Transcription downloaded from https://sermons.gracespringfield.com/sermons/93148/honor-your-father-and-mother/.

Disclaimer: this is an automatically generated machine transcription - there may be small errors or mistranscriptions.
Please refer to the original audio if you are in any doubt.


[0:00] And by the way, last week we were talking, or last few weeks we've been talking about the Sabbath, and last week we talked about how I proposed the idea that Christians don't have to go to church every week even though it's good right to fellowship with the body, that there is no condemnation when you miss a service.

[0:24] And I thought, well, man, that's pretty dangerous. Maybe next week nobody will show up. But most of you did here, so I appreciate that.

[0:37] We are going through the Ten Commandments, and we are looking today at the Fifth Commandment. And, you know, I don't know how well I would do if somebody quizzed me on the spot and asked me to go through each of the Ten Commandments and number them.

[0:56] I probably, at least in a few spots, might get them mixed up. But the Fifth Commandment is about honoring your father and mother, and we'll read through that passage here in just a moment.

[1:07] But as we've been going through this series, I've wanted to make two things really clear, and we're just reminding ourselves of this every single week.

[1:20] We did a few messages at the beginning to cover this in detail, but to have two different perspectives when it comes to the Ten Commandments and really the law in the Old Testament, the law of Moses.

[1:32] And those two perspectives are this. One is that as Christians, we are not under the law. That's our memory verse for this month. We are not under the law as Christians.

[1:44] What does that mean? Well, it means that the law no longer has power to condemn us, to separate us from God. In Romans, it talks about that condemnation is this power of sin and death, that when you sin, you must die.

[2:03] That's the power of the law, to bring not necessarily physical death, even though sin does bring physical death at times, but a spiritual death, a separation from God.

[2:14] The law no longer has that power to separate us from God. Also, on the flip side, it doesn't have any power to make you righteous.

[2:26] So, if we do everything that we can, we try, and we've seen this throughout history, and the Bible is full of the history of, quote, God's people endeavoring to keep the law, but never really reaching that righteousness that they think they can get from following the law.

[2:52] So, the law cannot make us righteous. It can't condemn us. Only Jesus can do that for us. It's through Jesus and the cross that we are made righteous, made the righteousness of Christ Jesus, Paul writes in Corinthians.

[3:11] But then, on the other side, the other perspective that we need to keep in mind is that, even though we're not under the law, does that mean that we just ignore the law?

[3:23] We just ignore the commandments? No. The Bible says, Paul teaches in the New Testament, that the law is holy and righteous and good, and that we can use it for instructions in righteousness.

[3:36] The law can still teach us right from wrong. It can set boundaries for us to avoid sin, which, by the way, leads to pain and suffering in our lives.

[3:48] And so, we should never ignore or diminish the law. Last week, we looked at the fourth commandment, actually the last few weeks, about the Sabbath, and we talked about how the Sabbath commandment is more ceremonial in nature.

[4:03] It's a ritual. And this one is, we're going to be talking about this more moral in nature. And that it's a fundamental, it teaches a fundamental aspect of right and wrong.

[4:15] Let's go ahead and read this one. Again, Exodus chapter 20. And it's just a single verse, verse 12. It says this, Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

[4:32] Honor your father and your mother. I'm actually going to split up this message into two parts. And this week, we're going to kind of look at kind of an explanation. I mean, there's not a lot here, but we can dive into the details of what's being taught here.

[4:47] But when it comes to relationships between parents and children, there's two sides, right? The responsibilities and duties of parents and the responsibilities and duties of children.

[4:59] And in this case, it's really pointing to the responsibilities of children to honor their parents. But there's also a responsibility of parents that we're going to actually focus on today.

[5:11] And then in our next message, we're going to focus more on the responsibilities of the children. The first thing we'll do is just look a little bit at the language. There are kind of two key points to this message, or two key words, really.

[5:27] You've got the mother and father part. Most of us know what that is, mothers and fathers, parents. But then this word honor, you know, that's a term we use a lot.

[5:37] But let's take a closer look. The Hebrew is an actual, it's a word called, that you might pronounce, kabad, kabad. And it actually literally means for something to be heavy, to have weight to it.

[5:53] And so to honor someone is to treat them with weightiness. Significance, significance, as substantial in your life. The opposite of that would be to treat something or someone as trivial or as light.

