Sunday, August 6, 2023 PM

And it's hard to consider how it is to honor God, especially in the matter of idols and so on, without properly relating to others around you, and the created order.

So, when we think about the Ten Commandments, we need to kind of take them as they come, see them in their context with Israel, and think about how they relate to God's specific promises in relationship to Israel.

And so we come to the Fifth Commandment. Now, we just have a very long commandment about the

Sabbath day. When you look at it visually in your

Bibles, you will see that the Sabbath commandment runs verses 8 through 11, and it's a big chunk of text.

And so it details all the ways in which a household must rest on the seventh day, in recognition of the creation week, how

God rested on the seventh day, and in recognition of God rescuing His people from Egypt, as Deuteronomy 5 puts it.

But a very large commandment dealing with all aspects of the household. That's the

Sabbath. Very focused on the household. Well, the very next commandment is also about the household.

And let's look at that. Verse 12, Exodus 20. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the

Lord your God is giving you. Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the

Lord your God is giving you. You can flip over to Deuteronomy 5 and see a little bit of variety.

In the second giving of the law, which is what the name Deuteronomy means,

Deutero, second, namost, law. So that's the second giving of the law. And in this, there is a hearkening back to what

God has already commanded. So, in Deuteronomy 5, beginning in verse 16.

Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you.

Looking back at the fact that this has already been stated. That your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the

Lord your God is giving you. Let's talk about the idea being expressed here.

First of all, it's the word honor. The word honor. This is the

Hebrew word for glory. Kabod means weightiness. It has the idea of something of great value.

Indeed, it can include the idea of something that is weighty and it sparkles. Gold is a good word picture for glory, for kabod, for something that is weighty.

The idea of honoring someone has the idea of reverence. It has the idea of paying attention to, considering above one's own self.

In the passage in Philippians 2, dealing with humility. Considering others as more important than yourself.

That's a way of honoring someone else. You're saying, your concerns, your needs are more weighty than mine.

I'm not going to weight myself as more significant than you.

I'm going to weight you as more significant than me.

That's the idea of honoring. Of course, this is very important for children.

Children just instinctively think that their concerns are the most important. That starts as a baby.

The baby waits for no one. Everyone waits on the baby. I need food now.

I need to be changed now. I need to be picked up now. My needs are the most important and weighty.

And we all understand that. But as the baby matures, as Ken reminded us the other night, there ought to be a shift in the attitude of the child growing up and realizing, hey, you know what, my needs, my interests are not the most important.

And the way in which a child learns to put others ahead of themselves and to give due honor and to be humble primarily comes through them learning obedience and honoring their father and their mother by recognizing them as more important than themselves.

If a child never learns obedience, never learns honoring father and mother, that child goes on to be a hellion.

That child goes on to be, I'm the most important person. Everybody pay attention to me. And any parent who encourages that and says, oh, yes, yes, whatever you need, baby, they're not really loving that child.

The parents are kind of favoring themselves. I don't want to be in any conflict. I don't want them to think ill of me.

I'm never going to challenge them. I'm never going to try to shape and mold them or use the rod of discipline to help direct them.

But the child, foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child. And foolishness is being very self -centered, self -focused, myopic,

I only see me. I'm a universe unto myself. That's folly. But the rod of correction will drive that foolishness, that folly, far from the child.

And that is the role of the parent. And we see that children are to honor their father and their mother, to honor, consider others as more important than themselves.

Let's look over in, as an example, let's look in Proverbs 1 as we consider the wisdom bound up here in the law of God and consider the wisdom that Solomon speaks to his own son.

Now, in verse 7 of the book of Proverbs, this is kind of the first four commandments in a nutshell.

It says, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

The fear of the Lord. Now, what are the first four commandments doing other than instructing us to think of God first and to think of him most?

You shall have no other gods before you. Love God, love God supremely. Don't make idols to worship.

God is the creator of all things. There's no thing that we can ever see or touch that we could ever think that that is the very picture of God.

Do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. And then the whole instruction about the

Sabbath is to rest in God's promises and to think about how he's the one who provides.

