Summary 

The fifth commandment to honor your father and mother often feels outdated in our culture that questions authority and celebrates individual autonomy. However, this command serves as a crucial bridge between our relationship with God and our relationships with others. The Hebrew word for honor, kaved, means weighty or heavy - the same word used to describe God's glory. To honor means giving weight to someone's presence, recognizing their God-given role, and showing respect and value.

This commandment extends far beyond childhood. The parent-child relationship is foundational, teaching us how to engage with all authority figures throughout life - teachers, employers, government officials. When we learn to honor our parents, we develop skills for navigating all authority relationships professionally and respectfully. The promise that our days may be long in the land suggests practical benefits that extend throughout our entire lives.

The commandment applies equally to those in authority. Parents, employers, and leaders are called to honor those under their care by loving them, providing guidance, protecting their needs, and recognizing their dignity. Jesus perfectly modeled this by honoring the Father even unto death, while the Father honored the Son by exalting Him. This divine relationship shows us the mutual honor that should characterize all healthy authority relationships, leading to practical benefits in our daily lives.

Transcript

Lord, we're thankful for your word. We're thankful that you give it to us in love. You desire to instruct us in your ways, to reveal yourself to us, to train us. God, like the perfect father, you desire our well being. You desire us to be nurtured in your ways.
And so, God, I pray that this morning we'd be attentive to your word. That we would desire it and desire you. Desire to honor you, to love you, to serve you, to follow you. Now, O Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
All right. You probably know that the ancient Roman emperors did some kind of wild things with their power. Let me share a few of them with you. I read that Nero built a spinning dining room, which reminds me of the spinning bar at the hotel in New Orleans. Now that I'm thinking of it, I forget which hotel that is.
Which hotel is that, babe? The Monte lion, right? Yeah, the hotel in New Orleans. And it had this ivory ceiling to it. Kind of wild.
Elagabus, I guess that's how you say. His name, I read. Played pranks on dinner guests, including the ancient form of the whoopee cushion.
I don't know what that was like. It was probably pretty funny for him. Commodus. He reigned from 177 to 192. And you may remember him from the movie Gladiator.
He renamed all of the months in his honor. Let me read them for you. Amazonius, Invictus, Felix, Pius, Lucius, Aelius, Aurelius, Commodus, Augustus, Herculeus, Romanus and Exuperatorius. Most of those were titles that he bore himself. And you're probably scratching your head at that last one, as I was.
I looked it up. Exuperatorius means O surpassing conqueror.
Herculius, of course, is from Hercules. Hercules, sorry. These names of the 12 months were actually used during his reign until he was assassinated, which happened to 36% of Roman emperors. Then they were dropped. But still, today, actually, we have two months that are named after different Roman emperors.
Augustus, and then his son Julius. August and July. Right. The thing is that the world revolved around them, right? They could do what they wanted, name what they wanted, time revolved around them.
Others were for their play, for their purposes.
Commodus actually renamed all of the Roman Empire. Colonia Commodiana. It's my colony. The world is mine.
I'm sure some of you are wondering why I would start a sermon on the fifth commandment, with all this Roman Emperor talk, it is not, as you may be wondering, because we have all heard that the average American man thinks of the Roman Empire 10 times a day, which I find wild. But I watched this little video about that and the guy that was being interviewed actually said, yeah, that's too little. Oh, really? Okay, no, that's not why. Rather, I think it shows that if we are able, if we are able to have sort of the power of the world, we would make it around us, everything doing our bidding, time and space and people under us, we view others out of our lenses, quite literally.
We just see the world out of the lens of our eyes, but also we act out of the lens of our hearts, right? Out of the heart comes our words and our actions, how we live.
The commandments began, right, you shall have no other gods before me. And of course, I suggest to you that that's in part because we actually have this innate kind of that sin. At its heart is this pride that says, I desire to be God, to have the place of God, to rule our world for ourselves.
There's Sophocles in there somewhere. But when we place ourselves as God, the truth is that we don't just sin against God, we sin against others. Right? That's why partly earlier I was saying also when we were reconciled to God, we are also reconciled to others. And we are brought from slavery to life in this resurrection reality.
We don't just have a proper relationship with God, but we are oriented towards our communities. As late moderns, we often confess the 1960s creed, question authority, and maybe you've heard don't trust anyone over 30, something that most all of us believe until we are over 30. You know, boomer is not just a name now, for a generation that was born between 1946 and 1964, it has now become rather a dismissal of those older than us. Okay, Boomer. We confess equality as a central idea of life and society.
