10/15/17 - Eph
6:2-3, The 10 Commandments, Pt. 15, The 5th Commandment, Pt. 1. Lesson # 17-110
Pastor/Teacher
Jim Rickard
Gracce
Fellowship Church
Before we begin, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus
Christ, (If You have - Trusted in Him for Eternal Life), it is important to
prepare yourself to: Take-in God’s Word and/or Participate in a Communion
Service, so take a moment to name, cite, or acknowledge your sins privately,
directly to God the Father. This will assure that you are in fellowship with
God the Father & the Holy Spirit’s convicting ministry will then be able to
teach you as the Holy Spirit is the real teacher.
1 John 1:9
says— “If we confess [simply name, cite, or acknowledge to God the
Father] our sins [known sins], He is faithful and just to forgive us our
sins [known sins] and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness [all unknown & forgotten sins].”
For
those of you who have not yet accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord & Savior,
please see: The Salvation Message @
the end of this document.
2 Pet 3:9, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness,
but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all
to come to repentance.”
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The Doctrine of the Ten Commandments Related to the Church Age,
Part XV.
The
5th Commandment.
We now turn to the 5th of the 10 Commandments, which we
have already noted based on our study of Eph
6:2-3, that led us to this study. See our study of Eph 6:2-3 below under “NT Usages,” for those details related to
this commandment.
Ex
20:12, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in
the land which the LORD your God gives you.”
Deut 5:16, “Honor
your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you,
that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the
land which the LORD your God gives you.”
In comparing the two OT passages of the Decalogue, we see that the
Deuteronomy listing is modified from the Exodus listing. Deuteronomy adds the
phrase “as the LORD your God has
commanded you,” KE ASHER YHWH ELOHIM TSAWAH, in the Piel Perfect, just as
it did in the 4th Commandment, because this was approximately 40
years from the giving of the Law in Sinai in the book of Exodus. So God reminds
them that He has already given them this mandate.
Deuteronomy reiterates the blessing, “that your days may be prolonged,” LE MA’AN YOM ARAK, in the Hiphil
Imperfect. But then Moses, preparing the people for the conquest and settlement
of the land, added in Deuteronomy, “and that it may go well with you,” WE
LE MA’AN YATAV, “to be good or go well,” LE. Finally, both accounts of the
Decalogue end with, “in or on the land
which the Lord your God gives you,” AL HO ADAMAH ASHER YHWH ELOHIM NATHAN
LE. These promises are also seen in Lev
26:3-13; Deut 5:16; 6:2; 7:12-16;
11:8-9; 28:1-14, in regard to keeping all the commandments of God.
This is a positive commandment and the first of the “horizontal
commandments,” as it is directed to other members of the human race, compared
to the first four commandments that are “vertical commandments,” which means
directed to God. It emphasizes that the core of the covenant community is the
family. Nevertheless, we also see the honoring of God our Father in this
commandment when we honor our parents. The prior commandments were all
concerned in one way or another with the necessity of honoring God as a basic
means of keeping His covenant. Now we have a commandment that follows logically
because it is concerned with honoring parents, who have the awesome role in the
family of representing God to their children.
Therefore, this commandment is directed to children under Divine
Institution #3: Family, to honor and respect their parents throughout the
parents’ entire life time. And I would venture to say that it also applies
after the parents’ death in order to, “honor their name.” In fact, some
theologians believe this command is for “adult sons,” requiring them to care
for the material needs of their aged parents and whatever other needs may be
associated therewith.
“Honor,” is the Hebrew
Word KABEDH, כָּבֵד in the intensive active Piel, and the Infinitive Absolute
activing as an Imperative that gives us the “you shall” of this command. It can
mean, “to weigh heavily, to be heavy, to venerate, to honor, to glorify, or to
multiply.” In Prov 4:8, it means,
“to prize highly,” in Psa 19:15, “to
care for,” and in Lev 19:3, “to show
respect for.” It also is used in some negative ways like, “to make dull or let
weigh down.”
