RETURNING TO HONOR

Exodus 20:12, Hebrews 12:15-17, Heidelberg Catechism Q+A 104

Scripture Passages:

Ex 20:12 "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

Hebrews 12:15 See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. 16 See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. 17 Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears.

Children's Message:

Need root of Quack Grass. Ask for identification. Define. "If you plant this in the soil, what do you think will happen? Describe how the root will first grow silently under the soil. Then it will shoot up blades of grass and spread until is wrecks the look of the entire garden. Question - do you think it is a good idea to plant it? -(No). If I already have, what is the best way to get rid of it? (Dig it up - a lot of hard work - but a lot of hard work that is worth it.)

Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer #104

What is God's will for us in the fifth commandment?

That I honor, love, and be loyal to my father and mother and all those in authority over me. That I obey and submit to them, as is proper, when they correct and punish me; And also that I be patient with their failings - for through them God chooses to rule us.

Summary of previous messages:

1. This command is a call to honour on the part of parents - character, courage and conscience.¹

2. This command is a call to obey, be loyal to, respect parents and other authorities because God rules us through them

3. Last Sunday morning we looked at the effect of buried anger when we looked at what Hebrews teaches us about bitter roots. Bitterness is buried anger at the unfair use of power (aimed at those who have power over us or authorities). It has the power to shape our character causing us to hurt ourselves and others, it has the effect of distorting our perception of others. Hebrews calls this "defiling many." Bitterness also has the power to keep us from relationships, especially relationships with authorities or those who are more powerful than we are. There is no authority higher than God. If the root of bitterness makes us avoid especially God, we might miss the grace of God.

Again I have received a lot of feed back from last Sunday morning's message about bitter roots. It seems clear, in a culture in which pop psychology has blamed parents for all of children's ailments and troubles, we need to return to the word of God, which calls a spade a spade, and recognize the destructive power of bitterness in the human heart. It may be that the parents of the two young men who went on a killing rampage this past week failed them many ways, maybe they were parents hardly worthy of honour, but one thing is very clear from these boys' diary - bitter anger left in the heart to grow to hatred was at the root of the acts which most of us simply cannot understand.

We as a culture, starting in the church need to turn back to honouring our parents and others in authority. When it comes to roots of bitterness, the heart of honouring is to forgive our parents, to forgive those in authority over us.

So this morning, I want to talk about pulling up bitter roots for a few minutes, because the most authentic expression of honouring or attributing worth to our parents is to do what we don't feel like doing. Forgiving them can be a difficult and long journey. Let me talk about the journey of forgiving.

Forgiving starts with the recognition that we have been hurt and that hurt has result in feelings that include anger or bitterness. We don't dig out quack grass unless we recognize that it is there. We don't dig up quack grass unless we recognize that it is not wanted. As we pointed out last Sunday morning, the first stage in getting rid of a bitter root is recognizing how destructive it is in our lives.

Once we know we have bitter roots and we want to get rid of them, the question is, how do we go about doing that?

Getting rid of bitter roots within our hearts starts with a decision - the decision to forgive . This is a decision of the will to forgive , a saying in the heart even though we don't feel it in our emotions even to the slightest degree: "I forgive!"

Now if you have struggled with a root of bitterness in your heart, you know that forgiving and getting rid of that bitter root is easier said than done. When it comes to bitter roots, forgiving is not just a one time decision just like uprooting quack grass is not simply digging a small hole, finding a quack root, pulling it out, and saying you have solved the quack grass problem. Like quack grass, the bitter root grows and spreads and shapes all different aspects of our character. As a result forgiving takes a lot of digging! Every time we find another expression of that root of anger, we need to pull it out and forgive, again, and again, and again, until the bitter root is pulled out, every little tendril. When Jesus called us to forgive 70 X 7 times, it is not without reason that the person to forgive is a brother. The need to forgive repeatedly occurs in our closest relationships, in family, parents and siblings. The decision to forgive becomes the process of forgiving, some call it peeling the onion, layer by layer. Sometimes we have to cry with each layer we peel. This does not happen overnight, it takes time and a lot of effort, something like pulling up quack grass.