And that kind of invites us to not think of people as over us or under us, as to be revered or to be cared for, intended to. We believe in the self made man. We mold ourselves from the dust, and we are embarrassed by belly buttons that remind us of dependence on others. Right? We believe in the holy word, consent, the necessity of our own giving of approval for anything to be right and good.
And so we come to the fifth commandment, this hinged commandment between how we engage with God and how we engage with others. Honor your father and your mother. Honor your father and your Mother. That your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. And I think we hear that and there's part of us that just, we know that there are ways that you apply that we go against that in some ways.
And there's certain people that totally go against that. Right. We're like, we're thinking about the Roman Empire all the time, ten times a day. And so we're like, Nero murdered his mother bad. Not he did not keep this commandment.
Amen. Y' all aren't sure. Okay, weird. Can I get an amen?
But also I think we think we hear this command, honor your father and your mother. And we, and, and part of us thinks, ah, antiquated hierarchical structures.
We push against it as we mock, dismissingly, dismissively. 92 year old Senator Chuck Grassley. Right. Honor to those over us, care for those under us.
So who's this commandment for?
First I want to say this commandment is for children. Children listen and I say that first because it's easiest to convince you of. It's not hard for us to get behind. It's certainly not hard for parents to get behind on Saturday morning when they want the chores done. After all, the command does specifically begin honor your father and your mother.
So at the very least, this is for children. The very least. But what is this command? It's a command to honor. What's that mean?
To honor. That word in Hebrew is the word Kaved, means weighty, heavy, like a big presence, right? Something that is very present, it's heavy. It's often a word in the Bible. Actually it's most often used in reference to God.
God in his glory, the weightiness of his divine majesty, the call that we as part of his creation are to give to the Creator, the One who's over all things.
To be honored, to receive our attention, our praise, our obedience. So to give honor to somebody is to give weight to their presence in your life. To give honor to someone is to give recognition of their God given role often over you. To honor is to respect, to esteem, to value, to prize something just to say that we give our attention to their words. We open our ears, open our hearts.
We understand that their presence shapes us, it influences us. And of course the opposite of honor is dishonor. So what we could say, this is not, is. It's not dismissing a relationship, it's giving its proper due, its proper weight.
To dishonor is to not only to disrespect, but to treat lightly, to act as though it's just kind of some feather that can be blown away, if you will.
I read this week there was a teen magazine whose cover read, do you really hate your parents? Like, who doesn't? I felt like I had to read it that way. Like, who doesn't? And then the article actually advised on how to deal with detestables, which is unfortunately, actually something that is fairly common.
Right. It's rather assumed that during at least your teen years that you will dismiss the weight of your parents. And let me say this. It is good and it's right. And it's actually a normal developmental thing for you to become your own person with your own interests, with your own loves, and with your own sort of way of being in the world.
Yet the Bible and history commend to you the honor, the constant honor of your parents, kids, and y'. All. This is for the rest of you, too, actually. I'm gonna get there. Here's the truth.
The relationship you have with your parents is the not only the first, but it is the most fundamental relationship that you have. It lays the foundations or the bedrock from which you learn to engage in all other relationships, okay? It's the foundational human relationship. It's the relationship where you learn life being, holding yourself, speaking, engaging with others.
If you meet somebody in your class who's hard working and diligent, who's kind and considerate, who doesn't laugh at somebody else's misfortune, you know, you fell over, you know that, you know, they're not that kind of person, you probably have their parent to thank because it's the foundational dynamic from which they learn to engage with others. It's certainly the case. Let me just say this. I feel like I can qualify so much of what I'm saying today. It is certainly the case that there are bad parents and great kids and great parents and bad kids.
But the way of the world is typically that you learn to engage in the world from this foundational dynamic of learning to honor your parents. To honor your parents is to give weight to their presence in your life. This does not necessarily mean always obey, though. Isn't that also a biblical command? But when it is, actually obey is, as Ephesians 6 tells us, children obey your parents in the Lord.
So while the default is obedience, it's obedience towards the Lord and what he's commanded.
And let me say this. When we say talk about children, it's actually, it's not just the case, right, that you're children as a young child, is it? You grew up. I am still a child. My parents are still living.
They have weight in the world, weight over my life, in a way, an ability to speak into my life. The relationship that you have as kids with your parents is what I'm suggesting, just how you learn to engage with those around you, and particularly those over you. It's where you learn how to listen and when to speak, how to engage with those about you, how to respect those over you. I think it's why. I think this is why this is such a practical command in the Bible.