Honor is not something that can be commanded if it remains only an
attitude or disposition. To honor demands action that emanates from and
demonstrates the inner spirit. Since all authority belongs to the Lord, and
since He instituted the family and established all human authority structures
into human social relationships, all such authority structures are to be
honored and respected in this way. Therefore, the command to honor is a command
to demonstrate in tangible, empirical ways the respect people must have for
their parents.
In the Decalogue, it implies that children give the proper
“weight” or “respect” to their parents’ position. The opposite of this would be
to despise or scorn one’s parents. One who did this was in danger of being put
to death, Lev 20:9, in some cases by
stoning, Deut 21:18-21. Thus,
respect for parents, and for authority figures in general, should be taken
seriously. Therefore, to honor means more than to obey. It is to respect and
esteem. It involved teachable attitudes by the children. It is the form that
AGAPE love assumes towards those who are placed above us by God. It means to
show them respect and love, to care for them as long as they need you, and to
seek to bring honor to them by the way you live.
“Father and Mother,”
are AV WE EM and the promise of “length
of days,” is AREKH YOM. AREKH means, “to be long or to prolong,” in the causative Hiphil Imperfect for ongoing
action. This emphasizes quality of life, in terms of giving to others and
serving Yahweh, as a priority over quantity of life. As God is to be served
with honor and respect, His representatives are to be so too. So the blessing
for having this mental attitude expressed in your life is first quality and
then quantity of life.
Parents are the subject of special
respect and obedience because in the Divine hierarchy, they stand next to God
Himself, that is, in the administration of His kingdom community. This is noted
in the statement of God’s creation of the human race in Gen 5:1-3, “When God
created human beings, he made them to be like Himself.... When Adam was 130
years old, he became the father of a son
who was just like him, in his very image.” The parent thus stands as the
image of God to the child and is worthy of the reverence that entails. Likewise,
the father/son relationship is analogous to the God/Israel relationship,
Deut 1:31, “And in the wilderness where you saw how the LORD your God
carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have
walked, until you came to this place.”
Therefore, this 5th
Commandment provides the link between the first four commandments, which
emphasize the vertical man/God relationship, and the last five commandments,
which emphasize the horizontal man/man relationship. The family structure
provides the sphere of the most intimate relationship, through which the right
relationship with God can be extended to a right relationship with fellow human
beings. As such, loyalty and submission to one’s father and
mother in the context of the Covenant are absolutely vital for the passing on
of God’s blessing from one generation to another.
The parents are charged with the solemn responsibility of
carefully instructing their children, both by precept and example, to live for
God and his testimony, rather than following the corrupt example and mind-set
of the secular world about them, as the heirs of God’s covenant blessing
bestowed on them at the time of the Exodus.
“Parents
are to be honored and feared; reverence is to be shown to them with heart,
mouth, and hand—in thought, word, and deed. But by father and mother we are not
to understand merely the authors and preservers of our bodily life, but also
the founders, protectors, and promoters of our spiritual life, such as prophets
and teachers, to whom sometimes the name of father is given (2 Kings 2:12; 13:14), whilst at other
times paternity is ascribed to them by their scholars being called sons and
daughters (Ps 34:12; 45:11; Prov 1:8,
10, 15, etc.); also the guardians of our bodily and spiritual life, the
powers ordained of God, to whom the names of father and mother (Gen 45:8; Judg 5:7) may justly be
applied, since all government has grown out of the relation of father and
child, and draws its moral weight and stability, upon which the prosperity and
well-being of a nation depends, from the reverence of children towards their
parents.” (Keil and Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament)
So important was this principle for the perpetuation of the faith
that each family and each assembly after reciting the great Shema, in Deut 6:4-5, were reminded to teach
these things to their children in Deut
6:5-7.
The Shema, Deut 6:4-5,
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord (YHWH) is our God, the Lord is one! And you shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all
your might.”
Then they were instructed in Deut
6:6-7, “And these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart;
and you shall teach them diligently to your son (or children) and shall talk of them when you sit in
your house and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and when you
rise up.”
Therefore, honoring and respecting parents consists of respecting
their instruction in the covenant. This assumes that a religious heritage is
being passed on. The home was seen as an important and necessary link for the
covenant instruction of each successive generation. Honor is given to them as
representatives of God’s authority for the sake of covenant preservation. If
parents are not heeded or their authority is repudiated, the covenant would be
in jeopardy.
Likewise, the parents are to set the tone for their home and all
who live in it, making it clear that their main purpose in life is to put God
first in their lives and live for Him, rather than for the ambitions and goals
of worldliness in a vain search for happiness and meaning in a career of
egoistic self-seeking. As fathers and mothers, you should seek to imitate God,
who is the perfect Father.
Therefore, this commandment is like the previous one, it links the
requirement to an action of God: As God rested on the creation Sabbath, so
individual Israelites must do so each week in their own families; as God
promises to take care of his dependents, Israel, for a long time in the
promised land, so individual Israelites must take care of their dependent
parents for a long time, as necessary, in their own families. The prior
commandment looks back on the creation Sabbath, whereas the present commandment
looks forward to the nation’s tenure in the land of promise. Here we learn about
God’s authority and His provision. Rebellion and insubordination to parents,
governments, teachers, and others, ultimately is rebellion and insubordination
to God. The clause on the end of the commandment provides a motivation for
keeping the commandment, “to live long
in the land given by God.” This reveals the generosity of God.
There is a double promise here. So long as the nation rejoiced in
the possession of obedient children, it was assured of a “long life” or
existence in the land of Canaan; but there is also included the promise of a
“long life,” (i.e., a great age, to individuals, cf. Deut 6:2; 22:7, just as we find in 1 Kings 3:14), a good old age referred to as a special blessing
from God. Therefore, the promise of prolonged occupation in the land of Israel
is primarily in view in this commandment. As such, the double promise of
blessing is first quality of life and then quantity of life; permanence,
progeny, and prosperity. It was not necessarily a guarantee that each
individual Israelite was to live to be 100 years old, although that could be
the case, but more so that the nation as a community of faith is to be kept
safe and secure in the territory promised to Abraham in Gen 15:18-21.
In the ancient Near East, it is not just the religious heritage
but the fabric of society that is threatened when there is no respect for
parental authority and family obligations are neglected. Violations would
include striking parents, cursing parents, neglecting the care of elderly
parents, and failing to provide adequate burial. Therefore, it speaks to duration
as a nation in covenant relationship with God, “in the land the Lord your
God is giving you,” rather than a lengthened lifespan for each obedient
individual.
Implicit in this is the promise that Israel would be strong and
secure in possession of the land as long as they maintained loyalty to the
Sinai Covenant and the standards set forth by Moses and Aaron by the word of
God and faithfully adhere to them. The opposite of the blessing is found in the
negative warning for not “honoring your father and mother” in Deut 21:18-21.
The example given here is that of a “stubborn and rebellious son”
who defiantly disobeys his parents, resists their admonition, and is
unresponsive to discipline. A son who was rebelliously stubborn, not respecting
his parents, would most likely eventually express that same attitude toward God
and become a threat to the security and continuity of the covenant community of
God. Likewise, to “curse” one’s parents was tantamount to repudiating their
authority, and was a capital offense, Lev
20:9; Prov 20:2; Ex 21:17, “And
he who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.”
As the years went on and Israel rebelled against God forgetting
His covenants and promises, and falling into reversionism, it led to God’s
removal of this promise, as the nation was first torn in two in the reign of
Solomon’s son Rehoboam, and later each kingdom going under slavery to another;
the Northern to Assyria in 722 B.C., and the Southern to the Chaldeans 586 B.C.
The captivity of Israel would be caused, in part, by a failure to honor their
parents, Ezek 22:7, 15.
Ezek 22:7, “They
have treated father and mother lightly within you. The alien they have
oppressed in your midst; the fatherless and the widow they have wronged in you.
15And I shall scatter
you among the nations, and I shall disperse you through the lands, and I shall
consume your uncleanness from you.”
Later, God through Malachi equates the failure of the priests to
honor God with despising him; i.e., they “show
contempt for His name,” Mal 1:6.
Moses had reminded them in Deut
4:9f, that God had spoken to them at Horeb so that they “might learn to revere Me.” The parents
were to teach this reverence and fear of God to their children. By failure to
respect his parents, such a son or daughter also failed to respect God. He had
not learned “to fear God,” Deut 4:10.
Therefore, if the child was unwilling to learn and apply what the parents had
taught them, the parents had the responsibility to prosecute their child for
the offense in question, but they could not take the law into their own hands.
Judgment was the responsibility of the community. The whole community was
affected by such a crime in the family, and parental sovereignty was at stake. The
severity of the punishment was to serve as a warning that insubordination to
parental authority might lead to insubordination to God, who was Israel’s
sovereign Lord. In this manner, the Israelites were instructed, “to purge the evil from among you,” Deut
17:12
Psa 112:1-2, “Praise the LORD!
How blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who greatly delights in His
commandments. 2His descendants will be mighty on earth; the
generation of the upright will be blessed.”
In a world that worships and imitates youth, where youth and the
quest for rejuvenation is the highest priority, and tends to disregard or
eliminate unwanted old people, where the wisdom of the elderly and the counsel
of parents are ignored, this commandment sounds like an echo from a time warp.
But the Jews were taught to respect age and to care for their senior citizens,
which remains a good example for us to follow today as we will see in our NT
passages including, 1 Tim 5:1-2, “Do
not sharply rebuke an older man, but rather appeal to him as a
father, to the younger men as brothers, 2the older women as
mothers, and the younger women as sisters, in all purity.”
The fifth commandment provides the key to real social stability.
Someone said that, “the elderly are the only outcast group that everybody
expects to join.” Therefore, how you treat them today will help to determine
how you are treated tomorrow, because we reap what we sow. A stable family-life
leads to a stable-society.
Likewise, we see that as the image of God was to be kept sacred by
all men in the 4th Commandment, the majesty of God was to be honored
and respected in parents in the 5th Commandment. This thought forms
the transition to the rest of the commandments.
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A
PERSONAL NOTE FOR YOU
John 6:47 says: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who
believes in Me [Jesus Christ] has everlasting life.”
Notice again what John
6:47 says, “he who believes in Me [Jesus Christ] has everlasting life.” It doesn’t say, “will have;” it says,
“has.” Therefore, the very moment you believe Jesus Christ’s promise of
everlasting life, you have it, and it can never be lost or taken away from you [John 10:28-29]. Furthermore, the gift
of everlasting life [also called eternal life in Scripture] is available to
every human being; there are absolutely no exceptions.
John 3:14-18
says: “And as Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in
Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son
into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be
saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is
condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God.”
Eph 2:8-9, “For
by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift
of God: 9 Not of
works, lest any man should boast.”
If
you have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, I am here to tell
you that Jesus loves you. He loves you so much that He gave His life for you.
God the Father also loves you. He loves you so much that He gave His only Son
for you by sending Him to the Cross. At the Cross Jesus died in your place.
Taking upon Himself all of your sins and all of my sins. He was judged for our
sins and paid the price for our sins. Therefore, our sins will never be held
against us.
Right
where you are, you now have the opportunity to make the greatest decision in
your life. To accept the free gift of salvation and eternal life by truly
believing that Jesus Christ died for your sins and was raised on the third day
as the proof of the promise of eternal life. So right now, you can pause and
reflect on what Christ has done for you and say to the Father:
"Yes
Father, I believe that Your Son, Jesus Christ,
died on the cross for the forgiveness of my sins."
If you have done that, I Welcome You to the Eternal
Family of God !!!
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Grace Fellowship Church
Pastor/Teacher: James H. Rickard
23 Messenger Street, Unit 3
Plainville, MA 02762
Copyright © 2001 - 2017.
Property of: James H Rickard Bible Ministries
All Rights Reserved.
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