[6:09] Something that you can dismiss. So when you think about giving weight to your parents, giving honor to them by giving weight to them, you're giving weight to their opinions, their needs, and even just their presence in your life.

[6:25] You know, there are other people in our life that we might give less weight to. And that would be appropriate. Now everyone deserves some amount of dignity and respect, just based on their being made in the image of God.

[6:41] But some deserve more weight, more respect, more honor than others. There's another passage in Deuteronomy chapter 27 verse 16 that speaks to a word that is actually the opposite.

[7:01] It tells us what children should not do. It says this, Contempt. That's the opposite of honor.

[7:13] That word in Hebrew actually means to be light. So it means the opposite in a very literal sense. In the King James, actually for that verse, It translates that word contempt to set something light.

[7:32] You shouldn't setteth light your mother and your father. Other translations will translate it, You should not lightly esteem your parents.

[7:43] You should honor them. Treat them with the utmost respect. And then there's another word that comes into play that is in the same vein of meaning.

[7:55] And this comes from Leviticus chapter 19 verse 3. And it says this, Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father and keep my Sabbaths.

[8:08] I am the Lord your God. That's what it says. In the book of Leviticus, same idea, same vein of thinking, but it uses a different word. You shall revere your mother and your father.

[8:21] And you know that word revere or reverence is actually, the Hebrew term is actually translated many times to fear. In fact, it's that same exact term where we read that as believers or really as for anybody, we ought to fear the Lord.

[8:40] We ought to reverence him. We ought to revere the Lord. God expects us to have the same attitude towards our parents that we have towards him.

[8:52] The next thing I'd like to look at is the kind of the ordering of the commandments. We're at commandment number five. And one of the things we brought out is that the commandments are kind of split up into two groups.

[9:05] One has to do with our relationship towards God. And then the other group has to do with our relationship toward men. More of a horizontal relationship. Some people call it the first table of law and the second table of the law.

[9:21] Really speaking about the two tablets. Remember there were two tablets. Now, of course, the Bible doesn't tell us exactly how the tablets were organized. We don't know which commandments were on what tablet and which were on the other.

[9:35] But we do kind of see a general organization. If we look at them in terms of our duties toward God, that would be the first four commandments.

[9:50] I think the Sabbath would maybe be one that people might quibble about. But in general, the first four are duties toward God. And then starting with number five and on, it's about our duties toward men.

[10:02] And, you know, when it comes to obeying our parents or really honoring, I guess, our parents, in the same way that we ought to honor our parents, our earthly parents, the first three commandments talk about how we ought to honor our heavenly father.

[10:25] Our parents are the ones that gave us life in an earthly sense. And for our heavenly father, he's the one that gave us life in really an even broader sense, right?

[10:42] He's the one that breathed the breath of life into our very first parent. And he's the one that sustains all life in the world. So this fifth commandment is, you can kind of see, as somewhat of a bridge, right?

[11:01] Where it's really speaking to both our earthly family, but our earthly family points us back to our heavenly father. In Proverbs, it says that you should listen to your father who beget you, who begot you, who gave you birth.

[11:21] And then a few verses later in that same proverb, it says, Let her who bore you rejoice. Our parents are the ones that really gave us life in a natural sense.

[11:33] And so, for that reason alone, we ought to honor them, just as God gave us life. I also want to point out another thing in this short verse.

[11:52] It says, Honor your father and your mother, and then it gives a promise. A promise. It says this, Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land, which the Lord your God is giving you.

[12:13] There's a repeat of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy. And when this particular commandment is repeated, it's just a little slightly different. I'll read that, Deuteronomy 5.16.

[12:25] It says this, So long life, but not just long life, but long life that is well with you, where there's peace and blessing and prosperity.

[12:46] Notice, by the way, who the promise is to. Is it to the parents, primarily? Really? That if the children honor their parents, then it will go well with the parents.

[12:59] No, really, the primary focus is to the children. If the children will honor their parents, it will go well for everybody. Parents included.

[13:12] And so, that is the purpose of this command. And by the way, it's the purpose of every command of God. God wants it to go well with us. And when we sin, when we hurt others, when we don't fulfill our obligations and duties in life, it leads to pain and suffering and hurt in our lives and the lives of others.

