By Rev. Michael Mwangi
Senior Pastor, Fedha Church KAG
Exodus 20:12 “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
The definition of Old Testament honour (the Hebrew word 'kabod') means heavy or weighty. To honour someone, is to give weight or grant a person of position respect and even authority in one’s life. In the context of Exodus 20:12, it means to prize highly, care for, show respect for, and obey. There is a difference between honour, obedience, and respect
• Respect and obedience are actions and inflections that reflect honour. While honour is an internal attitude of respect, courtesy, and reverence, it should be accompanied by appropriate obedience. You can obey without honouring but you can’t honour without obeying and respecting
Honour your father and your mother. This is especially so for adult children. Young children honour their parents through their obedience, but what about adults?
How do we honour our parents in ways that are fitting?
• The most appropriate honour to our parents will come when we first ensure we understand God’s commandment
Honour to Whom Honour Is Due
Rom 13:7-Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.)
• Honouring parents is a form of honouring all authority, including God himself. Respecting our parents is the basis for every other kind of respect and every other kind of authority.
• Remember: - there is no ending point to this commandment—we are to honour our parents in childhood and adulthood, for we owe them a debt of honour that never ends. We will never outgrow our parents no matter how old we get
What does it means for us to honour our parents?? And should every parent be honoured??
May be you may feel.
- “Yes, but you don’t know my parents.
- You don’t know who they are or what they did to me.”
1. Forgive Them
This is very important. The fact is, there are no perfect parents. All parents have fallen far short of their children’s expectations and, in many ways, even their own expectations.
Our parents have sinned against us. They have made unwise decisions, they have had unrealistic expectations, and they have said and done things that have left us deeply wounded,for that reason, many children have grown in anger and bitterness. They find themselves unable to move past their parents’ mistakes or their parents’ sin.
We honour our parents by extending grace and forgiveness to them.
We can best honour our parents by forgiving our parents.
And this is actually possible, for we serve and imitate a forgiving Savior. Jesus was willingness to forgive the ones who had wounded him.
Luke 23:34. He cried out “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”
Who are we to withhold forgiveness from our parents No matter what they did or didn’t do. Honour your parents by extending grace and forgiveness to them.
2. Speak Well of Them
Choose to speak well of them and refuse to speak evil of them. We live at a time when it is considered noble to air our grievances, when it is considered therapeutic to speak openly our pains and grievances in public.
We think little of telling the world exactly what we think of our leaders, our bosses, our parents. Yet the Bible warns us that we owe honour and respect our parents. Our words have the power to extend honour or dishonour. In the Old Testament the penalty for cursing parents is the same as the penalty for assaulting them
Exodus 21:15-17
15 “Anyone who attacks[c] their father or mother is to be put to death.
16 “Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.
17 “Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.
Leviticus 20:9
“‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head
For the root sin is the same.
To curse parents or to strike parents is to violate the fifth commandment as well as the sixth. We need to speak well of our parents while they are alive and speak well of them after they have died, to speak well of them to our siblings, to our spouses, to our children. We need to speak well of them to our churches and communities, As Christian, speak well of your parents and refuse to speak evil of them even if they don’t deserve. After all does it add you value
3. Esteem [regard][recognize] them Publicly and Privately
You need to esteem both privately and publicly. [Parents’] need to see themselves in you.”
Parents long to see how they have impacted their children, how their children are a reflection of their strengths, their values. “You may not realize how important it is to give them credit where you can.
You don’t realize how critical it is just to say,
‘You know, everything I really ever learned about saving money I learned from you.’ To say,
‘You know, Dad, that was one thing you always taught me that I really, really appreciated’.”
These are simple statements that bring great joy and honour to our parents.
We can give such esteem privately in one-on-one conversation or we can do this publicly, perhaps through speeches or sermons or even conversations around holiday. Children can write a formal tribute to their parents, to present it to them and to read it aloud in their presence or wall hangings or a card. We can honour our parents by esteeming our parents.
4. Seek Their Wisdom
We honour our parents when we seek their wisdom through life’s twists and turns. The Bible constantly associates youth with folly and age with wisdom
Proverbs 20:29
The glory of young men is their strength,
gray hair the splendor of the old.
Job 12:12
Is not wisdom found among the aged?
Does not long life bring understanding?
and tells us that those who have lived longer lives have generally accumulated greater wisdom. We do well, then, to lean on them for understanding, to seek their input when faced with major decisions.
But either way, it honours our parents when we seek their help, even if in the end we cannot or must not need it.
5. Support Them
We can also honour our parents by supporting them with love and care. I think of David at a particularly low point in his life, weighed down by cares cried to God, “Do not cast me off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength is spent”
Psalm 71:9
Do not cast me away when I am old;
do not forsake me when my strength is gone.
David feared the combination of age and isolation, of being old and alone. So too do our elderly parents. It is nightmare. By giving them the assurance that we will not forsake them in their old age, we honour them
When we grow we gain our freedom and independence. Our parents age as they become feeble, they begin to lose their independence and strength
Ecclesiastes 12:1-12:
Just as they cared for us, we will care for them. This is our responsibility and it ought to be our joy. This is why personal presence and touch means a lot. Visit them regularly. They want you not necessarily your money.
Even if parents have no financial needs, “there is still a Christian obligation for hands-on, loving care. Nurses may be employed, but there must be more—the care cannot be done by proxy. Emotional neglect and abandonment is not an option, for such conduct ‘is worse than an unbeliever.’”
6.Provide for Them
Finally, we can honour our parents by providing for them financially.
In 1 Timothy 5 we find Paul telling Timothy how to honour widows within the church. As he provides instruction, he gives two important principles: Children are to make some return to their parents (4) and Christians who will not provide for family members are behaving worse than unbelievers (8).
When children are young, God expects parents to provide for them
2 Corinthians 12:14
Now I am ready to visit you for the third time, and I will not be a burden to you, because what I want is not your possessions but you. After all, children should not have to save up for their parents, but parents for their children.
When parents grow old and feeble, it is then that roles and responsibilities are reversed.
Christian sons and daughters are responsible for the [financial] care of widows and, of their helpless parents and grandparents. The raising of children requires tremendous sacrifice and it is only right that children make sacrifices for parents in return. We might also consider
Mark 7:9-13
And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe[a] your own traditions!
10 For Moses said, ‘Honour your father and mother,’[b] and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’[c]
11 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)—
12 then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. 13 Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.”
and Jesus’s harsh rebuke of the Pharisees for their refusal to care for their parents.
The Bible calls Christians to take special responsibility for providing for their family members. This command applies equally to the parents of young children and the children of elderly parents.
Conclusion the promise of long life is only give by parents by honouring them. The church or pastor can give other blessings but this one is specifically tied to honouring your parents
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