The Fifth Commandment directs us to honor our parents, but how do we do that? Today, on Truth for Life, we'll learn practical ways to show our respect. We're continuing our series in the Ten Commandments called Pathway to Freedom, and Alistair Begg begins part two of today's message, titled Family Life, God's Way.
He's teaching from Exodus 20, verse 12. Let us come then to some specific applications of this Fifth Commandment. First of all, let us define honor here. Honor, your father and mother. Somebody obviously got to say, what does that mean? Well, the Hebrew word for honor is the word kabed, k-a-b-e-d, and it simply carries the meaning of to be heavy.
To be heavy. And it points to regarding our parents as eminently worthy of a weight of respect. Okay? Now, if that is how honor is defined, how is honor displayed?
Let me just run through a number of these in the time that we have. First of all, let us just note in passing that the honor that is called for is an obligation, it's not an option. It's not as if we can choose to opt into this if we like, and if we don't, then we'll just have a Christian life without this particular one.
We can't do that. It's obligatory, it's not optional. All right? So for those of you who thought you were going to skip the fifth commandment and move quickly to the sixth, you're in deep trouble.
All right? So the honor is displayed, number one, in practical respect. We understand disrespect, don't we? We would like to be able to teach respect and then people discover disrespect, but all having discovered disrespect, we will teach respect in counterbalance to the disrespect that we've already embraced. We disrespect our parents when we mock them with our tongues.
That is disrespectful. Therefore, to respect them means that I don't mock them with my tongue. I disrespect my parents when I'm talking on the telephone, asking for a ride home from such-and-such a place. I treat them as if they were some dreadful cab driver who ought to be glad of my business. Therefore, I respect them when I treat their kindnesses towards me with the honor and revering that is due them. Proverbs chapter 23, listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when you're old. I display practical respect for my parents when I show them courtesy.
Courtesy. I display practical respect for my parents when I look into their eyes when they're speaking to me. Do you know how difficult it is to get people to look at you these days when you speak to them? If a guy does not look at me when he speaks to me, I'll tell you one thing. He never looked at his parents when he spoke to them. If your children cannot hold the gaze of somebody in public, it's because you have not taught them to hold your gaze when you speak to them. And the one time I don't want to hold my mother's gaze is when I know she has something on me, and I… So he said, Will you look at me when I'm speaking to you? I'm not speaking to a board. I'm not speaking to a wall. I'm speaking to you, and your eyes are the gateway to your soul.
Look at me. Proverbs chapter 6, verse 23. Incidentally, young folks, you want to take proverbs and get it and just chew it up, eat it, memorize it, read it, think it out. Proverbs 6, 20, My son, keep your father's commands.
Do not forsake your mother's teaching. Bind them upon your heart forever. Fasten them around your neck. When you walk, they will guide you. When you sleep, they will watch over you. When you awake, they will speak to you.
Tremendous picture. You see the responsibility that is given to parents here. This is the flip side of Deuteronomy 6. These things shall be upon your hearts, and you shall teach them to your children when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you get up. In other words, it will be so much a part of your lives together that these things will be transferred into your kids. They will be wrapped around their necks. They will be carried with them. They will be driven, as it were, into their chests. And in the darkness of a night when the music beats and the temptation is loud, what will it be that keeps them?
It will be your prayerful commitment to instruct them even when they seem so disregarding of that which you offer to their care. "'It will keep you,' he says, for these commands are a lamp, this teaching is a light, and the corrections of discipline are the way to life." The corrections of discipline are the way to life. They're not the way to bondage, they're not the way to death. Freedom in the current framework of things is total bondage. And the expression of Christianity, which appears to be bondage, is actually the gateway to freedom.
All right, let's move on. Honor is displayed, then, in practical respect. It is displayed in genuine love—genuine love.
We'll come to this, as we conclude, God willing, if we have time, in the story of Joseph. But genuine love within a family and for children to parents is not something slushy, it's not something sentimental, it's a heartfelt expression of affection. And it needs to be cultivated.
And it needs to be cultivated at particular times. And parents need to be wise about the funny times, these adolescent years, where it appears that after you poured everything into these kids, they suddenly grew up and said, These people are crazy! I don't know why I'm even living in this house! Look at her! Look at him! Listen to him!
I can't believe this stuff! And it appears, in that sort of strange wilderness experience, in between their adulthood and their crawl from childhood, that there's maybe nothing much there at all. But hang on. Keep the lines of communication open. Keep looking in their eyes. Don't let them lock themselves away with regularity in their rooms.
It'll come around again. You've got to cultivate genuine love. If you want to have friends, you've got to be friendly. If you want to have love, you've got to be a lover. Some dads are not good at this. They say, I provide. Hey, I didn't want toys, Dad.
