Transcript
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Welcome to Gospel and Life. During January, we are inviting our listeners to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner. If you'd like to learn more, keep listening at the end of today's podcast for details. Have you ever wondered what it really means to live a great life? The Bible says the Ten Commandments aren't confining rules, but a framework for building a life of true greatness. Today, Tim Keller takes an in depth look at one of the Ten Commandments and helps us understand what it means to live the way God designed us to free, whole and rooted in his love.
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Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment, with a promise that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. Now, my wife will be quick to tell you that when I approached this topic a couple weeks ago, I was unhappy about it. I said, I don't want to preach on this. This is one of the great advantages of, of a series. It disciplines the preacher. I said, why do I want to preach on this? Maybe it was Mother's Day or Father's Day, but this is New York and they don't have Mother's Day and Father's Day in New York. It doesn't seem very interesting. Everybody knows about that command, right? I mean, it's pretty cut and dried. What's there to say? And I think Kathy remembers that at the end of the day, I was working. I, I spent all day working on this, studying this one commandment, honor thy father and thy mother. And I worked on it all day on my son's bed. I spread everything out on his bed. At the end of the day, she came on in and I looked up and I was amazed. I was amazed at that, what I'd learned. I, I was amazed at how I'd been convicted and challenged. I was amazed at how I, how I knew that I changed. I changed. And I felt like the psalmist who said, oh, thy commandment is exceeding broad, you see, and thy words are sweeter than honey to my mouth. Let me explain. Have you ever heard a Grimm's fairy tale? It's not a real famous one, but an intriguing one that is very, very relevant to our subject this morning. It was about a little old man who had gotten very, very, very senile. He, he got very confused about things and he was particularly messy at the, at the. The supper table, he was always dropping things and he was always splattering things all over himself. And he lived with his married son. And his son's wife particularly hated the fact that he was so messy and so much of a nuisance. And over the months and years, she had really turned her son's, her husband's. She turned her husband against his father in many ways. And it convinced him that his father was a great nuisance. And his father really was a tremendous father. And his father was a tremendous burden. One day he was particularly messy in the supper in the dining room. And the wife said, that's. That does it. You're eating in the other room. And she picked him up and they went into the other room and she sat him in the corner and she gave him the earthenware bowl. And for weeks and weeks the little old man sat in that corner, you know, with his eyes blinking, not really sure what was going on, far away from everybody else, just eating his porridge. And one day he dropped the earthenware bowl and he destroyed it. And the daughter in law, the wife, was very furious. And she came in and she says, that does it. If you're going to eat like a pig, you might as well eat like a pig. And she grabbed a trough out of the pigsty and this was a farm, and she brought it in and she put it down in front of him and says, from now on you can eat out of this. And that's how she served them. And it was some weeks later that the father and the mother, the husband and the wife, son and daughter in law, saw their little boy carving something. And they said, what are you working on? And the fairy tale goes like this. He looks up and he says very proudly, he says, I am carving you and daddy a trough so that when you grow up. When I grow up and you get old, I can feed you out of it. And you know, the son and daughter in law looked at each other and they said nothing. And they began to weep. And suddenly the son. The son. The son in law, his. I mean the son of the. The adult son, he. His memory began to go back. He began to think and he began to think and work overtime and began to smolder. And what happened was that the son and daughter in law walked on in and picked the old man up by the hand and led him back into the dining room and sat him down in the most comfortable chair and let him eat there. And never, ever, ever got angry at him again. And that's a fairy Tale, you know, it's a good fairy tale, but its point is it sums up the Fifth Commandment. And what is that? The Fifth Commandment teaches this. A society that destroys the family, destroys itself. The fifth commandment is this. If you eliminate honor in the family, you will eliminate honor. Period. And what amazes me over the years is I have preached on this sermon, this, this commandment four times before. Obviously I must have preached at least four other series on the Ten Commandments. Every time I addressed the Commandment to parents, every time I preached a sermon on it, I, I would get to that place and I would talk about what Christian family life ought to be like. But if you read the Commandment, you see it does not address parents at all. It says, honor thy father and thy mother. It's talking to children, and particularly it's talking to adult children. And what's intriguing about the Ten Commandments is you have to realize that this is. The Ten Commandments are a summary of everything that human beings ought to be. We're saying all along that the Ten Commandments are like a high, are high steel. When you think about a skull skyscraper going up, you see the high steel. And then on top of it, after they put the steel framework up there, they, they build the skyscraper on it. And we've said that the Ten Commandments are like high steel on which you can build a life of greatness and a society of greatness. And yet in all of the Ten Commandments, there's no place that talks about how Christians should relate to the state or Christians should relate to the government or how people should relate to their people above them. It doesn't talk about authority except right here. And I think it's because God knows that if we honor our parents, all kinds of other things will fall into place. Now you say it's awfully cut and dried. I know we're supposed to honor our parents, but let's look into it a little bit deeper and let's ask the Commandment 3, what, why and how? And let's just blip right through. What does this commandment tell us? Why does this commandment tell us and how can we go about obeying it? What, why and how? What should we do? Why should we do it and how can we do it? All right, let's take a look. Number one, what does this commandment ask for? Think it is absolutely stubborn. It's absolutely single minded. It commands honor. Notice what it does not command. This text does not command affection. Now that doesn't mean that affection isn't appropriate, but it doesn't command that you have affection for, that you confide in, or that you even trust your parents. Number two, it does not command admiration. It doesn't command that you think that they're the greatest thing. Number three, it does not command obedience. It does not command that you always do what they wish, but it always commands honor. Now, why? The reason that it commands honor and not these other things is because the relationship between a child and a parent is incredibly complex, and it changes in the earliest stages. We must be totally dependent on our parents, and we must obey them. It says so. In fact, this passage in Ephesians says, children obey your parents. But the word children there means little children. And we know the Bible says that at a certain stage we