[13:33] You know, some people might think, especially when they read the first command, that, you know, you should honor the Lord, you should only worship God.

[13:46] It sounds kind of selfish, you know. Like, is God just kind of self-absorbed? He wants all the attention on Him. He doesn't want any love or affection or any unordered love or affection, anything prioritized above Him.

[14:04] Why would that be the case? Is that just because He's being selfish? No. I don't think so at all, right? God wants what is best for us. And the way that God designed things, the way that He designed us, the way that He designed the world, is that when we honor and reverence Him above all, then life just goes better.

[14:29] And I don't think really anyone can thrive or live a healthy life unless they give God the greatest honor, and then, on top of that, to give their parents the honor that is due them as well.

[14:45] We've mentioned here that, you know, as believers, after the cross, under grace, we are not under the law.

[15:00] Yet, we find Paul, who is one of the primary ones to teach this message of grace. It's his verse that we quoted there in Romans, that we are not under the law.

[15:12] That same Paul actually references this very commandment in his letter to the Ephesians. If you've got your Bible open, go ahead and turn to Ephesians chapter 6.

[15:22] We're going to be looking in there as well this morning. Even though Paul clearly teaches that as believers, under grace, we are not under the law, yet he has no hesitation in actually quoting the law in giving instructions to the believers in Ephesus.

[15:44] Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1 says this, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment, with promise, that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth.

[16:00] Not only does he give the command, but he actually gives the promise as well. That, hey, things will go better for you in the world if you will honor your parents.

[16:13] Children, obey your parents, because the Old Testament law in that fifth commandment said to honor your mother and your father. You know, when we, I don't know if you noticed this, but in Paul's reference to this Old Testament law, he actually changes a little bit when he quotes from it.

[16:37] And so, in Exodus chapter 20, verse 12, it says, That it may go well with you, that you may live long in the land, and that it may go well with you there.

[16:49] So, the promise is regarding what? The promised land that they were going to enter into. And so, the promise has a very Jewish and Old Covenant context to it.

[17:02] But Paul kind of changes it up just a little bit, subtly, because the idea is the same. God promised the Jews a land that they could thrive in.

[17:13] And for us, we don't have that same promise of a land out in the Middle East that God had promised to us, but we do live in the earth.

[17:25] And notice, in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1, what it says about this command. It says, Children, obey your parents and Lord, for this is right. This is a matter of just fundamental right and wrong.

[17:38] And so, even though this was a command for Israel at a certain time, it's something that applies, there's a principle that applies to everyone.

[17:51] Every group of people in the world during any age, any dispensation, any covenant, children ought to honor their parents. So, what is kind of the underlying order of creation that kind of we're talking about here that Paul is appealing to?

[18:14] I think really at the heart of this is this concept of authority, of being under authority, of respecting authorities in our lives.

[18:26] Really, honoring parents is about recognizing and then also appreciating the authority that our parents have in our life.

[18:38] Now, that authority is limited, and that authority actually changes as you age. The authority over a child's life goes from being greater when they're younger to diminishing to really a large degree as they become adults.

[18:56] We'll actually talk about that more in the next message. But regardless of how that authority changes, the respect, the honor, the dignity must remain.

[19:09] The first three commandments are really all about God's authority over our lives and how we need to honor and respect Him. We need to honor and respect His name. We need to honor and respect, you know, as far as the image of God, that we don't create these false images, these idols.

[19:30] And the same thing with our parents, and that's what this commandment is all about. The authority of God that trickles down to the authority that God has given to parents.

[19:42] And it really turns out that recognizing and respecting authority is foundational to living a healthy life and really having a healthy society. When individuals or groups fail to recognize or to respect the authority in their lives, things start to quickly break down.

[20:06] Paul talked about this in Romans 13, and I'm going to actually read this passage. And he's really talking about governmental authorities, civil authorities. He says this, Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God.

[20:21] And the authorities that exist are appointed by God. And by the way, he's not saying that every authority that is, every person that is in a position of authority, that God has hand-selected them.

[20:35] What he's saying is that God has established authorities in general, certain seats of authority, certain roles, if you will, and that regardless of who's there, we ought to honor and respect those roles, those seats, those positions.

[20:52] Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. Things will go bad for us if we don't respect the authorities God has put in place.

[21:04] For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good.