I wanted you. Thirdly, we honor our parents when we display express obedience to their commands. That is, that we say no to stubbornness, we say no to rebellion, we say no to despising their instruction and their direction, and we say yes, once again, to the book of Proverbs 1 8, listen, my son, to your father's instruction, and do not forsake your mother's teaching.
It just comes time and time again in the wisdom of Solomon. Real obedience is a matter of attitude, not simply of actions. Do you obey your parents from the heart, youngsters? Do you obey in the attitude of your heart? It's possible to do things, to maintain an external frame of existence, to become a kind of Pharisee in training, cleaning the outside of the cup and making sure that everybody knows that you're doing everything right, but in your heart you're like a grave, you're like a tomb, you're so rebellious, you're so disrespectful, you are in such violation of what your parents are asking from you that only those who know you from a distance could ever believe that you are expressing honor to your parents by obedience to their commands. It's an attitude of the heart. That's what obedience is, first of all. My actions are an expression of my attitude. Are there limitations to obedience to our parents?
Someone always asks that. Well, you know, I don't have Christian parents, and they asked me to go and to steal a car from down on such-and-such an avenue. Am I supposed to obey my parents then?
No. The obedience to our parents is within the framework of the instruction and guiding principles of truth and righteousness. But for example, if I am facing a decision, living at home, maybe I want to get baptized, and my parents are from a completely different environment, they don't understand my faith in Christ, and they call for my obedience. Should I be baptized, or should I obey them? I think you should obey them if you're living in your home. For you will be able to be baptized at an age of your own accountability. They are your parents. Obedience that violates the commands of God—for example, in Acts chapter 5, where they were told, You shall no longer speak concerning Jesus—well, would we then obey our parents if they told us no longer to speak concerning Christ?
No, I don't think so. But it's a principle, you see. It's an attitude of heart. Correlative with this is that honor is displayed to our parents when we submit to their discipline. When we submit to their discipline, every parent worth their salt disciplines their children. Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 9, Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them for it. We may not have enjoyed it at the time when the powwow was coming and the wowwow was going, but now we're twenty-five, and we realize that that afternoon was an important afternoon.
The people I'm really concerned about are the ones I see in the supermarket, buying off their kids, squawking monsters, riding in chariots, holding the whole place to ransom. What would you like, honey? Kudos? Do you like kudos? Nah! Popsicles, nah!
And the mother is just going totally insane. Take the little rascal out of the chariot, round behind the place, give it the powwow, wait for the wowing to stop, bring it back, put it in the chariot. Otherwise, when that chariot becomes their own chariot and they drive it, when you put your head in the pillow at night, they will be going looking for another kind of kudos to satisfy the passionate hunger of their lives. This stuff works.
It's not just true. It works. Our society doesn't want to admit it works.
It works. One mom, one dad, children in obedience to their parents. Here's your answer to so many questions. Finally, we honor our parents when we repay the love and care and trouble that they've taken in our lives. The Pharisees were real bad at this stuff. They should have been taking care of their moms and dads, and they weren't, and they tried to justify it on the basis of their commitment to the church. You can read this account in Matthew chapter 15, where the Pharisees came and started to annoy the disciples with their questions.
And the fact of the matter was that they were just downright hypocritical. And they were saying—you can read this in Matthew 15—they were saying that if a man says to his father or mother, Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God, he is not to honor his father with it. And Jesus says, Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You're a bunch of hypocrites. In other words, don't tell your parents you won't be able to come and see them in Arizona, because you're tithing to the building plan.
Your parents are your parents. That's what Jesus is saying. Don't be a bunch of Pharisees. When Paul writes to Timothy, he says, There are widows in your church, and they've got children, and they've got grandchildren. Then let the children and the grandchildren take care of the widows. If churches and families were serious about this, then it would be radically different. And it's gonna have to get radically different, loved ones, because this thing, this system, is not gonna work. I don't know who's coming up with the system, but it isn't gonna work.
You can't keep getting older and older and older people with less and less capacity to care for themselves and plug it up by any system, except the system that God ordained. The Chinese understand it. They're committed to the extended family.
The African culture understands it. They're committed to the extended family. We just reject it, flat-out reject it. Newsweek magazine, December 1991, did a report on hospitals that have turned into dumping grounds for grannies. Reported that barely half of the American public believe it is the children's responsibility to look after their parents.
But you know what? Why would we be surprised? Do you think this is gonna change? Do you think that the children who tomorrow, at the age of seven months, are gonna be taken to a daycare center, not because their dad died in the war and their mommy has to go to work, but because their mommy wants to be a, quote, real person and doesn't believe in parenting and in marriage and in motherhood, she wants to be a real person, and so she's gonna put the seven-month-old in the care of some yahoo who doesn't… ought to be staying home looking after her kids, probably, and the whole thing goes down the tubes from there. So we got all these tiny little kids living in these boxes. It's unbelievable.
