Teaching Your Children to Honor

In Exodus chapter 20 God gives the Israelites the 10 Commandments. Each one of the commandments was to be honored as holy and from the Living God. These are more than just words in a book or decorations in a court of law. The 10 Commandments are guidelines for a successful, happy and satisfied life.

I want to focus today on the 5th command because it is the first of the ten that comes with a promise.

"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

To honor your mother and father is the command. A long life in the land that God has provided is the promise. That is how important this command is to God. That He would actually be willing to attach a promise to it allowing us to enjoy an even better life if we keep it.

You may look at this and say to yourself that the burden of responsibility for this command is on the children and not the parents but I would encourage you to open your mind and look a little deeper at the Word of God.

Children are taught honor and respect by their parents. You cannot expect your child to honor the position that you have over them as a parent if you first don’t model to them what it is like to honor authority.

Your children’s lives are at stake here by what you teach them. This command is reinforced in the New Testament book of Ephesians but notice the verse that follows the command.

1Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2"Honor your father and mother"—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3"that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." 4Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Ephesians 6:1-3

It is your responsibility as parents to “bring up” your children with proper life instruction. You have to instill in them honor and respect by teaching them as fundamentals of lfe.

Why? Let me give you three powerful arguments for why you should obey this commandment.

The First Reason to Obey the 5th Commandment
More than anything else, your adolescent craves your total trust. It doesn’t come natural for your teen to obey you but if you look at Ephesians 6:1-3 again you will see that the command for children to obey their parents and the command for parents to teach their children are linked.

How can your child ever respect and honor you if you never teach them what it means to respect and honor. Many parents punish their children by removing their trust but they fail to teach them how to do what is expected of them.

Author Fritz Ridenour says, "You might as well trust your teenager; you don’t have any other reasonable choice. Distrust simply breeds more distrust, but if you keep trusting your teenager, sooner or later the message will get through."
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The Second Reason to Obey the 5th commandment

The 5th Commandment has a Reciprocal Consequence

This is going to be a hard pill to swallow for some of you. God didn’t say honor your parents if they’re honorable. Nowhere does he say that respect must be earned before you have to give it. God simply calls us to give honor where honor is due and that is too our parents, for better or worse, because they are the ones who gave us life.

This means that, at the very least, you refuse to speak disrespectfully of your parents, no matter what they’ve done.

One of Grimm’s fairy tales tells of an old man who lived with his son, the son’s wife, and the young couple’s four-year-old boy. The old man’s eyes blinked, and his hands shook. When he ate, the silverware rattled against the plate, and he often missed his mouth. Then the food would dribble onto the tablecloth. This upset the young mother, because she didn’t want to have to deal with the extra mess and hassle of taking care of the old man. But he had nowhere else to live. So the young parents decided to move him away from the table, into a corner, where he could sit on a stool and eat from a bowl. And so he did, always looking at the table and wanting to be with his family but having to sit alone in the corner. One day his hands trembled more than usual; he dropped his bowl and, and broke it. “If you are a pig,” they said, “then you must eat out of a trough.” So they made the old man a wooden trough and put his meals in it.

Not long after, the couple came upon their four-year-old son playing with some scraps of wood. His father asked him what he was doing. The little boy looked up, smiled, and said, “I’m making a trough, to feed you and Mamma out of when I get big.” The next day the old man was back at the table eating with the family, from a plate, and no one ever scolded him or mistreated him again.

So you see the enormous implications of honoring your parents. We’re so disconnected from this commandment today that we have to re-learn how to honor our parents.

The Third Reason to Obey the 5th Commandment

Living with honor for others equips you for all of life.

When God first gave this commandment to his people, he told them one of its purposes. “If you want to live a long and good life in the land I’m giving you, honor your parents.” The negative implication is that if they fail to honor their parents, they’ll be expelled from the land.

By learning to respect parental authority, one learns to respect the authority or other superiors, such as teachers, ministers, policemen, and state and federal officials.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger writes writes in her book The 10 Commandments: The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life; “Parents are teachers of faith and morality. What God is to the world, parents are to their children. Unfortunately, some parents become so focused on the element of friendship or their own convenience, comfort, self-fulfillment, happiness, or love life that they forget their job is to help mold moral character so their children will have the strength to do what is right in a world that sometimes encourages them to do otherwise.”