The Fifth Commandment
Deuteronomy 5:16, 21:18-21

I. Our Experience of Our Parents Effects How We See God
A. Psychotherapy
1. A girl was diagnosed with “reactive-detachment disorder” so was put through “rebirthing” therapy.
2. The therapists squeezed too hard, crushing her to death. Such are human attempts to birth again.
3. We can see our parents in light of God, rather than make a god in the image of our parents.
4. Sigmund Freud taught that we are in a constant struggle with our parents (the Oedipus complex).
5. For many people, their experience of their parents effects how we feel toward God.
6. Children of indulgent parents don’t understand discipline or discipleship or the church.
7. Our experience of God changes our view of our parents.
B. Honor
1. In Chinese culture, children are expected to grow up to take care of their parents.
2. In American culture, this commandment is treated as something trivial. Nice but not significant.
3. The word “honor” comes from the Hebrew word “kabod”, meaning heavy. Treat with gravity.
4. The commands to execute disobedient children came from God. The Lord Jesus repeated them.
5. In 1 Corinthians 5:13, disrespecting parents is like sexual immorality, greed, insulting scoffing, etc.
II. Restraint
A. Restraint On Self-Centeredness
1. Sin is willfulness, the insistence that I will do what I will do; my appetites, my ego, will rule.
2. We’re told to honor someone else, altogether out of our control, who will require sacrifice from us.
3. The command restrains our tendency to only love people of our choosing, for our own purposes.
B. Parents Are Restraints on Children’s Selfishness
1. Our egotism must be restrained. This commandment reaches in to the nitty-gritty of our daily lives.
2. We are tempted to view our aged parents as burdens that drain away our hard earned cash.
3. God reaches into our selfishness, stands before the tank of our individualism, and says, “Honor.”
III. Relationships
1. This commandment is the bedrock of our relationships. If we cannot relate honorably with our parents who cared for us when we were helpless, how can we relate well with others? We can’t.
2. The command doesn’t mean denying the problems that existed. Be thankful for what you can.
3. God starts with the parent-child relationship because this is where authority begins.
4. You can’t earn the respect of disrespectful people. You can’t earn the trust of distrusting people.
5. How we treat the first authority we come across (our parents), shows how we feel about The Authority.
IV. Reliance
1. People today hate to admit to being reliant. This command to remind us of our reliance.
2. To keep this command you must reject the lie of individual independence, that you’re self-sustaining.
3. Your parents were the instruments in God’s hands to bring you into this world and preserve you.
V. Reward
A. The First Commandment With a Promise
1. This command comes with a promise that it may go well with us, that we’ll live.
2. God will reward us personally for sacrificial care of our parents, either now or later.
3. Those who build a society in which old age is honored can expect to enjoy that place themselves.
B. Jesus Fulfilled the Promise of the Fifth Commandment
1. Luke 2:51 tells us Jesus was submissive to his sinful, merely human parents.
2. Attending to the needs of His mother was so important, it’s one of the things He did on the cross.
3. He came out of death, alive. In the resurrection, the promise of the fifth commandment is fulfilled.
VI. Invitation: Even the best parents cannot but help to fail. They will disappoint us. If we are building our impressions about who God is based on our parents, we will have a dishonoring view of God. Trapped in that old cage of only knowing God through the image of your parents, you can’t honor parents who were disappointing. We need to be born again. We must encounter the real, living God. We must be transformed by Him and get to know Him as He really is. When we have tasted that He is good, it makes it possible for us to see that every good thing we received from our parents was a gift from God through our parents. You need a change of heart. You need to be born again.