If you think, if we think that children who have been dumped for the first six years of their lives are gonna somehow come through for their mom and dad in the last six years of their lives, we're crazy. What's the answer? The fifth commandment, given by God to Moses thousands of years ago and relevant this morning in twentieth-century society. It's wonderful. I'm so excited. I want to go out and stand on the corner and hold up my Bible and say, Hey, guys, listen to this stuff. This is good.
This is true. This is life changing. Are you committed to this? Will you live this out? Will you be radical for Jesus' sake? Are you prepared to make a dent in your office, in your street, in your home, in your family? Are you prepared to put your money where your mouth is with your family and your loved ones?
Are you prepared to make a difference? Something's sadly wrong when other cultures without our Bible are better at dealing with the long-term care of the elderly than we with our Bibles and our apparent commitment to Jesus Christ. What do we do? We push people up the ladder of success fast so that we can topple them off as quickly as we can. We don't respect old age. We don't respect wisdom. We just don't.
We don't bring these people back to ask their advice or their guidance. We blow them off. We're committed to youth.
Youthism. We change our hair. We change our face. We have makeovers. And we're not committed to youth because youth is tremendously efficient or it has a commitment to hard work. We're committed to youth on the basis of image.
The basis of image. We believe that old age at best is relief from having to get up in the morning, and at worst it's in existence, which offers no reason whatsoever to get up in the morning. So that's what you've got to look forward to. So you look forward and say, Oh good, I don't have to get up.
And then you lie there, and you go, I don't know why I would ever get up. So life ekes out. The fifth commandment says that Christians should be the best visitors of their families, where they're in long-term care. The Christians should be the most willing at the accommodation of their families, most prepared to put their resources to the areas of greatest need. That Christians of all people should uphold the place of maturity and of old age. Old age is taboo. Youth is worshipped. Old age is dreaded or despised. We live in a society that isolates and impoverishes those who have given their lives that we might have an existence. This is really wrong! Are we just going to be two more old friends on Euclid Avenue, sat on a park bench with a coffee from McDonald's and sharing an Apple brand muffin, looking at one another and wondering? Or are we going to be some of the lucky ones that go to Florida and get to live in Morrison's Cafeteria? There's a sad place!
There's a sad one! And I've got to tell you, loved ones, when the signal goes out, and the word is sent, and the call is made, the people who go first to respond to this are not your conservative, evangelical, committed, Bible-believing Christians. The people who go are the people with a theology that we would not embrace, but with a heart that we cannot match. And the fifth commandment says to me, we'd better get our hearts and our attitudes and our resources in line with our convictions. That as parents, we'd better teach the wee ones how to honor us as they grow. But in our growth, we'd better not forget that those who have given their lives on our behalf demand our utmost commitment and respect at the end of their days. In Leviticus chapter 19 verse 32, it says that we should stand up in the presence of old age.
Some of you remember that, don't you? I used to wonder as a kid, why do I stand up when the teacher comes in the room? Every day the teacher walked in, the whole class stood.
Why? As a mark of respect. Why was I always told when someone came to visit my house, don't sit there, stand up? As a mark of respect. Why were we told when ladies came back into the room to stand again? As a mark of respect. Why were we told to take our hats off when we were eating in a public place or standing in a public building? As a mark of respect. What do we really know about respect, about honor? That's the challenge. Of commandment number five.
Honoring our parents is an obligation, not an option, whether we're young or old. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg, and keep listening. Alistair, we'll be back shortly to close in prayer. At Truth for Life, we're all about teaching the Bible every single day in a way that's clear and relevant. Our prayer is that God will use Alistair's messages to lead you to trust Jesus for salvation or to trust him today more than ever before. So in line with that hope, we're thrilled to tell you about today's book recommendation. It's a brand new daily devotional by Alistair. It's titled Truth for Life, 365 Daily Devotions. Over the years we've heard from so many of you who have asked if Alistair could write a daily devotional, and now it's here. It's a beautiful hardcover book with a full year's worth of devotions. Each daily reading includes a verse or a short passage of Scripture followed by a full page commentary in which Alistair explains the passage.
And just like his teaching on Truth for Life, each day's reading is filled with deep insight and fresh application. At the end of each devotion there are three symbols that will prompt you to ask how God is calling you to think differently, how he wants you to reorder your affections, and what he's calling you to do now as you go about your day. Get started with this devotional right away. Request your copy of the Truth for Life daily devotional when you make a donation of any amount. You can simply tap the image on the app or visit our website at truthforlife.org slash donate.
Or if you'd prefer you can call us at 888-588-7884. Now here's Alistair to close with prayer. 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 is completely crazy when it comes to these issues. Give us bold sensitivity, genuine love, and may we honor our fathers and our mothers. We commend one another into your care. 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.
I'm Bob Lapeen. Scripture is clear that God values all life. But join us tomorrow to find out why human life is particularly sacred. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-07-22 10:57:53 / 2023-07-22 11:06:40 / 9