Sermon 4 of Ten on the Ten Commandments 7/12/09 Deuteronomy 5:16
Sermon 4 of 10 on the Ten Commandments
7/12/09
Text: Deuteronomy 5:16
Title: Ten Words of God for living a happy life.
For the last several Sundays we have been studying the Ten Commandments. For us who believe in Jesus as our Savior, who trust in his Word the Ten Commandments do not condemn us anymore. Oh they still strike our conscience, for as we all must admit we do a terrible job keeping them. They don’t condemn us though, for Jesus took the condemnation that we still deserve upon himself. We are free of God’s wrath, but we are not free of the Ten Commandments, for now they serve a different purpose. They are God’s Words for living a happy life.
God knows that, as much as we willfully ignore them that his Commandments are good for us. The first three dealt with the place of God in our life. The next seven deal with life as we live it among each other. Today we will be looking at the first of the seven, the 4th Word of God for leading a happy life. The Commandment is found in Deuteronomy 5:16. It reads as follows, “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
This Word of God for leading a happy life does not just talk about obedience to parents, but also to obedience to all those God has put in our lives to help parents in raising their children. Because of time constraints I am only going to address honoring our parents.
As I prepared for this sermon I noticed that even though it, as well as those following deals with how we live our lives on earth, it is also a reflection of our relationship with God as addressed in the first three Commandments. We are to honor God above all things. We are not to misuse his name, but use it to honor him. And we are to take advantage of the Sabbath Day, our Sunday to honor him by Worshiping him on our day of rest.
We know that if we keep the first Three Commandments our lives are much better. We will be happier. In this Word of God for leading a happy life the same promise that God gives us in the first three carries into our relationship with our parents. If we honor our parents above all things on this earth we will be blessed. If we honor our parents by not speaking ill, I think that includes in-laws, we will be blessed. And if we honor them by making time for them in our lives we will be blessed. We will be blessed because they are placed over us, just as God is placed over us.
The problem is of course that our parents are sinful, as we are, and God is not. But does that nullify the Word of God? It does not, for unless they ask us to sin against God we are to honor and obey them. Does this Commandment, the Word of God for leading a happy life then only speak to those who are still under the age of adulthood? Some would say so, but God I could not find an escape clause. We are to honor and obey our parents as long as they live and of course those God has put in authority over us so that we will live a happy life.
Oh we have plenty of excuses for not honoring and obeying our parents. We use excuses like they are too hard to hard to be around. They drink too much, they smoke too much, they complain all the times, they tell the same stories over and over, and they are just out of touch with the way things are done today. The list can go on and on. While all those things might be true, I firmly believe that we many times do not honor our parents because it is just too inconvenient and costs too much to honor them. In other words, parents quite often are sacrificed on the altar of convenience and material prosperity.
Our culture, in fact our lives as Christians too many times is focused on “I”. It has to be about me and what makes me feel good; what fits my schedule. That same mindset from our culture is directed toward aging parents. Father and mother are considered a curse and a burden to those who want to live free of responsibility.
This is nothing new; for Jesus even speaks about it to the Pharisees who had devised a religious law where if you said that all you own belonged to God you would be free of the responsibility to care for one’s parents in their time of need. There is no sin that the human mind cannot justify as reasonable when our convenience is the purpose of our living. Just as children so many times today are looked upon as a burden to society, especially those children of the poor, the elderly are being classed as a burden also. The so-called field of ‘Bio Ethics’ has reduced life to a mathematical formula where death is considered zero and anyone who does not have a certain quality of life is less than zero. Under the modern ‘ethics’ death is considered to be an improvement and the terminating a life is justified by claiming that it is an improvement. It is argued that, if what society claims to be quality of life is absent, euthanasia is a good deed.
It is situations such as these that create the need for God to give us specific commandments so that we are not lured into the pressure of a sinful culture who instructs us that sin is good and values are a burden. Not only should we obey God’s Word, but we should do so with an attitude of wanting to please God, not because he commands it, but because out of our gratefulness we want to please him and thus have better happier lives.
We honor God by obeying His command to honor our parents. We read of that in Ephesians 6:7, “Children obey your parents out of obedience to God alone and do all things as to God, not as to a person.” Did you catch that? We are obeying God when we obey our parents, for they are the physical presence of God. You cannot honor your parents or God without obeying them.
Let me put it this way. Obedience is an act of faith. If I truly confess that Jesus is my Lord, I will willingly submit to the authority God has ordained whether through his direct Word or indirectly though those he has placed in authority over me, for if I have faith I believe that God will work through the authority he has placed over me good for my life, even though my idea of good might not be at the time in sync with what his authority is telling me.
