The Christmas Message We Need (But may not want)
Christmas
December 10, 2023
I’ll be home for Christmas
You can plan on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents by the tree
Christmas eve will find me
Where the love light gleams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams…
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. —Exodus 20:12
Honoring our parents is the place where we start to learn what it looks like to honor God.
The law is graciously given to set us apart from those around us, and to point the way to love of God and love of neighbor. The Ten Commandments show us how to live holy lives as citizens of heaven while we yet dwell on earth. For the believer, the law becomes a means of grace. —Jen Wilkin
51 And he went down with them (his parents) and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. —Luke 2:51
God submitted to man. The God-child obeyed his mere human parents. And in doing so, he dignified the most basic, and enduring, of everyday relational dynamics. In our modern age, taught to despise the ideas of submission and obedience, the Son of God himself, worthy of limitless worship and praise, shatters our shallow conceptions of value and worth.
Jesus’s obedience to his parents challenges the insecurities in us that often make us averse to submit and obey. God himself in human flesh subjected himself to two average, ordinary, inexperienced parents in an obscure, backwater town called Nazareth. —David Mathis
1.) WHAT IS COMMANDED?
HONOR = WEIGHTY
Both parents are to be honored
There are no qualifications
The command was given to adults
Obedience is for a time, honor is for a lifetime
2.) WHAT IS PROMISED?
12 Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. —EXODUS 20:12
17 Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. —EXODUS 21:17
3.) WHY IS THIS HARD FOR US?
WHEN YOU CHOOSE TO HONOR YOUR PARENTS, YOU ARE CHOOSING TO HONOR THE GOD BEHIND YOUR PARENTS.
4.) HOW DO WE LIVE IT OUT?
A. EXPRESS HONOR TO YOUR PARENTS
Speak Well of Them
9 Whoever would foster love covers over an offense, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends. —PROVERBS 17:9
Spend Time With Them
Care for them in their old age
Although this commandment requires children to honor their parents in all sorts of ways large and small, there can be little doubt that its most basic insistence from the point of view of establishing a responsibility that might otherwise be shirked is to demand that children take care of their parents in their parents’ old age, when they are no longer able to work for themselves… —STUART DOUGLAS
B. TRAIN YOUR CHILDREN TO HONOR YOU
5 It is foolish to ignore what your parents taught you; it is wise to accept their correction. —PROVERBS 15:5
18 Discipline your son while there is hope, and do not desire his death. —PROVERBS 19:18
AS CHILDREN LEARN TO HONOR THEIR PARENTS, THEY LEARN TO HONOR GOD.
C. FORGIVE YOUR PARENTS
14 For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. —Matthew 6:14-15