Bible Text: Deuteronomy 5:16 | Pastor: Eric Danielson | Series: For Our Good | The relationship between children and their parents is very important to the well-being of the home, but are there ramifications beyond that? What is the parent-child relationship supposed to look like?

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A Vital Correlation
Deuteronomy 5:16

I’ve been doing a lot of running this summer to try to stay healthy, and normally I run for about 25-30 minutes two or three times a week, just to get the blood pumping, exercise the muscles, and get the heart rate up. Then Luke Wittkop and I started running together a couple times a week and Luke came up with the crazy idea to run a half-marathon that was scheduled to be in Amery last Saturday. That’s 13 miles! That’s running from here to downtown Turtle Lake! The farthest I had ever run before was about 8 miles and that was a long, long time ago. So at first I thought there was no way, but eventually we decided to go ahead with the training and see what happened. We planned to run shorter routes during the week and longer runs on Saturday mornings to try to work up to 13 miles. The first Saturday we’d do 7 miles, 9 the next week, then 11, and then it would be race day. It was in preparing for those longer runs that I learned some things I had to do for my body if I was going to make it through those longer distances.

The first thing I learned was about hydration. When you run, you work up quite a sweat and the longer you run the more water you lose. So, in our first 7-mile run, Luke stashed some Powerade at about the halfway mark for us to drink so we wouldn’t get dehydrated by the end of the run. That was something I had never even thought of before. We had to be careful to drink a lot of water beforehand and during each of our longer runs in order to give our bodies the hydration they needed to make it to the end.

The second thing I learned was about eating. Prior to running these longer distances, I had the attitude that because I was running, I could eat whatever I wanted – I’d just run it off. But I came to learn that when you run longer distances, your body actually needs fuel to run on and certain kinds of food give you the fuel you need while other kinds actually hinder you. Luke did some research and found that the night before a long run you need to eat a lot of carbs, some lean protein, and some non-starchy vegetables. And you should not eat greasy or fatty foods or certain vegetables that will make you bloated. So we were careful about the food we ate before our long runs to make sure our bodies had the fuel they needed to make it all the way.

The last thing I learned was about sleep. The body needs sufficient sleep before going on a long run. When I was running 25-30 minutes, I didn’t worry about sleep because I knew that even if I felt terrible, I could gut it out for that long. But when we started running for 45 minutes, and an hour, and 90 minutes, and two hours – that was a really, really, long time to endure misery if I hadn’t slept well. So I started paying attention to what would help me sleep better before those long runs – I didn’t want to stay up too late, or eat the wrong kind of food that would keep me awake, I knew I needed good sleep in order to make it to the end.

So we paid attention to these things and could definitely feel the difference and the benefits, and when the race day came we were able to make it all the way to the finish line – something I never thought I’d be able to do. Each of those things made a big difference and I was very aware that if there was a breakdown in any of them, I don’t think I could have made it. There was a definite correlation between doing those things well and being able to finish the race.

This morning we are going to look at a similar correlation as it relates to us being a healthy church body that endures to the end in what has proven to be a church-killing culture. I want our church to grow and thrive and be healthy and strong and I know that you do too. But it’s not going to happen by accident. There are things that we need to pay attention to and do well in order to make it to the end. And if there’s a breakdown in them, we will set ourselves up for failure. One of those things is found in the fifth commandment.

The first four commandments that we’ve looked at have been related to a person’s relationship with God, and now we have six commands that are related to a person’s relationship with other people. Today we look at the first of these six commands.

Deuteronomy 5:16
16 “‘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.

There is a difference between this command and the first four we’ve looked at – something new – this is the first command that comes with a promise. There’s a conditional guarantee. God told his people that if they would honor their father and mother, their days would be long in the Promised Land and it would go well with them. So obedience to this command is given as a key to endurance in the land. There was a direct correlation between honoring father and mother and receiving the covenant blessings God promised in taking possession of the land. If things went well in the parent-child relationship, things would go well for the whole nation. And the implication is that if things didn’t go well in the home and there was a breakdown in this command, things would not go well for the people of Israel. So a lot of importance is placed on this command and on the parent-child relationship.

The command is straightforward – the people were to honor their father and mother, but there were a whole bunch of different scenarios that this entailed. I think that Moses was talking to the people in general – not just children in the home, so there are all kinds of different nuances in how this command could be obeyed. For children I think it would primarily have to do with being obedient and respectful to their parents. Paul seemed to think that way when he wrote in Ephesians 6:1-3: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), 3 “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Children at home were to submit to God’s pattern of authority and they were to be obedient and respectful to their parents. The expectation is that the parents would be leading godly lives and teaching and leading their children to do things according to God’s will.

But what about adult children who don’t live with their parents anymore? Does this command apply to them? I think it does – very much so. If you look at the culture of ancient Israel, showing honor to one’s parents and ancestors was a deeply embedded value no matter what the age. It was highly valued that an adult son or daughter would honor their parents and live in a way that would bring honor to them. Their communities were organized by tribe and family, so people almost always lived in close proximity to their parents in the same community. They had daily interactions with them, their lives intersected with work and worship, so there were many opportunities to show honor and respect. Reputation was a big deal too, so even if a son or daughter wasn’t directly interacting with their parents, their lifestyle and choices would have a major impact on the family reputation and they could honor or dishonor their parents significantly by how they chose to live their lives. So besides showing honor and respect directly to their parents, I believe this command included living in a way to bring honor to them and not disgrace.

Another interesting thing I realized this week is that when Moses gave this command in Deuteronomy, he was speaking to a large segment of the population whose parents were dead. Because of the Israelite rebellion in the wilderness, all the adults over 60 years old were dead – they had died in the wilderness – and all the adults over 40 didn’t have living parents anymore. Yet Moses gave this command to them all and I think it still applied to those whose parents were dead. How could they honor their fathers and mothers? Again, I think this goes back to the idea of honoring them by how they lived their lives – they were to live in an honorable way before the Lord, so they would bring honor to their parents if they were still living.

I think this is also how to apply this command for people who have parents that are ungodly and abusive. Some of you should not obey your parents or even have contact with them because of their ungodliness or their crimes against you. In a way they are dead to you because they’ve driven themselves away from you by their sin. But rather than dwelling in bitterness toward them and feeling helpless to obey when you hear this command, I encourage you to honor them by living a life that is honorable before God – the kind of life that if they were who they were supposed to be, they would have been very proud of you.

So no matter how old they were or if their parents were dead or still living, this command applied to all of the Israelites. And it was a very significant command because, like I pointed out earlier, it came with a conditional promise – If they would obey this command it would go well with them as a nation and they would live long in the land. Why did this command bear that kind of weight? That seems to be more fitting of some of the earlier commands we’ve looked at. Doesn’t this put an awful lot of responsibility on little children and adolescents? Doesn’t the importance of the promise seem to outweigh the importance of the command?

This is one of many places in Scripture where it’s very important to look at the surrounding context because after Moses gives the people the commands in Deuteronomy 5, he goes on to tell them some vitally important things in chapter 6 that help us to see the fullness behind this command and why it comes with such an important promise. In chapter 6, Moses says this…

Read Deuteronomy 6:1-3
Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the rules—that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over, to possess it, 2 that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. 3 Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has promised you, in a land flowing with milk and honey.

So here, Moses tells the people that God had commanded him to teach them the Ten Commandments he had just given them so that they would fear the Lord and keep his commands so that their days would be long and it would go well with them in the land. Notice that he gives them the very same conditional promise here as with the fifth commandment, only here it is linked with obeying all the commands. I think this points out something very significant. Not only does the command to obey father and mother have a direct correlation with what would happen to the people of Israel as a whole, but it also has a direct correlation with how well the people of Israel would obey or disobey all the commands as a whole. In other words, if the people obeyed the command to honor their father and mother, it would also mean they would obey all the commands. And if they did not obey their father and mother, they would not obey all the commands. The way that children treated their parents would essentially be the same way they treated God. If they honored their parents, they would also honor God. So if there was a breakdown in the parent-child relationship, there would also be a breakdown in the people’s relationship with God – things would not go well for them and they would not remain long in the land.

Here again, and even more so now, it feels like there’s an awful lot of weight placed on the shoulders of children. Why would God do that? Doesn’t he realize that children’s natural tendency is to test their parents, push the boundaries, and disobey? By relying so much on children, isn’t he setting the whole nation up for failure? Let’s see what Moses says in the next few verses.

Read Deuteronomy 6:4-9
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your 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. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

After giving them the Ten Commandments in chapter 5, including the command for children to honor their father and mother and the promise that if they do things will go well and they will live long in the land, Moses turns to the adults and gives parents the burden of responsibility to diligently teach all these things to their children. So children don’t bear the weight of responsibility that will determine the direction and outcome of the nation; parents do. We need to let that sink in a little bit. Unless I’m wrong, Moses was telling them that there is a direct correlation between parents teaching their children to obey God’s commands and the success and failure of the nation. If parents diligently teach their kids, and the kids grow up to obey the Lord, the nation succeeds. If parents don’t teach their kids and they grow up to disobey the Lord, the nation falls.

Now I understand this isn’t an automatic formula or the only factor in the direction and outcome of a nation – parents can diligently teach their kids and the kids can still rebel. Or a bad king or ruler can lead the whole nation to rebellion, even if parents are doing a good job. On the other end of the spectrum, God can bring repentance and revival to a nation even if parents have failed. So there are exceptions and a lot of other factors and the role of parents isn’t the only one. But it’s a big one. And you can easily see throughout the Old Testament that the faithfulness or failure of parents had a huge influence on the success or downfall of Israel.

So not only is this fifth command a call for children – both young and old – to honor their parents, it’s also a charge to parents to faithfully and diligently teach their children to obey the Lord.

What does this mean for us today? We are not the nation of Israel and the covenant promises concerning the Promised Land don’t apply to Americans. We are not Israelites and we don’t live in Israel. That’s not to say that if most Americans were to obey this command there wouldn’t be a huge national revival – I’m sure that would happen. But I believe it would be more accurate today for us to apply this command and its promise to Christians in the church. If we as Christians honor our fathers and mothers and if we teach our children to do the same and to obey all God’s commands, I believe we can expect it will go well for us as a church – we will be healthy and strong and continue to endure even in our current culture. You have to hydrate, eat right, and sleep well to endure a long distance race, and you have to honor father and mother and teach children to do the same to be a healthy church that endures. So, if we are going to make it to the end, we are going to have to do this well.

Are you honoring your father and mother? If you still live with your parents, are you obeying and showing respect to them? If you’re an adult, are you honoring them by the way you treat them? By supporting them as they age? By living an honorable life before the Lord that will make them proud and not ashamed? If your parents are already gone are you living a life that would bring them honor if they were still living? If your parents have separated themselves from you because of their abusiveness and sin, are you living in a way that would honor them if they were living for the Lord?

What about those of us who are parents, who have been charged with diligently teaching our children? Are you teaching your children to honor you as parents? This is highly important because the way they learn to treat you will likely be the way they learn to treat God. J. Vernon McGee writes: “The father and mother stand in the place of God to the little one who is growing up.” It’s not ok for your kids to disobey you or treat you with disrespect. We need to teach our kids to honor us as parents so that they learn to honor God. But a huge part of that is being a parent who is worthy of honor. We should try to make it easy for our kids to honor us by the way we treat them and live our lives. Are you honoring God with how you live our lives as a parent? Are you modeling to your kids the kind of person you want them to become? Are you seeing your role as parent as seriously as God sees it? Be the kind of Christ-follower you want your kids to be. Don’t expect them to be a certain way if you’re not that way yourself.

As parents, our role is instrumental in the direction of our kids and the health and endurance of our church. We need to take the command to teach our children the ways of the Lord very seriously. I knew this was important when my kids were little, but I’ve seen it much more clearly now that I have kids in Middle School and High School. Someone is going to teach my kids about life and God’s call to me as a parent is to step in, step up, and be intentional about fulfilling that responsibility – both moms and dads.

I also believe this responsibility rests in some measure on all the adults in a church. All of us have been given the responsibility to disciple the next generation of disciples. There’s a saying: “It takes a village to raise a child,” and there’s a lot of truth in that. Just today we heard about a need an opportunity to get involved in children’s ministry right here at church, and next week we will hear about opportunities with middle and high school students. How can you get involved?

Now, I realize that all of us who are or have been parents can easily feel like failures – especially after hearing a sermon like this. So I want to bring you some encouragement that I have to think about often. None of us is a perfect parent. We all make mistakes. We all sin. We all screw up. We don’t have to pretend we’re perfect – even in front of our kids. We can tell them we’re not perfect and we will make mistakes. We can ask our kids for forgiveness and they can actually learn from our mistakes. And God’s grace is powerful enough to overcome all our failures. So trust the Lord, teach your kids, and pray for them everyday.