[21:15] But if you do evil, be afraid. For he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is God's minister, an avenger, to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore, you must be subject.

[21:31] Not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For because of this, you also pay taxes. For they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing.

[21:42] And by the way, we think, well, Paul didn't know how bad it was going to get in our day with all these liberals. Well, if you go back and study a little bit of history during Paul's day, I think what we're experiencing today is pretty lightweight.

[22:00] We had Nero in charge at that time. He was the emperor. And if you'd know just a little bit about Nero, man, he was a bad, bad dude. Speaking about honoring his parents, he attempted to murder his mother several, several times and finally succeeded.

[22:17] Not a good person at all. And really oppressed so many people, including Christians at the time. And that was the context when Paul was writing all of this.

[22:28] Crazy. But he finishes this passage with this. This is Romans 13, 7. Render, therefore, to all their due, taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, and honor to whom honor.

[22:46] There are certain people based solely on the position that they hold that we ought to honor. There is honor that is due them. These positions, notice, are positions, authorities, that are established by God.

[23:03] not, you know, and even though, and we think about this in the civil sphere, some people, through force and even violence and means that is not, you know, fair or just, will sometimes take those positions.

[23:18] And even then, we are to honor that position, even if we protest against it. And if we don't, if we don't honor these positions, we ignore them to our detriment.

[23:31] And notice that he's not saying, well, only give honor to those people for whom they show themselves worthy, to those who show themselves honorable.

[23:44] And by the way, this applies to those rulers in the government, but it also applies to parents. And we'll, again, get more into that next week when we focus on the children's side of the equation.

[23:59] But I think we've all seen this, especially in the last five, six years, when people throw off authority, things, society decays, the social structures that we have break.

[24:15] We saw that with the BLM riots back, what was that, five or six years ago? When people just kind of threw off restraint, and they didn't respect anybody. They didn't respect the police, government officials.

[24:27] We see today, and this just continues on and on and on, an antagonism and a disrespect for police officers. I mean, every single day in the news, you can find something like that.

[24:41] And what does it lead to? Many times, it leads to bloodshed and death because there was a child that was not taught when they were young that they need to have the proper respect and honor for authority.

[24:55] If you're not there already, go ahead and turn to Ephesians. We'll be spending the rest of our message in Ephesians.

[25:10] And like I said, I'm going to really spend the rest of this message giving instructions not to children, which really is the primary focus of this commandment, but I think it is valuable to provide instruction to the parents themselves.

[25:25] Like I said, even though this command is toward children and not the parents, parents do have an obligation and responsibility to teach and to even command respect from their children.

[25:48] Is that true? Absolutely. Doesn't God do that with us as our Heavenly Father? Doesn't He teach and command us to respect and to honor Him?

[26:01] He does. And in the same way, parents ought to teach and demand respect from our children. In fact, it's a parent's duty to do so.

[26:12] And you know what? It might be challenging, especially I think of when I was younger, a brand new parent, kind of wet behind the ears. I was still just a kid anyway.

[26:23] I felt like it. And now here I am. I went to the hospital. My wife gives birth to a baby and then they let us go home with a baby to take care of. And I'm like, are you people crazy? I can't do this.

[26:35] At least it didn't feel like it, right? We figured it out for the most part, I think. But you feel like, hey, I've been under my parents' roof. I've been honoring and obeying my parents all this time.

[26:48] Now, and thankfully, you know, when they're young, there's a lot less to deal with as far as later when they get older. But now you have to be the one who's in charge.

[27:00] You have to be the one asserting authority. You have to be the one commanding respect. That can be a challenge to some. The other thing that it can be challenging with is because many of us, you know, we kind of struggle in our own lives with our own character, our own sins, our own failings.

[27:20] We think, man, I don't know, should my children really respect me? Sometimes I don't live a very honorable or respectable life. And so we might not really demand respect from our children because of that.

[27:36] We ought not to do that because, one, we're doing this for them, right? Not for us. Ephesians chapter 6, let me read this again.

[27:46] It says this, Children, obey your parents and the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.

[27:57] Then it continues on with this, And you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. So even though we might be reticent to assert our authority as parents because of our own failings, we can't do that, right?

[28:17] Because it will lead to our own children's destruction in their life if they don't honor us. But at the same time, that does not mean that we ought to just say, oh well, I'm just going to command respect and forget about being a good parent, being an honorable person, living an honorable life.