And I think it's also why it's the command with a promise. In fact, Ephesians chapter 6 tells us that it's the first command with a promise. Because this is the fundamental command that organizes your social life. It sets you up in life. This is why.
Again, I've mentioned this earlier, but this is why this command, most theologians take it as a hinge from your relationship with God to your relationship with others. This is the beginning point from which you begin to engage with the world about you, your neighbors, and all of the rest. This command says, honor your father and mother. But it adds that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Isn't that interesting?
It's not just a, hey, do this, but there's actually certain effects that it has in your life. You will learn how to speak to your teacher by honoring your parents. You will learn how to speak to your bosses by honoring your parents, treating your parents with weight. You will have a greater possibility of receiving helpful feedback from your professors when you've submitted papers, if you learn how to honor them with your speech, with your being, with your presence in the classroom, all the rest. Let me give you an odd example of this.
In my life, actually, maybe it's not that odd. I feel really hesitant to give this example because there is a rule in preaching that when a preacher gives an illustration, they're not supposed to be the one that looks good in the illustration. Okay.
I don't know if you've noticed. I really try not to give illustrations where it kind of makes me look like I kind of had it going. But I'm going to break that today. So when I was in college, I went to Western Washington University, and a couple of the spring semesters, I wanted to go on some bigger trips with a couple friends, trips that would take longer than a week because they were far off and there was a lot involved in them. And so I thought, well, I would really like to just not have One week off for spring break.
I'd love to have two weeks off for spring break, brazen child as I was. And so what I did is at the beginning of each of these spring semesters, I went to all of my professors and I said, I am going to be a good student. I'm going to show up to class on time, I'm going to give my attention to your words, I'm going to do what you say, I'm going to submit my homework on time, and I will participate in class. Would you give me an extra week off for spring break?
Have you ever heard of anyone doing this? I actually haven't. But you know what? Both of those years that I did that every single one of my professors said, yes, if you do what you just said, if you show up, if you're diligent in your work, if you participate in class, if you turn your stuff on in time, I will give you that extra week off, every single one of them. Which is just to say I honored the relationship and it frankly went well for me.
Those spring breaks children, I'm telling you this. If you want to ask your future employer for greater responsibility at work, for a greater, maybe a pay raise, if you want to ask your professor to meet with you that extra hour because you are struggling in calculus, you need help on that paper. If you want to interview well for a future job, if you want your days to be long in the land to which the Lord your God is bringing you desire to honor those over you, seek out, what does it mean for me to honor the people that God has placed over me and practice it in the home?
Because of course, this command is for natural parents, but it is not just for them right adults. Let me give you some advice. Speak honorably to your boss. Speak honorably about them. Let your words.
Practice your words in the home of how you would speak to them. Don't bad mouth them behind their back, because you're more likely to do that in front of them. It will go better with you if you learn to honor those who are over you. Isn't it crazy? It's utterly wild to me that Peter tells us.
Second Peter. First Peter 2:17. Right. Honor the emperor who was the emperor at the time when Peter was writing that Nero, the guy who killed his mother. It's not that of course, the emperor was doing always honorable things, but the Christian community was called to engage with them in honorable ways.
Because as you do so, as you honor those proper authorities that God has placed over you, it was more likely to go well with you. This is true. It's a very practical command. You learn how to engage with those authorities over you, primarily in the home, but they extrapolate beyond that. St. Augustine said this.
If anyone fails to honor his parents, is there anyone he will spare?
Give your parents weight. This command is for children, but it is far from being only for children. It's for us too. All who are under God given authority. But here's the truth, beyond sort of this idea that this is for children.
It's this authority dynamic, right?
It's a command also for those parents and those who have authority. This is how Christians have always taken this. This is not just for those under authority, but this is actually a command for those who have authority. Think about this like this, okay? So the command, honor your father and your mother and then it goes to the promise that it may go well with you, right?
That your days may be long in the land the Lord your God has given you. Well, if your days are long, eventually you grow up and you actually are the one that is doing the instruction. It's for you, all, the community. This is the command for the whole community. So is this a command only for children?
No, it is not. Is it a command only for employees? No, it's not. Is it a command only for citizens, those who receive laws? No, it's not.
No. The desires for the health of the entire community, for the whole, all of the relationships, the. You cannot just mean children here. You cannot just mean the fatherly, motherly dynamic. It can't just be those who are under authority.
