Dishonorable | Sunday, November 15, 2020

Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. (Deuteronomy 5:16)

To honor your father and mother is to walk in the very ways of God they trained you in—and to break His commandments is to dishonor them.

Hiding God's Commandments in Our Hearts

This year I have been working slowly through the book of Deuteronomy, considering the statutes and judgments of God, and we have finally come to the actual Ten Commandments. While the phrase "the Ten Commandments" is fairly well known in our culture, the actual words are not. My aim in teaching through these commands is to help you hide them in your heart and mind by memorizing them. A couple of months ago we made a PDF available at lifeinconnection.com/commands to walk you through how to memorize them easily.

It is important for us to memorize Scripture, and we'll see in Deuteronomy 6 that it is also important to teach these things to our children and grandchildren. David writes in Psalm 119:11, "Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You." And in Psalm 19 we read:

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple... More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is Your servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward.

If you want to become wise and want your soul transformed, commit these things to memory. They really will begin to transform your mind, your heart, and ultimately your life. God wants to transform us more and more by the renewing of our minds, so that in our daily interactions with friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors we would demonstrate God's perfect will.

A Cultural Memory—and Some Confusion

Although most people we meet probably can't recite the Ten Commandments word for word, there is still a cultural memory of them in our society. Someone might tell you "honor your father and mother," or "you shall not kill" (which, as we'll see, isn't quite what the command says), or "you shall not steal." I once had someone tell me one of them was "you shall not judge"—a good try, but obviously not one of them. That's right up there with "God helps those who help themselves," which is also not in the Bible.

We've already looked at the command to have no other gods, and last week the command concerning rest and the Sabbath. The remaining commands are very straightforward—do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet. You don't need a degree in biblical languages to understand them. So I'm not going to spend an hour each week unearthing the nuances of the Hebrew behind "you shall not murder." You get it: murder is bad, adultery is bad, theft is bad, lying is bad.

Why the Fifth Commandment Stands Out

This morning I want to zero in on the fifth commandment for several reasons. First, it is distinct. Where the sixth through tenth commandments are presented as negatives—"thou shalt not"—the fifth is presented as a positive: "Honor your father and your mother." And not only is it positive, it also carries a promised blessing: "that your days may be long and that it may be well with you in the land."

Second, this commandment sometimes causes confusion, which I'll address in a moment. Third, the fifth commandment is, as one commentator said, "justly regarded as asserting the foundation of all social ordinances and arrangements." In other words, the family ordered around a father and a mother is the seed of all society. Community and civil society grow out of the family.

So if you get family wrong, you get society wrong. If you destroy the family, you destroy society. Do away with the structure of father, mother, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and civil society begins to manifest murder, adultery, theft, deception, greed, and covetousness. The understanding of "thou shalt not" was originally supposed to come from within the family—Deuteronomy 6 shows we are to teach these things to our children and our children's children. So I don't find it odd that our society grows increasingly less civil as families fall apart and the union of a father and mother joined as one flesh comes under attack. As the family breaks down, so does the fabric of society.

Clearing Up the Confusion

So what is the confusion around this command? Some assume that to honor father and mother means you must obey everything your parents tell you, right on through adulthood. Obedience is important—Paul says in Ephesians 6, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." So there is a New Testament command connected to this, but it isn't identical to what we find in Deuteronomy.

The command in Ephesians 6 is given to children: "obey your parents." The command in Deuteronomy 5 was spoken to adults, and the word "honor" is not the same word as "obey," even though they are connected. To the adult who feels they cannot make any decision outside the direct will of their parents—that's not really what is being taught here. Hopefully your parents raised you well in the training and admonition of the Lord, so that they remain a source of wise counsel as you grow. But when you become an autonomous adult, there is a leaving that takes place—and even then, the command to honor your father and mother remains.

I've counseled people in their twenties and thirties who feel conflict because they're making decisions outside what their parents want, saying, "I need to honor and obey my parents." That is not necessarily what this passage is speaking of. You don't have to obey every single thing they say throughout your whole life to be one who honors your parents.

Honor and Shame

So what does it actually mean to honor your father and mother? I like to use the Bible as a commentary on the Bible. Here in the West we live under a guilt-based society, but much of the rest of the world—including the Hebrew world of the Old Testament—lived under an honor-and-shame culture. If you did not live in a righteous way, you brought dishonor and shame upon your father and mother.

