the honor we give to the people to whom God has entrusted delegated authority.) IV Part of honor is patience with human failings. (As we just noted, people-problems follow after interactions between people. There is a Biblical solution to problems that arise due to human failings. It is related to love and loyalty, and obedience and honor. Remember that God is the ultimate authority and source of all authority for those who exercise it. Those who exercise authority, godly or otherwise, are all people. Those in authority make mistakes as easily as their subordinates make them; and generally, with more and better opportunities to make excuses for their failings. Love and loyalty can extend immediate obedience to parents into long-term honor for all authority; but we have to use God's solution to the human problems of authority and submission: that solution is forgiveness.) A Parents must teach their children to make responsible decisions. (We all know that there is a time in the lives of children when decisions are more like instinctive responses to stimuli than they are like conscious choices. The first of the conscious choices are likely to be selfish, and moral behaviors must be learned, from instruction, mistakes, and corrections. We note that many adults have never learned to make responsible decisions, and some of them who have learned, do not use Scripture as the basis for their reasoning. In

5 the Body of Christ, things should be different. Churches are the corporate equivalent of a family. God invests parents, and church leaders, with certain kinds and degrees of authority. The purpose of the investiture is for people to teach people, and the lessons we must teach are about the New Testament Covenant of Grace. Just as there are some families in which parents do not understand nutrition and bedtimes very well, there are churches in which the leaders do not understand evangelism and discipleship training very well. So how can we define responsibility, so that our concept equals God's requirements of us? Let us say that responsible means, to do what is expected of us, and without immediate supervision; and let us say that accountability is when God checks to see whether or not we were responsible. Will any of us be perfect, when we stand in front of God? No, but we expect to be forgiven for sins against God. One of God's expectations of us is that we forgive each other, for sins against each other. Then by this measure, a responsible decision is, in the name of Jesus we forgive someone who offended us. Is it possible then, to teach children to make responsible decisions about attitudes and behaviors, and to teach them compassion and forgiveness, with examples that include our reactions to their bad decisions? God will judge us all, and by the same judgments we use, and apply to us the same measures that we take (cf Matthew 7:1-5). Does that frighten anyone besides me?) B The time will surely arrive when children make decisions independently of their parents. (Divine justice is a much bigger, and broader, concept than any of us can understand very well. God uses positive and negative aspects of human relationships, as well as positive and negative aspects of our relationships with God in Christ, to deliver Justice. With the Fifth Commandment in mind, Justice includes what we teach children, and how children learn, and what they do about the lessons once they are no longer obliged to give parents unquestioning obedience. God knows how to turn the hearts of the children away from parents, and how to turn their hearts towards them again. If there is sufficient honor for God and His Word among His children, then there will be sufficient honor for the Word of God among the children of the children, even to a thousand generations. The

6 absence of that honor in modern society is testimony to the absence of honor for God among the children of men. That ought not to be the case among Christians; and it would not be, if churches taught the Word of God, and adults set an example of honor for the Word of God in front of children. Children become like their parents were, for better or worse.) V The Biblical plan for orderliness in society works best. (That plan includes honor for God by obedience to His Law. The terms of the New Testament Covenant are that God forgives our sins for the sake of Jesus, when we repent and forsake sins. This is the lesson plan for what churches should be teaching. The Law shows us just how much repenting there is to do. Whether we can turn things around in Christian families and churches is an open question, and one that we are ill-prepared to answer, for lack of experience in obeying the Law of God. Honor for parents under the Fifth Commandment follows after honor for God.) A Historically, the institutional church sacrificed godly order on the altar of politics and economics. (The fear of God did not keep people from sinning. Instead, from about the Fourth Century, religious authority became political authority, and the fear of God in people became a tool for securing politicial advantages for churchmen. Now the religion is secular humanism, and fear of God has changed into fear of people's opinions. Economic greed is just as ungodly, in any time or place, and abuse of government authority is just as evil now as it was in Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia.) B We would not obey God any better if we started over again in the Fourth Century. (Exodus 20:20 is a warning. A modern and expensive welfare state is one of the results of failing to heed the warning. Christian people should be able to share the Kingdom of God among ourselves, but the spirit of worldliness obstructs our efforts. Understanding where modern problems came from does not solve them; and solving them by obedience to the Law is not possible either, with our sinful natures still in us. Our days will be long on the earth if we get the Fifth Commandment right. If we don't get it right, we can look forward to Justice in Heaven, if Christ replaces our disobedience to the Law of God with His own righteousness. That requires repenting sin, in obedience to the command of Christ. Then our Heavenly Father, Who alone is worthy of all honor, grants us eternal life in Heaven.)

7 Based on the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 39