We read in Proverbs 1:8-9 “My son, hear the instruction of your father, And do not forsake the law of your mother; for they will be a graceful ornament on your head, And chains, that is decorative chains, about your neck.” And in Proverbs 6:20-22, “My son, keep your father’s command, And do not forsake the law of your mother. Bind them continually upon your heart; Tie them around your neck. When you roam, they will lead you; when you sleep, they will keep you; And when you awake, they will speak with you.” You must keep the command before you receive the blessing. Like I said earlier you keep it not because you have to, for that is Law and you are free of the Law. You keep the commandment, the Word of God for leading a happy life out of gratitude for what God has done for you.
Sometimes there is bitterness toward one’s parents or those in authority. They do, or don’t do, or say, or don’t say something and we feel justified in being bitter toward them. There is, for the Christian no place for bitterness in their life. God tells us in Matthew 5:44-45, "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
If we are commanded to love and do good toward our enemies, how much more can we be expected to love and honor our parents? Even if you have or had a parent that tried to be an enemy, our responsibility is still to honor, pray for, do good to and love that parent. For some people, the challenge is great. I know people who have bitter parents who create great trials for the children. All I can say to those who carry that burden is that you must pray for wisdom, so that you will not be drawn into the bitterness while honoring your parents.
This fourth Word of God for leading a happy life is not a command with loopholes or exceptions. Many people have been wronged in many ways, but our act of love toward our parents, is to the Lord and the more difficult the challenge, the greater the reward.
Our culture places value on someone based on what benefit can be obtained from that person. Human nature is self-seeking and self-serving. Human nature is willing to sacrifice in order to gain, but human nature will not sacrifice in order to give. Sometimes that gain may be the desire to have self-worth or feel good about ourselves, but there must be some type of gain before our selfish nature will give. A self-focused culture looks at children and parents in the light of ‘how will this affect my lifestyle’ instead of asking, “What has God called us to do”.
Jesus in Proverbs 23 has made it clear that caring for our parents is an important way that we fulfill our commandment to honor our father and mother. Listen, as I read it, “Listen to your father who begot you, And do not despise your mother when she is old.” Do not despise your parents or consider it a burden to care for them. They are after all in spite of their sometimes weird ways, their cantankerousness, their foibles, and sin are still a gift from God.
Any opportunity that we have to honor our parents whether it is in obedience, respect or care carries a promise, a promise from God that things will go well with you. We like to think that that means that we are going to be blessed with money, and health, or any of the other things that we think are important, but the Lord never promised that we would not be inconvenienced, or have to spend some of our resources as we honor and love our parents, but then again he never promised life would be good as a follower of his either. He tells us that if we are to follow him we must pick up our cross and follow him and for that we gain eternal life.
Honor your mother and father, a Word of God for leading a happy life. Amen.
7/12/09
Text: Deuteronomy 5:16
Title: Ten Words of God for living a happy life.
For the last several Sundays we have been studying the Ten Commandments. For us who believe in Jesus as our Savior, who trust in his Word the Ten Commandments do not condemn us anymore. Oh they still strike our conscience, for as we all must admit we do a terrible job keeping them. They don’t condemn us though, for Jesus took the condemnation that we still deserve upon himself. We are free of God’s wrath, but we are not free of the Ten Commandments, for now they serve a different purpose. They are God’s Words for living a happy life.
God knows that, as much as we willfully ignore them that his Commandments are good for us. The first three dealt with the place of God in our life. The next seven deal with life as we live it among each other. Today we will be looking at the first of the seven, the 4th Word of God for leading a happy life. The Commandment is found in Deuteronomy 5:16. It reads as follows, “Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
This Word of God for leading a happy life does not just talk about obedience to parents, but also to obedience to all those God has put in our lives to help parents in raising their children. Because of time constraints I am only going to address honoring our parents.
As I prepared for this sermon I noticed that even though it, as well as those following deals with how we live our lives on earth, it is also a reflection of our relationship with God as addressed in the first three Commandments. We are to honor God above all things. We are not to misuse his name, but use it to honor him. And we are to take advantage of the Sabbath Day, our Sunday to honor him by Worshiping him on our day of rest.
We know that if we keep the first Three Commandments our lives are much better. We will be happier. In this Word of God for leading a happy life the same promise that God gives us in the first three carries into our relationship with our parents. If we honor our parents above all things on this earth we will be blessed. If we honor our parents by not speaking ill, I think that includes in-laws, we will be blessed. And if we honor them by making time for them in our lives we will be blessed. We will be blessed because they are placed over us, just as God is placed over us.
The problem is of course that our parents are sinful, as we are, and God is not. But does that nullify the Word of God? It does not, for unless they ask us to sin against God we are to honor and obey them. Does this Commandment, the Word of God for leading a happy life then only speak to those who are still under the age of adulthood? Some would say so, but God I could not find an escape clause. We are to honor and obey our parents as long as they live and of course those God has put in authority over us so that we will live a happy life.
Oh we have plenty of excuses for not honoring and obeying our parents. We use excuses like they are too hard to hard to be around. They drink too much, they smoke too much, they complain all the times, they tell the same stories over and over, and they are just out of touch with the way things are done today. The list can go on and on. While all those things might be true, I firmly believe that we many times do not honor our parents because it is just too inconvenient and costs too much to honor them. In other words, parents quite often are sacrificed on the altar of convenience and material prosperity.