[28:38] We want to make our children's responsibility of honoring us as easy as possible, right, mom and dad? And so Paul warns here in this passage that a father especially, but this I think applies to both parents, we should not provoke our children to wrath.

[29:09] We shouldn't do things that would cause them to have a reason not to honor us. And so we ought to live honorable lives in front of our children.

[29:26] Part of that is to teach them how we honor others. And that's the second point I want to make when it comes to how we ought to do this with our children.

[29:37] children. When we teach them to honor us, that's important, command respect for mom and dad, but what if we command that they respect us, yet we do not exemplify or provide an example of us providing it for others?

[29:59] Or we don't expect them to respect anybody else except for us. If we do that, then we'll tend to undermine the whole thing.

[30:13] And so as parents, one of the things that we ought to do is not just expect or demand respect for mom and dad, but for really all adults. Not the same level as parents, but it is appropriate for children, especially at a young age, and really even at any age, for someone who is older, to give them the proper respect that is due them.

[30:39] We don't have this as much anymore today, but I see this in the South. We've got some people visiting from the South. We can maybe testify to this, but I lived in Augusta, Georgia for a little while, and my mom's from the South, and I've been down there lots.

[30:55] But it's very common to hear a yes sir or yes ma'am down there, right? And it is just a way to express respect to your elders. It's just a part of the culture.

[31:07] It's not a part of the culture up here in the Northwest Yankees. I don't know why that is. I think it would be great if it was. And of course there's lots of different ways in which we can express respect to others, especially those elders, those who are older than us.

[31:26] But I would love to see that as more of a habit that's part of our culture, to give respect for all adults. And so we have, you know, to a certain degree, tried to kind of make it a habit to say yes sir and yes ma'am or no sir and yes ma'am or no ma'am in our house.

[31:48] But it's really hard, especially when your culture, even the Christian community doesn't expect the same thing. It's really hard to inculcate those types of things. So we've had varying levels of success with that.

[32:02] The other thing when it comes to teaching our children to honor all authority is for us not to be hypocrites as parents. We ought to exemplify, respect ourselves.

[32:17] When it comes to civil authorities, when it comes to judges and police officers and city council members and lawmakers and mayors and governors and even the president, even like I said, if they're not being honorable, you know, okay, yes, there's lots of opportunities to criticize, but can we do it in a respectful way?

[32:37] Do we honor our boss at work or do we constantly just trash our boss when we come home in the hearing of our children? Do we show and demonstrate honor and respect to our children's grandparents, our parents, or do we trash them in the hearing of our own kids?

[33:00] That will undermine this work of establishing honor for authority. And then the other one is, what about when our children are looking at how mom honors and respects her husband or about how dad honors his wife?

[33:22] Is that what they're seeing in the home? And when we treat our spouse disrespectfully, again, we're undermining that fifth commandment in the eyes of our children.

[33:36] You know, we talked a little bit about the lack of respect and honor honor and the lack of respect and honor in our civil society related especially to the police these days.

[33:56] And when you see that, what is the source of that? It's really a failure of the home. Because the home, and I think that's what this fifth commandment is really getting to, is the home is the breeding ground, the nurturing ground for teaching children to have respect, starting one with their parents, but then, you know, moving on to the Lord, right?

[34:18] And then also to other places of honor, other roles of honor and authority in our society. So when we see that punk kid yelling at the police, that's really a failure of parenting.

[34:35] And by the way, mostly of fathers who are the ones especially to insist on that kind of respect in their home. And along those same lines, kind of my next point is in teaching this to our children, children, we have to start early.

[34:56] You can't wait until your child is 12, 13 years old to teach them to respect your parents. It will probably not happen if you start then. If you just let your two-year-old kind of rule the roost, where the two-year-old is king of the house and they get whatever they want and they can disrespect or disobey their parents.

[35:17] We have to start from the very, very, very beginning and have an expectation that every single day, every single hour, every single minute of every hour, our children are obedient and respectful.

[35:34] And you know what? That requires work. It's a lot of hard work. And I'll tell you, as someone who has a 23-year-old and a 4-year-old, it gets tiring after a while.

[35:47] I think, man, I've already done this six times and now I've got number seven and I've got to keep on doing it. And I've seen so many parents and you can tell they just got tired.