So that's wisdom. That's wisdom is the fear of the Lord. And the first four commandments are filled with that wisdom of thinking of God first and thinking of him most.

It says, Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And so Solomon does not want his son to be a fool.

He says, My son, hear the instruction of your father and do not forsake the law of your mother.

That sounds a lot like Exodus 20 verse 12. It sounds like the fifth commandment. Honor your father and your mother.

Now look here. Remember that the word honor has to do with weight, weightiness.

The idea of kibbutz in the Hebrew can be backed up with treasure. Abraham was described as a glorious man.

Why? Because he had a lot of loot. Took it off of the Egyptians. Took it off of the

Bimelech and the Philistines. He was a very wealthy man. He was very weighty.

Keep that in mind. Honor your father and your mother. Now look what he says.

My son, hear the instruction of your father. Do not forsake the law of your mother. Now listen to how he describes instruction and law.

For they will be a graceful ornament on your head and chains about your neck. A crown and a chain.

Now what are crowns made out of? What is the ornament chain made out of?

Precious metals. Heavy things. Valuable things.

Weighty things. Things that catch the light and draw the attention. Now think about this.

Now if you were to walk around, and I want you children to think about this a little bit. If you were to walk around with a very heavy thing on your head, and a very heavy treasure hanging about your neck, would you forget that you were wearing them?

Instead of trying to balance it and keep it on your head, this thing's always kind of clanking around everywhere you go.

But these are treasures, right? They may seem like they weigh you down, but actually they enrich your life.

Honor your father and your mother. All right, so that's the idea of honor.

Thinking of the father and the mother and the words that they say, the principles that they lay down is more important than what

I think and what I lay down as far as what I think should happen. But then notice how this is expressed.

It says, honor your father and your mother.

Do you see it's not just one? It's not just honor your mother.

It's not just honor your father, but it's both. And why is that?

Because the marriage relationship is primary. The marriage relationship is primary.

When God made man in his own image, in the image of God, he created them.

He made them male and female and brought them together into a marriage relationship immediately.

He did not make mankind initially as a father with children or a mother with children, but as a man and a woman together in marriage, the primary relationship.

And so the children need to recognize the primacy of that relationship and honor them both, to honor father and your mother.

Now, I have a question. Maybe the children can answer this one. Can you honor your father without honoring your mother?

Does that work? No. Can you honor your mother while dishonoring your father?

No, can't do that. They come together. If one of my children disrespect their mother, they disrespect me.

If they disrespect me, they disrespect their mother. That's the way that that goes together.

You can't have one versus the other or apart. Also, we see, and now

I just want to think a little bit more about why that is. Because of the way that God created mankind and the way that he has designed us in his image, there is this assumption, isn't there, of a two -parent household, mom and dad, with children.

You see the assumption is made here? Now, that's not structural oppression. That's good design.

That is, that is to the glory of God and is to the good of all. This is essential for good societal structure.

But the mom and the dad are working together to educate the children, and thus, if the children honor father and mother,

God promises Israel, the children of Israel, your days may be long upon the land.

If you honor your father and mother, your days will be long upon the land, which the Lord your God is giving you.

In Deuteronomy, he says that it may be well with you. Your days will be long and that it will be well with you.

Now, why is that? Well, notice he's talking about the land that he has given to them.

What happens if the children don't honor their father and mother? What do they end up doing?

There's sin, there's folly, there's disruption, all kinds of things breaking down.

And we come back to the covenants. We're going to talk about exactly how that works. With the covenant that God made with Israel, how vitally important it was for the children to honor their father and their mother and what would happen if that didn't follow through.

But first, we're going to go back to Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 because the covenants that God makes are in the shape of the image of God.

So we need to go back to the original design and see what goes on there. In Genesis 1 and verse 26 through 28, we are picking up the language of God creating mankind.

But prior to that, time after time, when God is making the creatures, he's making everything after its own kind.

And everything is tuned for reproduction and growth and multiplication, everything after its own kind.