should leave our parents. That means we no longer obey them. We're supposed to be raised up. We're supposed to become adults. In fact, to continue to depend on your parents and to continue to be intimate with your parents and into adulthood can be very pathological. So, you see, things change. And obedience is not always something that's good. Dependence is not always something which. Which is good. Another thing that's that that can differ is your parents themselves. Some parents are quite admirable people. Some parents are downright evil, all right? And for you to obey them or for you to even trust them or for you to try to admire them would be to live a lie and would be maybe very unwise. But you see, the command is so wise because it doesn't say you must love your parents in the sense of admiring them or having deep affection for them. In some cases, yes. In some times, yes. But the one thing you must always, always, always give them, no matter what age you are, no matter what condition they are in, no matter what kind of person you are, no matter what kind of people they are, is honor. The Bible says that there's no excuse under any condition for you not to honor your parents. And do you realize how important that is to separate honor from all these other things? A lot of us are thinking, well, if I continue to honor my parents, that means I have to obey them, and I shouldn't. And since I just shouldn't obey them, why do I have to honor them? Your conscience tells you that you don't have to obey them, but your conscience does tell you that you have to honor them. And you've got to separate these out or you'll never be able to. To really honor your conscience or this law. Honor your father and your mother. That's what it Asks for nothing more and nothing less. That's the what. Now, why does it command this? And that's interesting. You see, some cultures and some traditions and some religions will say, you should honor your father and your mother because of the mystery of the blood. You know what the mystery of the blood is? Because you should be so awed in the presence of the one out of whom loins you spring. You see, there's something mysterious and awesome, but that's not what the Bible talks about. Because, you know, the Bible considers that an adopted father or mother is just as worthy of honor as a natural one. Some people say, well, the reason that you need to honor your father and your mother is because they're. They're wiser than you, because they're older than you. And we all know that's not necessarily true. The Bible doesn't teach that the older you are, the wiser you get. The Bible teaches that the more mature in Christ you are, the wiser you get. And therefore, the fact is that parents are sinners and children are sinners. The Bible says. And so you can't just say, because we should honor parents because parents are less sinful. That's not what it says. In fact, some people would say, well, the reason you must honor your parents is because you should be honoring your parents out of gratitude for what they've done. The fact is that there are some situations in which there's very little gratitude owed because there was very little given. And yet the word honor is there for everybody. So the real question is, why do it? And the answer is right here, actually honor your father and your mother. Look, for this is right. For this is right. What's that getting at? Something very profound. Give me about three minutes to develop it. All right? There's a moral structure in the universe. There's a moral order to things. There's a right and there's a wrong. And there's a God who created us. And when we listen to His Word and we come under his authority and we say, yes, I believe what you say about me, and we listen to what he does, what he says, we experience the liberty of authority. Now, there are lots of little illustrations you can give here on Earth. When a musician, when a bunch of musicians get together and they follow a conductor, they're going to experience the liberty of authority. In other words, if they all do what the conductor says, they may have a symphony on their hands. If a bunch of people get together to play a game, whether it's basketball or football or whatever, you got to Have a ref. And if they don't listen to the referee, and if every single person there says, well, I want to play, you know, by my own rules, there's not going to be a game. But if they listen to the ref, there may be a game. If they listen to the conductor, there may be a symphony. And you may not like the referee or think he's doing a good job, and you may not like the conductor and think that he or she is doing a good job. But you do know this. You've got to have one. And you give respect to the person and authority, knowing that even though that person's not doing a good job, it would be far worse if there was no one there, because there's got to be somebody there, because there's a moral structure to things. And some things like music, some things like sports, most things don't happen unless you put yourself under someone's authority. The Bible says there's a moral order for life, and God is our creator, and he tells us what is right and wrong. But the first incarnation of that moral order, the first representative that we have of that moral order in the universe is your parents. And that moral order is a teaching authority. Now, let me explain that. Over the last few years, there's been a revolution in the modern understanding of the family. The old understanding of the family was completely authoritarian, where fathers, in particular fathers, had the right to kill their children if they wanted to. They had that kind of authority. But over the last 150 years, the authoritarian model is going by the boards. And I'll tell you one of the reasons why. There's lots of reasons. There's ideological reasons. In the east, totalitarianism has weakened the family so that the state can have more control over the child. But in the west, individualism is weak in the family. Because in the west, we believe so strongly that you should never sacrifice for anybody, but you should always seek to fulfill yourself first. You've got to look out for number one, you've got to take responsibility for yourself. You know all the cliches. And the most important thing is to find yourself. And a parent should not put the child's welfare over his or her own, and the child should not put the parent's authority over his or her welfare. And so that's undermined it. But frankly, the biggest reason that the old authoritarian understanding of marriage has been undermined is the industrial revolution, which happened 150 years ago. If you read the Bible, you will see that the father and the mother, the husband and the wife were co heirs of both the economic provision of the family and the rearing of the children. The father and the mother worked together to provide for the family. Whether they were farmers, whether they were craftsmen, they did it together. And the father and the mother together reared the children. But what happened somewhere 150 years ago, because of the way in which industrialization proceeded in our society, the husband got to the place where he left to go work and the wife stayed home with the children. And then this unbiblical bifurcation happened and that was that career and money making work was man's work and taking care of the children was women's work. Now what happened was that on the one hand, men became alienated from child rearing. They became incompetent at it, totally incompetent at it. Meanwhile, women became embittered by it because they were bearing the whole brunt on themselves. And so in the last 20 years we see that in the wisdom of the human, the human soul, women have decided in order to be equal, we're going to be equally alienated from child rearing in order to be equal. What we're going to do is not call the husbands back, but to say career first.