Some people are of the mind that when it comes to these past experiences: "Let buried dogs lie!" They feel that digging them up just causes trouble. But I suggest to you that truly honouring our parents insists that we deal with our anger and forgive. You see honour attaches to what we really and truly are. Unless we deal with these past issue of anger, we will not have the capacity to honour our parents for who they really are, and if the bitter root is large and expansive, we will not be able to see what is worthy of honour in our parents. Forgiving enables us to see our parents in a different light, it enables us to see the good qualities in our parents apart from the bad, it enables us to give honour where honour is due. But that perception can only start when we have taken the log of bitterness out of our own eyes. To forgive our parents is the highest form of honouring them.

To return to honour the road starts with forgiving those who with their power have treated us unfairly, our imperfect parents.

The second point that I want to make this morning is related to the first because it can only follow the first point. The second point is to stop our distancing. There are times when distancing in relationships is very appropriate. For example in cases of abuse, it is very important for the child to get away from the abuser. In fact to separate in that way is to honour the parent because it is a way of holding them accountable to a higher authority, namely God.

The distancing that I am talking about this morning is the distancing that results from unresolved issues. As children, we do that in so many ways. One of the ways is what has been called "throwing out the baby with the bath water." Because our parents were imperfect, we choose to disassociate with many of the good things they stood for. In a time when like never before, the church is losing its spiritually hungry younger generation to the world, what we are seeing is for a large part, a younger generation throwing out the baby with the bath water. Their parents were far from perfect. The children in unforgiveness have thrown out not only their parents imperfections, but those things which their parents have done right also. A recent statistic indicated that 80% of those in their 20s and 30s had a high degree of spiritual interest but there was a very low percentage of these who were interested in traditional Christianity. The danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water is that we become driven to reinvent the wheel. The many and profound blessings that our parents have given to us are simply forsaken, like Esau who despised his birthright, today some of us are despising our birthright, we destine ourselves for a life of wondering.

Return to honour by returning to those things in the lives of our parents that were values worth building our lives on.

Part of that is obviously is to return to God. It was God who through imperfect parents ruled us. God is the source of blessing - so that it may go well with us in the land the Lord our God is giving to us. If we throw out God because of our parents imperfection, how poor we are! So it is so very true, it is in forgiving our parents and working through our issues that we once again discover the infinite grace of God.

Finally - to return to honour is to do unto our parents as you would have had them do unto you. We think we are people who live by the golden rule, but we excuse ourselves from the golden rule to our parents because of past injustices. The truth is, we are to do to our parents as we would have had them do to us.

A story is told in good book The Ten Commandments: the significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life , by Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel. Pp. 170-171) which demonstrates this point well.

""Once upon a time, when families lived in extended units, with children and grandparents living together there was a home in which a man lived with his son, daughter in law and grandchildren. The meals they ate together were always a wonderful time of sharing. As the years went by, the man's health began to decline. He couldn't help as much around the house, and his hands began to shake. He sometimes would spill his food on the table or even on the rug.

One day when he was shaking particularly badly the spoon he was holding in his bowl broke, spilling the food all over. The son said to his father in anger and frustration, "Dad, I can't take this any longer. Can't you control yourself? You will just have to eat by yourself in your room." And so the son gave his father a wooden bowl that could not break, and for every meal would bring food to the father's room.

Time went by and the meals at the dining-room table were much quieter and neater. The old man was very lonely eating his meals in his room, but he didn't say anything because he didn't want to make his son even more upset.

Several weeks later the son came home and found on of his children making something out of wood.

"What are you making?" he asked.

"I am making a wooden bowl," answered the young boy.

"It is very nice, but what will you use if for?"

"Oh, it is not for me, Dad, it is for you."

"For me? Wonderful! Maybe we can keep fruit in it," said the dad.

The son answered, "It is not for you yet, Dad. I am saving it for when you get older and your hands begin to shake. When I see it is to hard for you to eat with us, then I will give it to you so you can eat in your room."

The father silently walked into the house and went to his own father's room. "Dad, I'm so sorry for what I have done. How many years did you take care of me, assuring me that I would grow out of my clumsiness? Never once did you make me eat a meal in my room; and look and what I have done to you. Can you ever forgive me for not giving you the respect you deserve?"

That night the old man returned to the dining-room table. Though the table was a little less quiet and a little less neat, the family was whole."

When we forgive, we both honour and enable honour. When we forgive, we live by the Spirit of this command: "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

¹Taken from The Ten Commandments: the significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life , by Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rabbi Stewart Vogel.

Back to Sermon Index Page