LAW HOMILY: FATHER'S, HONOR THEIR MOTHER

Every week we look at the law of God because we want to understand what God has to say to His people. If you want to understand how to use a television, you should probably look at the manual. If you want to understand how to use a toaster oven, if people still use such things, you should probably read the instructions.

If you want to understand how to do maintenance on your car, you should probably read the manual. If you want to understand how a human works, you should probably look at the law of God because in it, God has told us who we are, who He is and what we are to do.

The Fifth Commandment as the Manual for Human Life

So today we're gonna be in the fifth commandment and we're gonna have a little bit of a different take on the fifth commandment today, but I think it will be good and edifying as we do it. Here's the fifth commandment.

Honor your father and mother that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. Now the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother does not terminate at the nursery door.

It does not expire when a son grows tall and a daughter marries. The Westminster Larger Catechism shatters any such cramped readings with surgical precision saying things like this in question 124, who are meant by father and mother in the fifth commandment?

And then the answer comes like this, by father and mother in the fifth commandment are meant not only natural parents, but all superiors in age and gifts and especially such as by God's ordinance are over us in place of authority, whether in family, church or commonwealth.

Authority, not biology. Office, not mere affection. This is the hinge upon which the whole argument turns, but the catechism doesn't leave us there satisfied that we have somehow mastered honor. It presses us further into the asymmetry that we often miss.

Question 127 explores what inferiors owe superiors. Question 128, 128 catalogs the sins that of inferiors commit against their superiors and then comes the point, question 129. It asks this, what is required of superiors to their inferiors?

And the answer is devastating in its comprehensiveness. This is what it says. It is required of superiors according to that power they receive from God and that relation wherein they stand to love, pray for and bless their inferiors, to instruct counsel and admonish them to countenance, which means to show them your love and face, commend and reward such as do well and to protect and provide for them all things necessary for soul and body.

Honor in Marriage: Headship Without Tyranny

It's a pretty wide sweeping sort of command. And you wouldn't normally consider this marital wisdom literature, but this commandment applies devastatingly to us as men and as husbands. A husband is superior not in quality.

A husband is superior in hierarchy of station and office. He is called leader in a family. He is called head. His authority is derivative, it's borrowed from God and he is accountable unto God, measured by God and therefore responsible unto God for how he honors his wife, which means that honoring his wife is not frosting on the cake of complementarity.

It is not egalitarianism, it's moral law of God. First Peter 3 .7 says, you husbands in the same way live with your wives in an understanding way as someone weaker since she is a woman and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life so that your prayers will not be hindered.

Ephesians 5 .25, husbands love your wives, that's agape. Sacrificially love your wives just as Christ also, sacrificially love the church and gave himself up for her. Colossians 3 .19, husbands love your wives and do not be embittered against them.

Proverbs 31 .28, her children will rise up and bless her and her husband also praises her. Biblically, headship divorced from honor is not headship at all, it's tyranny. And what has motivated me to write such a thing and to preach such a thing is I look on Twitter at a bunch of young boys who have woken up and found out that there's such a thing as patriarchy and now they've become twice the sons of hell in the way that they treat God's daughters.

The fifth commandment is not spoken just to children, it thunders at men, husbands and fathers, it roars at you. It weighs down upon you like a crushing weight upon your chest, husbands who bear the name of Christ must act like Christ.

The same God who commands wives honor their husbands also commands husbands honor your wives, not just sentimentally, not occasionally, not with I'm sorry dear, it won't happen again, not with a card and flowers, but covenantally, consistently, visibly, sacrificially.

I want you to consider the contradiction. A man can demand respect on his high horse while despising the woman that God gave him, what a fool. He can insist upon submission while ruling like Pharaoh instead of Christ.

He can quote Ephesians five, woman, honor me. And yet Peter says you show her honor man or your prayers will be hindered. Your prayers will bounce off the ceiling of your house like you have a copper ceiling.

And it's not hyperbole, God does not hear the prayers of a husband who dishonors his wife. The theological precision in that statement needs to settle down into our bones. Your family worship means nothing if you dishonor your wife.

Your leadership in the church means nothing if you are a pig to the one who God has called you to love. If you come before the throne of grace with the blood of perpetual dishonor against your wife on your hands, the altar is closed to you until you repent.

And dishonor looks like a myriad of different things. Could be violence, but it's often more insidious than that. It can mean neglect, to slowly starve a person's soul while you're feeding your own. It can mean publicly belittling, making jokes and jabs at a person's expense.

It can mean dishonoring her thoughts, dismissing her as unimportant. You know that God gave her to you to be your helpmate, not just the one who carries your babies. Dishonor is silence when praise is due.

Dishonor is correction without tenderness. Dishonor is authority without affection. Dishonor is headship without heart. The law of God doesn't wink at it. It's a violation of the command. It's the violation of the fifth command, honor thy father and mother, because you, a superior, a covenant head, have despised the one that God loves.

It's looking at pornography when you should be adoring your wife. It's belittling her and treating her as if she is inferior to you. It is continually destroying your own name and your own reputation so that she lives under the brutality of your tyranny.

Men, we are called to a higher office, which means that we are called to higher accountability. We are told to live like, to act like, and to imitate the Lord Jesus Christ. So there is not a man in this room who can't say, God, I need to repent.

Whether or not you're a husband or not, there's some way that you have dishonored a woman in your life or someone in your life. And whether or not you're a man or not, there's some way that you've dishonored someone this week.

I'm particularly focused on the husband because he's commanded to bleed for her, wash her, adorn her, speak well of her, present her back to Jesus more beautiful than he found her. But his command is far-reaching and wide and it applies to all of us.

Repentance, Prayer, and Christlike Leadership

So what I pray is that we would repent of all dishonor, of all ways that we have broken this, the first commandment of the second table of God's law, the one that really demonstrates to all of us how do you love your neighbors yourself when you cannot do it with dishonor.

So let us pray. Let us confess our sin. Let us ask the Lord to forgive us of our sin. And let us ask the Lord to help us grow into repentance in this area so that our wives, our children, our husbands, our families flourish under our affection.

Amen?

Lord, there are so many ways that we can violate your command and every week we see all of the different facets. This is obviously one of them. Lord, I pray that in a society that has shamed men for being men for so long, that the overcorrection would not happen where men now with an ounce of courage would become tyrants instead of Christ-like leaders.

Lord, I see a trend that's happening where an overcorrection is occurring, where manosphere bloggers, where these men pumped up on fake testosterone and masculinity, at least disguised as such, proclaim a gospel of men mistreating women.

Lord, there is no reason that men for 100 years have been our society's doormat, but there's also no reason that we would become the perpetrator either. Lord, I pray that judgment would begin in the household of God, that men would find their place at the foot of Jesus's cross, and that, Lord, we would love our wives, our children, our future wives, future children, that we would love them like Christ loves them, that we would be living examples of your love.

And, Lord, when we fall short, and obviously we will, Lord, would you forgive us as we know you will? It's in Jesus's name we pray, amen.