This becomes clear in the Proverbs of Solomon, where a father or mother repeatedly exhorts a son. Proverbs 19:26 says, "He who mistreats his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings reproach." So a huge part of honoring your father and mother is living according to the wisdom of the Scriptures—which, biblically speaking, mom and dad are supposed to train you in.

What Dishonor Looks Like: David and Bathsheba

To show what it looks like to dishonor your father and mother, I want to read a long section from 2 Samuel 11—the story of King David, who lived three thousand years ago, the great king and psalmist of Israel.

It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him, and all Israel... But David remained at Jerusalem.

The king sent his armies off, but he stayed behind. Then one evening David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the palace, and from there he saw a woman bathing, very beautiful to behold.

So David sent and inquired about the woman. And someone said, "Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" Then David sent messengers, and took her... and she returned to her house. And the woman conceived; so she sent and told David, and said, "I am with child."

The king takes another man's wife—"thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife"—and commits adultery—"thou shalt not commit adultery." Then David sends for Uriah from the battle and tries to get him to go home to his wife. But Uriah was a man of godly character and integrity:

"The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing."

David keeps him another day and even gets him drunk, but Uriah still will not go down to his house. So in the morning David writes a letter to Joab and sends it by Uriah's own hand:

"Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die."

That is premeditated murder—"thou shalt not murder." And that is exactly what happens. When word comes back that Uriah and others are dead, David tells the messenger, "Do not let this thing displease you, for the sword devours one as well as another." Then he takes Bathsheba as his wife, and she bears him a son.

But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.

You might want to underline those words—it may be a bit of an understatement.

Breaking Every Commandment

This is what it looks like to dishonor your father and mother and bring shame upon the household that raised you. David—a man after God's own heart—at a moment of weakness, when he was not engaged in the battle, sees Bathsheba, takes her, commits adultery, lies about it, and conspires to murder her husband. He breaks them all: do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet. In breaking all the commandments, he dishonors his father and mother who trained him to walk in the ways of God.

So honoring your father and mother, that your life may be long, is not just obeying everything your parents say—it's obeying the teaching of the Scriptures they taught you. When you break the law of God, you dishonor those who trained you. To honor them is to not lie, not covet, not steal, not commit adultery, not murder—to walk in the ways of the Lord.

At this point you might think, "Thank God I'm not like David. I haven't murdered anyone or committed adultery." But Jesus updates these things in Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount. "You have heard that it was said... 'You shall not murder,' but I say to you, whoever hates his brother has committed murder in his heart." And, "Whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her in his heart." Hatred is equated to murder and lust to adultery. So the law of God is a heavy burden, and we all dishonor our father and mother when we fail to walk in what is right before God.

How to Respond: David's Repentance

So what do you do when you realize you have dishonored your family through greed, covetousness, theft, deception, adultery, or murder—when you've done exactly what David did, bringing shame upon God, the kingdom, and your whole family? There is good news. The same man who committed these grave sins in 2 Samuel 11 confessed with great repentance in Psalm 51.

The heading reads, "A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." David lied about his sin for a year, and then he prayed:

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions... Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight... Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow... Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me... Restore to me the joy of Your salvation... Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You.

The same David who committed these horrible sins confessed and repented in a glorious way, speaking of God's lovingkindness and His ability to purge and forgive sin. That is the wonderful joy we learn of in Jesus, the Son of David, the Messiah. All of us like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord laid on Him our iniquity so that we could be forgiven and receive His grace.

So while there is very heavy news in the commandments—when we realize we have all broken them and dishonored our father and mother as liars, adulterers, and murderers at heart—we discover that in Christ Jesus we can experience forgiving grace as we come to Him, confess our sins, and have them purged by His grace. My encouragement today is that you would call out to the Lord, realize your sin, and confess it to Him, "for if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Closing Prayer

Father, we thank You for Your grace. We thank You for Your goodness—none of us are deserving of it, but we rejoice that You have blessed us with that grace and forgiveness when we realize that, just like David, all of us are sinners who fall short of Your glory. While it is our desire to honor You, and to honor our father and mother by walking in obedience to the Scriptures, we all fall short. We thank You that when we fall short, we have Your forgiving grace. So, Lord, we once again confess our sins to You, and we pray that You would forgive us, for we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.