[35:59] And so they did pretty good with the first crew and then it kind of, they start sliding and sliding and sliding. And I tell my kids, hey, you point out to me if you see dad sliding on these younger kids.

[36:12] Because I've heard from so many other families, the older kids, oh, mom and dad, you know, they let the younger ones get away with so much. And really, right, it's not healthy for them when they get away with so much.

[36:26] And so we need to stay on top of it. Training has to start from the very beginning. The earlier you teach, the easier it will be throughout the rest of their years.

[36:37] At home and on into the rest of their adult lives. Obedience is never optional. It should never be optional in your home. No always means no.

[36:50] And do this means, hey, it must be done. And by the way, we have, when we talk about obedience in our house, there's three aspects to obedience. Now, I didn't write this down, so let me see if I can remember this.

[37:01] I'll ask my children for help. There's three ways to obedience. You've got to do it the right way, not the wrong way. Right away, not, oh, after my, after I'm done with my book or my TV show or whatever it is.

[37:17] And also, with a right attitude. Right? We're not allowed to obey in our physical, you know, obey outwardly, but show disrespect inwardly.

[37:35] And because that's what we're going for, right? We don't want just outward compliance from our children. We want an inward obedience, an inward honor and respect.

[37:50] Really, I think if you are successful in teaching honor and respect in your home, when you go out into public and your kids, even at five, six years old, they see, you know, a little kid, whether it's a toddler or a ten-year-old, and I've seen all of it, throwing a major fit and calling mommy and daddy names, you should expect your child to be shocked out of their minds, asking the question, how is that child still alive?

[38:28] And they will recognize, too, right, when they see that, just how unhappy that child is. And, you know, I know this from myself growing up. I know there were certain times in my life where my parents demanded respect, and as an adult, maybe I didn't appreciate it as much back then, but as an adult, I appreciate it so much today because they saved me from so much misery and pain in my life.

[38:53] Now, another thing that comes into play is, notice that in this commandment, it says, honor your father and your mother. You know that it's a lot easier to honor a father.

[39:06] Why? Because, well, fathers, they have more kind of gravitas, presence. They're stronger, they're weightier, their voice is deeper. When they command something, it, you know, has more weight to it.

[39:18] And for a mom, sometimes it's easy to just dismiss her. She's so much lighter and God, aren't you grateful men that God created women to be gentle and sweet and kind?

[39:30] But young children can take advantage of that. And man, if you let it go into the teenage years, boy, it can be, get really bad. And so as a father, it is so important that you don't just expect, but you actually enforce honoring of your wife, honoring of their mom.

[39:59] There should never be any time where a child at any age should be allowed to speak back to mom or dad. But fathers need to take care to make sure the children are being respectful to their mom.

[40:15] And sometimes dads are away, right, off at work, mom's at home with the kids and something happens. And mom's not sure what to do, but you know what she can say? Well, you wait till your dad comes home.

[40:30] And she should be able to do that and know that something's going to happen. And maybe dad has to take Junior back to the woodshed and enforce that respect and that honor.

[40:46] But it will be good. It will be good for the child to learn to respect both his father and his mother. We already talked about this just briefly, but the other thing is that we should expect not just outward compliance, but we want honor that comes from the heart.

[41:04] A little bit later in Ephesians chapter 6, it's talking about actually masters and slaves or servants. And he says this, he says that you slaves, you servants, should not just obey or submit with eye service.

[41:19] This is Ephesians 6, 6. As men pleasers, but as bond servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. That's what God really wants from all of this.

[41:33] Not just outward compliance, not just doing something to make sure everybody's happy around you. But we want to please God. We want to live a life that is pleasing to God. Doing all of these things from our hearts.

[41:49] And so if your children learn just outward compliance and respect, but they never do it from the heart, then our labors are mostly fruitless. If they never learn to honor and respect their parents from the heart, then we fail them.

[42:03] We should expect obedience, again, not just outwardly, but from the heart. We can't tolerate the eye rolls, the pouting, the half-hearted, yes, sir, right?

[42:18] No, you're not going to talk to me like that. You're going to talk with the utmost respect. You will respect me and you will be happy about it. Or at least you're going to pretend to, to be happy about it.