It also must be those who grow up to have authority. There's a call there, by the way. Okay, quick side note about this command. For all the ways and times where the Bible is said to be an ancient patriarchal text, did you all notice that it says honor your father and your mother? There is an equal footing in this text there.
Pretty interesting for an ancient text where that would certainly not have been the case, broadly speaking, anyway. Contained in this command to honor your father and your mother is also a command for the father and the mother, for the ones who have a degree of authority, which is to say, honor those who live under you. Give their presence a weight in your life. Don't dismiss the reality of who they are, what they bring, how God's made them, the gifts they have, the proclivities they have, the personalities they have. Which is to say, parents, it is your duty, it is our duty to understand.
Parenting an infant is different than parenting a teen is different than parenting an 18 year old is different. Parenting a 28 year old. Do not coddle your 18 year old.
Send them out into the world with your blessing. Teachers know this, right? I mean, like no teacher is thinking I should give the same assignment to a third grader as I do a 10th grader. We all know how ridiculous that sounds. There's an attentiveness to those who are under their care, where they are, who they are, how they learn, how they grow.
There's an honoring of who they are. The weight they are, the presence, their presence in the world. Parents, let's grab onto this. Those in authority, grab onto that. Learn those under you.
So I don't think I've ever really done this in a sermon, but the theological text of our denomination, actually of sort of the Reformed prestige church, historically and globally, is the Westminster Confession of Faith and larger and shorter catechisms. And the larger catechism is amazing on the Ten Commandments. I've been tempted the last few weeks to read some of it to you, and I have not done so. But I want to read to you some of the Westminster Larger Catechism as it speaks to not the obligations of those who are under authority, but the obligations of those who have authority. Okay, so I want to read some of this to you today.
Keep in mind this was written in 1647. It may use some words that are not as common today. And it talks about those with authority as superiors, those under authority as inferiors. We think of inferior as actually lacking value. That's not how it's intended.
Okay, so question 129 is, what's required of superiors towards their inferiors? What's required of those with authority for those who are under their care? It's required of those with authority according to that power they receive from God and that relationship, that relation wherein they stand to love, pray for and bless those under them. That is our primary posture. That's the first thing that's required that we love, pray for and bless those under us.
If you have people that work for you, that is how you are to care for them, to honor them. We continue to instruct, to counsel, to admonish them, countenancing, command, commending and rewarding, such as do well and discountenancing, reproving and chastising, such as do ill, protecting and providing for them in all things necessary for soul and body, and by grave, wise, holy and exemplary. Carriage. Y' all haven't used the word carriage in a long time. That's not like a horse drawn carriage.
It's how you comport yourself in the world. To procure glory for God, honor for themselves, and to preserve authority that God has put upon them great call to those with authority. But here's the thing. What are the sins of those with authority? Listen to this.
The sins of those with authority are besides the neglect of the duties required of them. So you got to do the duties. What are the sins and inordinate seeking of themselves.
I mean, think of something that kind of hits home for me. These commands in Colossians and Ephesians. Fathers, do not provoke your children.
When do we provoke our children? Fathers, in inordinate seeking of yourself. Do what I told you.
Listen to me.
Okay, let me keep going. Inordinate seeking of themselves, their own glory, ease, profit or pleasure. And inordinate seeking of your profit is actually where you sin against those under you, commanding things, unlawful or not, in the power of inferiors to perform. Look at that. Parents, part of the way the confession has applied this is it says it's actually sinning against your.
Your children. Let's say that if you are commanding them to perform something that is not in their power to do counseling, encouraging or favoring them in that which is evil, dissuading, discouraging and discountenance them, discountenancing them in that which is good, correcting them unduly.
How about that, parents? I feel like. I know. I know that in my life. A way we break this command is we correct those under us unduly, overly harshly, too many times, carelessly exposing or leaving them to wrong, temptation and danger, provoking them to wrath, or in any other way dishonoring themselves.
See, the confession says there is an honor that is due those under you.
What this is to say is that this command is not just for children or those under authority to honor those above them. This is just as much a command for those who have authority, who have those under them, who are to care for, protect, love, to honor their weight and their presence in your life. Give their presence its due. Which is to say that all life has weight.
There are no little people. There's nobody that you can dismiss in this world. There no insignificant people in this world, no people that do not carry weight.
The problem that we face in this command, and the reason why we all break it, is that we do not honor the role that others always have in our lives. God has always placed you in certain relationships, and those relationships are always to be honored for that relationship. And we do not do so.