Our culture, in fact our lives as Christians too many times is focused on “I”. It has to be about me and what makes me feel good; what fits my schedule. That same mindset from our culture is directed toward aging parents. Father and mother are considered a curse and a burden to those who want to live free of responsibility.
This is nothing new; for Jesus even speaks about it to the Pharisees who had devised a religious law where if you said that all you own belonged to God you would be free of the responsibility to care for one’s parents in their time of need. There is no sin that the human mind cannot justify as reasonable when our convenience is the purpose of our living. Just as children so many times today are looked upon as a burden to society, especially those children of the poor, the elderly are being classed as a burden also. The so-called field of ‘Bio Ethics’ has reduced life to a mathematical formula where death is considered zero and anyone who does not have a certain quality of life is less than zero. Under the modern ‘ethics’ death is considered to be an improvement and the terminating a life is justified by claiming that it is an improvement. It is argued that, if what society claims to be quality of life is absent, euthanasia is a good deed.
It is situations such as these that create the need for God to give us specific commandments so that we are not lured into the pressure of a sinful culture who instructs us that sin is good and values are a burden. Not only should we obey God’s Word, but we should do so with an attitude of wanting to please God, not because he commands it, but because out of our gratefulness we want to please him and thus have better happier lives.
We honor God by obeying His command to honor our parents. We read of that in Ephesians 6:7, “Children obey your parents out of obedience to God alone and do all things as to God, not as to a person.” Did you catch that? We are obeying God when we obey our parents, for they are the physical presence of God. You cannot honor your parents or God without obeying them.
Let me put it this way. Obedience is an act of faith. If I truly confess that Jesus is my Lord, I will willingly submit to the authority God has ordained whether through his direct Word or indirectly though those he has placed in authority over me, for if I have faith I believe that God will work through the authority he has placed over me good for my life, even though my idea of good might not be at the time in sync with what his authority is telling me.
We read in Proverbs 1:8-9 “My son, hear the instruction of your father, And do not forsake the law of your mother; for they will be a graceful ornament on your head, And chains, that is decorative chains, about your neck.” And in Proverbs 6:20-22, “My son, keep your father’s command, And do not forsake the law of your mother. Bind them continually upon your heart; Tie them around your neck. When you roam, they will lead you; when you sleep, they will keep you; And when you awake, they will speak with you.” You must keep the command before you receive the blessing. Like I said earlier you keep it not because you have to, for that is Law and you are free of the Law. You keep the commandment, the Word of God for leading a happy life out of gratitude for what God has done for you.
Sometimes there is bitterness toward one’s parents or those in authority. They do, or don’t do, or say, or don’t say something and we feel justified in being bitter toward them. There is, for the Christian no place for bitterness in their life. God tells us in Matthew 5:44-45, "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”
If we are commanded to love and do good toward our enemies, how much more can we be expected to love and honor our parents? Even if you have or had a parent that tried to be an enemy, our responsibility is still to honor, pray for, do good to and love that parent. For some people, the challenge is great. I know people who have bitter parents who create great trials for the children. All I can say to those who carry that burden is that you must pray for wisdom, so that you will not be drawn into the bitterness while honoring your parents.
This fourth Word of God for leading a happy life is not a command with loopholes or exceptions. Many people have been wronged in many ways, but our act of love toward our parents, is to the Lord and the more difficult the challenge, the greater the reward.
Our culture places value on someone based on what benefit can be obtained from that person. Human nature is self-seeking and self-serving. Human nature is willing to sacrifice in order to gain, but human nature will not sacrifice in order to give. Sometimes that gain may be the desire to have self-worth or feel good about ourselves, but there must be some type of gain before our selfish nature will give. A self-focused culture looks at children and parents in the light of ‘how will this affect my lifestyle’ instead of asking, “What has God called us to do”.
Jesus in Proverbs 23 has made it clear that caring for our parents is an important way that we fulfill our commandment to honor our father and mother. Listen, as I read it, “Listen to your father who begot you, And do not despise your mother when she is old.” Do not despise your parents or consider it a burden to care for them. They are after all in spite of their sometimes weird ways, their cantankerousness, their foibles, and sin are still a gift from God.
Any opportunity that we have to honor our parents whether it is in obedience, respect or care carries a promise, a promise from God that things will go well with you. We like to think that that means that we are going to be blessed with money, and health, or any of the other things that we think are important, but the Lord never promised that we would not be inconvenienced, or have to spend some of our resources as we honor and love our parents, but then again he never promised life would be good as a follower of his either. He tells us that if we are to follow him we must pick up our cross and follow him and for that we gain eternal life.
Honor your mother and father, a Word of God for leading a happy life. Amen.
posted by Pastor Rhoads | 11:24 AM
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