[42:32] Right? Because we can't actually change our children's heart. I wish there was a way that we could apply some kind of potion or mixture and change our children's heart to be exactly how we want it to be.

[42:44] But we can't do it. We can't do it with just rules and regulations and even enforcements and punishments. We can, we can bring outward compliance, but we can't change their heart.

[42:55] That's a problem and that's a concern. But you know what? God couldn't do that either. He couldn't change us with just the law, with all of its regulations and with all of its curses and punishments that came along the way.

[43:12] Those things failed. In fact, that was part of the song that we sang this morning. I wrote it down. It says here, the law could never save us. Our lawlessness had won.

[43:23] And that's what happened. That's what the gospel is all about. Our lawlessness had won. The law failed. Not because the law was bad, but because we were so bad. But really, this is what the gospel message is all about.

[43:39] And this is what grace is all about. How did God work to transform our hearts? There was the law. The law was good, holy, righteous, instructions and righteousness.

[43:51] All that was good. But it wasn't sufficient. And that's why he did something more. The Bible says that he demonstrated his love towards us.

[44:05] And later on, it says that God's love for us compels us to do good. And that is grace. That's the life of grace.

[44:16] That we look toward what God has done for us, his love for us. And then we can respond with a transformed heart, which is what God is really looking for.

[44:27] To honor him, to love him with our lives, with everything that we do. He demonstrated his love for us. And that love that he demonstrated to us can compel us to be like him.

[44:41] And as parents, that's what we can and ought to do as well. You know, we ought to lay down the law. We ought to enforce obedience and compliance and honor.

[44:57] We also need to be careful to do it for the right reasons. So many parents, you know, because they want to look good to their friends or to society. So I want my kids to be compliant because of that. And we do it for all the wrong reasons.

[45:09] We need to do it for the right reasons. We need to teach our children to honor and respect their parents and other authorities in their lives. Because it's the right thing to do. And because that is what's best for them.

[45:24] We need to endeavor in everything that we do to let love be the driving force in asking our children that they honor their parents and honor any other authority.

[45:42] And so we ask ourselves, am I directing my children because I want to look good for just for other selfish reasons? Just to make my life easier maybe?

[45:55] Because if they just obey everything that I do, that'll make my life easier. Is that why we're doing it? Or are we doing it because that is what's best for them? And you know, for some people, their whole life is just selfishness.

[46:09] And I'm going to just turn my children into slaves, my slave labor in my house, and have them make sure they do everything that I ask them. And that's just their whole way of life.

[46:21] But for others of us, hopefully that's not our way of life, but occasionally, right, we can slip into that for a time or for a season. And so we ought to look inwardly, look at our own hearts.

[46:32] Why are we ordering our house the way that we are? Are we doing it for ourselves? Or are we doing it because we want what's best for them? That will ultimately be what changes their hearts.

[46:47] They see that your love demonstrated towards them. And then finally, our love is imperfect, right?

[46:58] But God's love is the source of all the love in the world. And his love is perfect. We have a heavenly father who doesn't fail us.

[47:10] Even though our love is imperfect, we can point our children to God's love. That's what we ought to do. They need to know that God loves them. They need to know specifically the gospel that Jesus died for every sin that they've committed.

[47:25] We need to keep on pointing them over and over and over and over again to the Lord. Because their relationship with the Lord, their knowing him, their being changed and transformed by the gospel is the most important thing to transform their hearts, to obey this commandment, to honor their parents, to honor all authorities, and to honor the Lord himself.

[47:55] God demonstrated his love towards us. He bore that agony of a cruel cross that we might have a restored relationship with him. And so that's the love of God that changes us.

[48:07] And that's the kind of love that's going to change our children. Let's end in a word of prayer. Father, this commandment is so important. I mean, I think, you know, this is number five in the ten.

[48:20] These ten commandments are all so important, but this one is so foundational to children. At a young age and even as we grow older, we still remain children of our parents.

[48:33] I pray that you would work in us, Father, to live lives that are honoring to our parents, to all authorities around us, to take this seriously, that especially we would honor you.

[48:44] And then, Father, that we would look to you, the love that you demonstrated towards us, that we would be inspired and motivated and compelled by that love that you have shown towards us to live a life that is good and right and well-pleasing to you.

[49:06]  We thank you for all of this. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen.