Deuteronomy 5:16 Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you; that your days may be prolonged… This command begins the second "table" of the law, which is occupied with our duties toward our fellow men. We are to fear and love God; but in that fear and love lies the ground of our reverence for His representatives. This commandment does not concern children alone. Every man has his part in it — in youth, manhood, and age. Order is to reign in all conditions of life — a Divine order. Rulers in home, state, and church rule according to this order, and are to be obeyed according to the will of God. I. THE DIVINE ORDER IN THE HOME. 1. Parents who spend toilsome days and sometimes sleepless nights in order to provide for their children, hope that in old age they will be eared for by these children. How often, alas! is it otherwise, and the parents are regarded as a burden by undutiful children! They blame the evil times, etc., whilst the real cause lies in their own forgetfulness of God's Word, their own careless lives, and lax fulfilment of their parental duties. 2. Why ought children not to despise their parents? Because in them they honour the Divine order. They have a holy office. God has given them a part of His power, His right, His majesty. Serve them, children. Be helpful to them in labour, in sickness, in age; help them from your superfluity, and even in your poverty as you may. Comfort them, pray for them, obey them. Do what they require, even when it is hard to do so; and when they depart, let it he said to their honour that they have left God-fearing children. Love and esteem them. Give them a chief place in your heart. Remember how they eared for you in youth, etc., and think that neglect of them can never lead to blessing (Proverbs 20:20; Proverbs 30:17, etc.). And if father and mother are gone from earth, or if you have left your home, remember you are still servants and children of the heavenly King and Father. II. THE DIVINE ORDER IN THE STATE. 1. Princes and governors must also be held in honour as appointed by God. But, say some, all rulers are not the fathers of their people; many of them seem to live for themselves rather than for the people, etc. There is a cheap kind of popularity to be earned by the propagation of such ideas at the present day. Think of what would be the result if any man of honour subjected to the same criticism as those in high places — every word noticed and every action, every hasty exclamation, everything misconstrued, and added thereto lies, etc. — how would the life of many even good men appear after such an ordeal? 2. Princes and rulers also are men like ourselves, neither better nor worse. They are like the parents we are commanded to honour; and like them, they are to be honoured because ordained by God. And if children hear their parents lightly slandering "the powers that be, those children may be expected to become rebellious. 3. Then we must remember that even a bad government is better than none at all. A slave is he who obeys those in authority simply from fear of the sword, h freeman obeys according to the will of God. III. THE DIVINE ORDER IN CHURCH AND SCHOOL. 1. These also are of the Lord. They are appointed to instruct the Church and the youth of the nation, to exhort, warn, etc. For this they shall give an account. 2. The young ought to honour them. Those who despise them despise those whom God has appointed to this honourable office. It is no glory to make a man's office hard and bitter to exercise. 3. Those set over the community as pastors should receive this honour. "To pass by the church and school is the shortest way to Bridewell," says the proverb. And who are sometimes to blame for this? Careless parents, as the thief asserted when he said, "My father built the gallows — and he wasn't a carpenter." On the parents' attitude toward the Church and her pastors will depend the children's, very likely, in later years. 4. And if young people are taught to despise those whom God has appointed ministers of His word, what will be their attitude to the Word itself? Men should honour in those appointed to the office of teachers and preachers the Divine order by which men are trained intellectually and spiritually. (K. H. Caspari.) Parallel Verses KJV: Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. |
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