God created everything with this enormous bias towards life.

Everything is made so that it will reproduce and grow. And so the trees and the fish and the birds and all of the animals are to reproduce and be abundant after its own kind.

And of course, this is God's plan for mankind. So verse 26,

So he makes male, female, man and woman, husband and wife with clear instructions to be fruitful and to multiply.

Of course, that means children. Well, how is that going to work? Is there just, as we see, a variety of ways in which the creatures that God makes reproduce and expand?

In the insect world, here is a queen. And there are several drones.

And then there is just reproduction of all these worker ants or worker bees. Is that how

God designed mankind? No. He designs the family. And there is an orderly multiplying of families.

Notice in verse 24 of Genesis 2, Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Now, God says this in, we see this conclusion, this instruction. And this is spoken in the context of Adam and Eve before they ever had children.

But the basis for the family unit is the marriage and the man leaves his father and mother and be joined to the wife.

The two shall become one flesh. And obviously they're going to have children. That's the plan. That's the pattern moving forward.

So what do we have here? We have clear authority structures. Here is a child living in the home of his father and his mother.

And then he leaves, and now he is joined to his wife. And there's a new authority structure.

And this keeps on moving forward in an orderly way. Well, that's the plan.

And then what happened? We move from Genesis 2 to Genesis 3. It's a startling thing.

I was reading commentary on Romans 5,

Donald Gray, Barnhouse. In reflection on how things went, it's a very short sentence that he wrote, but it struck me.

He said, the very first baby became a murderer. That's startling.

The very first person to ever be born on planet Earth was also the very first one to murder.

And if you want a synopsis of the depths of sin, there it is.

And we have the fall here in Genesis 3. Sin comes in, and thus death. And yet God gives a promise of a seed.

And this is important, isn't it? Because although death is now this defining reality of humanity, death has come in, relational death and spiritual death and physical death and eternal death.

Although death, the idea of separation has come in, there is a promise.

There is a promise that involves life. There's a promise that involves children. Verse 15,

Genesis 3, God says, I will put enmity between you, the serpent, and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.

He shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel. There's a promise of a child. There's a promise of a son.

There's a promise that comes about through God's design for the family.

And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all the living. So there's this promise, there is this good thing ahead with family, with husband and wife having children, although it will be difficult.

Verse 16, Genesis 3, to the woman he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception. In pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. So there's a promise of sorrow there, but there's also still the hope.

There's one to come. There is a son, there is a seed who will conquer.

There's a son, there's a seed who will win the day and undo what has been done.

So there is an attention given to sonship, to who will be the faithful son.

Well, it's not Cain. He killed Abel. What about Seth? Right?

And we see the distinction between the line of Cain. You know, Cain had a son named

Enoch, but he wasn't like the Enoch that came through Seth's line. Cain had a

Lamech that descended from him, but he was not like the Lamech who came through Seth's line. There's a distinction between the two.

Where is the faithfulness going to come from? And, of course, Lamech thought maybe my son will be the one to give us rest, and so he named his son

Rest. He named him Comfort. He named him Noah. And Noah had three sons, didn't he?

And God made a covenant with Noah and very much put attention upon his family.

Now what happens as Noah understands that things are going to continue on now, after the washing of the earth, and they come out of the ark, and they begin to look at the prospect of repopulating the earth and so on?

Now what's going to happen? Well, we have a story, don't we?

Genesis 9, verses 18 through 29.

Now the sons of Noah who went out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And Ham was the father of Canaan.

That's important information for the Israelites, who are getting some very vital information before they cross the

Jordan River to go to war against the Canaanites. These three were the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was populated.

Do you know how that verse has been mocked for more than a couple of generations?

To say that from these three sons of Noah the whole earth was populated, how much laughter and mockery that verse has gotten.

That's not how it happened, so on and so forth, until they're running the genetic code. And lo and behold, there are three nodes for human

DNA. Three, how about that? Well, verse 20,

And Noah began to be a farmer, and he planted a vineyard. Then he drank of the wine, and was drunk, and became uncovered in his tent.

And Ham, the father of Canaan, you see how Moses is underlining this, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.

So what did Ham do? Ham did not honor his father, he dishonored his father.

Well, he deserved it. A man gets drunk, uncovered in his tent, he deserves what he gets. Ham should have honored his father, but he dishonored his father.

But now notice Shem and Japheth, verse 23, They took a garment, laid it on their shoulders, went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father.

Their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness. Oh, this generation, they are righteous in their own eyes.

They despise their father and mother. A wicked generation is lamented in Proverbs.

This Ham, do you know how easy it is, and I'll say this to the youth and children, do you know how easy it is to find fault with your parents?

Easy as falling down and tripping. Super easy.

Honoring your father and mother does not mean making much of their faults. But by recognizing they're more important than I am,

I need to honor them and respect them, even though they do the wrong things and don't get it all right.

So Ham makes much of his father's problems. Shem and Japheth cover. There's a distinction there, isn't there?

One is not honoring one, and Shem and Japheth, they are honoring. Now, verse 24,

So Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done to him. You know, it doesn't look like much. You know,

Ham just mocked and scorned his father. That's all it was. But what did he say, verse 25?

He said, Cursed be Canaan. Now, who's Canaan? Ham was the one who did it.

Canaan is the son of Ham. What's going on here?

If the son doesn't honor his father, what is it going to happen to his own descendants, his own son, his own children?

Do you see what's being built here? What's being taught to the Israelites in their own context, but what actually happened here with the story of Noah?

What's being highlighted here for them? Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.

And he said, Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant.

May God enlarge Japheth, and may he dwell in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood 350 years, so all the days of Noah were 950 years, and he died.

So there is this story about an unfaithful son and what happens to him and the faithful son.

You see, back in Genesis 3 .15, when God promised that there would be an opposition between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, we immediately see that happening in the story of Cain and Abel.

But just because Abel died, didn't mean that there was no hope for the seed of the woman.

That lineage came through Seth. And just because the flood came and wiped out all the descendants of Cain, didn't mean that there was no more seed of the serpent.

For we see a distinction here between the faithful son and the unfaithful son.

We have Shem on the one hand, and we have Ham on the other. And then we have this prophecy of future conflict.

There's going to be opposition that's going to be worked out between the descendants of Shem, who begot somewhere down the line

Eber, where we get the word Hebrew from, who begot Terah and Abram, Isaac and Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel and the children of Israel.

And we'll leave that for next time. But focusing in on the son and honoring father and mother.

Any questions or thoughts as we close? Yes, so it's a difficult question about how children are to honor parents that sin greatly against their children.

So it's important to recognize that in the providence of God, a child may always honor father and mother in the following ways, even if things are really bad.

One, that in God's providence I received my life through my parents, through my father and through my mother.

So there's thankfulness to God for that. And that honors a father and a mother, that there would be a thankful heart regarding that.

You can also honor father and mother by maintaining an approach of love.

Because even though a parent may not ever confess their sins to their child and seek to be reconciled to them, and in a sense parents may remain at enmity with their own children and be against them in sin,

Jesus says for us to love our enemies. And it's a tragic and a very hurtful thing for a child to have to regard their parent as their enemy, but it happens.

But we're called to love our enemies and pray for those who spitefully use us and persecute us. And so we may honor our father and mother even in that.

And if our mother or our father comes to us and asks for forgiveness, what are we to do?

We are to forgive them and rejoice in that reconciliation that we're able to forgive and to move forward.

And to not be embittered against them and to hold these things near and dear, the offenses, to hold them and use them as excuses or to use them as weapons against the parents who have failed us.

So these are ways in which we can honor father and mother even if they have failed us and sinned against us.

Yes. There's a deep -rooted wisdom in honoring our father and mother that the

Fifth Commandment points to, but it's certainly something deeper and broader throughout all of biblical history.

And we see that it's embedded with how we're supposed to love one another rightly in the image of God.

We are to honor father and mother. Yes. Well, I hope this has been helpful for you all.