Articles From Our Bulletins
Honor Your Father And Mother
“Honor your father and mother” is the fifth of the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:12). The placement within the decalogue is not accidental, for this is the “hinge command” that affects both the previous four and the latter five. In the home is where children first learn about God and how to respect and revere Him, and the home is where they first learn about respect for others. If children do not first learn about God’s authority and preeminence in the home, then where will they learn it, and what will they learn about it?
The first command is, “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Exod. 20:3). In the New Testament we are taught to “seek first His kingdom and His righteous-ness” (Matt. 6:33) and to avoid all forms of idolatry (Rom. 1:21-23). To say that God comes first is to recog-nize His rightful priority as the Creator and Ruler of all. If we do this, then we are recognizing that He maintains all authority and we must listen to Him.
Our respect for God is not based on whether or not we think God has adequately explained Himself to us. He is not amenable to us. As a parent has the right to tell a child what to do without the child fussing back, so God has the right to tell us what to do without our fighting back. Our place is to honor Him. We have no right to disobey Him just because we think He has given a com-mand that doesn’t make enough sense to our finite rea-son. Faith is trust, and if we trust God as the ultimate authority, then we will trust that all He tells us and shows us will be what we need. Learning this kind of trust begins in the home, when we first trust our parents.