We do not honor those who are over Us. And we do not honor those who are under us as we should, because we are like the emperors of old. We are like Adam from long ago, desiring to be God. We want to decide what is best for the world. And if you are not on board, as one unfortunate preacher once said, you are going to get run over by the bus.
The creed questioned authority, and frankly, its accompanying liberating sexual revolution was largely, actually the rejection of the family structure, rejection of authority structures. And it has not gone well. It's not gone well. What I'm saying is that this command is a command for all of us. Do not dismiss this as us for children.
It's a command for all of us in all of our relationships, and we all break it. But there is good news. And interestingly, I think the good news of this command is that this command is followed perfectly by our Lord Jesus and by our Heavenly Father. Okay, there are a lot of texts I could go to for this, but let me just kind of read a few of them for you. First one that most of you know, John 3:16.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, and what does the Son do? But he obeys the Father, right? He honors the father in Luke 6. How are we. Sorry, Luke 11.
How are we taught to pray the Lord's Prayer? But our Father, right hallowed, holy, honored be your name. The beginning of actually our life and our conversation, even with the Father, is how Jesus interacts with the Father. Our Father and Jesus, we can read In John chapter 8 says, I do not seek my own glory. The Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us doesn't seek his own glory.
Instead, we can also further read In John chapter 12, now is my soul trouble, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. No. But for this purpose I came. And to this hour, Father, glorify your name.
The Son, Jesus in the flesh. God incarnate is honoring the Father constantly in Jesus high priestly prayer. We find this idea, of course, repeated again and again that Jesus honors the Father. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. He's able to say, I've honored you by listening to you, obeying you, following you.
That's verse four, verse six. I've manifested your name to people whom you gave me out of the world. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known. I'm honoring your presence, your weight, your glory. When Jesus is in the garden, of course, right before his crucifixion.
On the night in which he was betrayed. He's sweating drops of blood, right? And he says, father, if you're willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. He's honoring the reality of the Father's presence in his life.
He's obeying the Father. I can give you more. But in Christ, we see the honoring of the Father perfectly. That where we fail, the Lord Jesus lives perfectly. And of course, we see this most clearly in his going to the cross, humbling Himself, being obedient to the point of death, obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
In that same high priestly prayer.
What is interesting is that you see actually the combination, not just though, of the. Of the Son seeking the honor of the Father, but actually the Father seeking the honor and glory of the Son. Because it's a dual dynamic. So in John, chapter 17, again, the night before our Lord's crucifixion, Jesus prays, father, the hour has come, the hour of my cross, my suffering. Glorify your Son, you know, honor the reality of me as your Son, that the Son may glorify youy.
He goes on, now, Father, glorify me in youn own presence with the glory that I have with youh. Before the world existed. There's this dynamic of honor at play. Of course, in Philippians 2, which I already sort of alluded to. We read that it was for the joy that was set before him that Jesus endured the cross, despising its shame.
But it was for the Father's honor, right? And it was in doing that. Actually, this is interesting. In verse nine, all that is followed up by saying that the Father exalted Him, that's Jesus, and bestowed on him, that's Jesus, the name that's above every other name. So the Father honors the Son and the Son's obedience to the Father.
There's this dynamic at play between the Father and the Son, which is exactly what this command is calling us to do.
All this to say is that in the glory of Rome, we see both the ugliness of what happens when we think everything else needs to revolve around us. The revolving dining room, the renaming of time, and 30% of the world is a slave.
But in that same Roman world, what we saw is God coming into this world and honoring Jesus, honoring the Father. And in that dynamic, the Father honoring the Son and lifting him up. And that is our hope that where we fail, the Lord Jesus succeeds. And we can rest in this reality that what God has done in Christ, he will do for us as we seek him, as we pray out to him. Our Father, hallowed be your name.
And so, brothers and sisters, let me end with this. Simply honor your father and mother and believe that what the Lord tells us is true, that it will go well for you in the land to which you're going. This was true of our Lord. This is true of our Lord. And may it be true of us as his people.
Let me pray. Lord, I pray that we would see the weight of other people in our lives, see the honor that we are to give others the way we are to consider their presence and their role in our lives. God, I pray that we be those who desire, eagerly, desire, actively desire to follow this command. And that more than ever we will see that as we fail, the Lord Jesus succeeds and that he goes to the cross to honor the Father, but also to pay for our sins. That we might be those who die to sin and live to righteousness.
That we might know that it's by his wounds that we are healed. Brought from death to life, from slavery to freedom. And may we live this kind of resurrection life that mirrors the reality of the Son and the Father. Pray this in Jesus name, Amen.

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