It’s an amazing thing – but God places a very high premium on children honouring their parents. And that’s not always easy. I mean for starters – what does “honour” actually mean here in the 21^st century, mm?

I asked my 16 year old daughter Melissa, the other day what she thought the word “honour” means. She immediately responded, "It means obedience." "Mmm," I said, “That's part of it but not the whole lot." "What do you mean?" She asked, "Well," I said, "Your Mum and I honour you, don't we?" She hadn't quite thought of it that way. She looked around the room and said, "You're right, you do."

Honour is a two way thing, parents honour their children by loving them and caring for them and doing things for them and driving them to where they want to go, providing for them. The list is as long as your arm and children are supposed to honour their parents but exactly what does that mean?

We've all heard of the Ten Commandments I guess, it's an interesting list. Moses, in the Old Testament, (you can read about it in the book of Exodus) went up to Mount Sinai and received the Law, the Jewish Law from God. And the Jewish Law is the first five books of the Old Testament; Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and there were 613 commandments and prohibitions in the Jewish Law. And I guess the Ten Commandments that Moses received up on Mount Sinai are kind of like an executive summary of all of those 613. You can read the Ten Commandments in Exodus, chapter 20. Now let’s just take a moment to go through the list.

The first commandment is that:

You shall have no other Gods before me.

That’s fair enough.

The second commandment says:

Don't make any idols.

The third one is:

Don't use the Lords name in vain.

And the fourth one is that:

The 7th day, the Sabbath, is a day of rest, and you have to set that apart for the Lord.

Now you think of those first 4 commandments and they're all about our relationship with God. They're about loving and honouring God and resting in Him. Those first 4 commandments define our relationship with Lord our God. Okay, what's the fifth commandment? The very next one is:

Honour your Father and your Mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you.

Isn't that amazing? The very first thing He does after defining our relationship with Him, the very first thing is to say, "Honour your Father and your Mother." And it's the only commandment with a blessing attached to it. "Honour your Father and Mother so that you may live long in the land that the Lord has given to you."

Mmm! And this one comes immediately before the ones that we might consider to be the real biggies.

Don't murder.
Don't commit adultery.
Don't steal.
Don't lie.
Don't be jealous of what your neighbour has.

Do you think that God thinks this is important? There are 613 prohibitions and commandments in the Jewish Law. The executive summary is the Ten Commandments, the first 4 of those is about us and God, number five is about honouring your parents and there's a blessing attached. Mmm, I think God's got it very high on His priority list.

Well, what does it actually mean to honour your parents? Let’s just unpack this commandment, this 5th commandment just a little bit. What does honour your parents actually mean? Well I guess there are 3 dimensions, firstly to prize them highly. If you read Proverbs, chapter 4 and verse 8 it uses this word honour, it says:

Wisdom when sought above everything else and prized more highly than all else will bring honour to its seekers.

You know, as kids often we, I know as a teenager I didn't prize my parents highly, I didn't value them and parents do so much for their children. When the kids, just kind of in their hearts, are grateful and value and prize them that brings honour to the parents. I just wish someone had told me that when I was a teenager.

The second dimension is caring, showing affection for them. If you read psalm 91, verse 15:

God's honouring of individuals is shown by His care in being with them and delivering them from trouble.

You know something I never did as a teenager; I never actually showed affection to my parents. I never actually cared for them, I never actually looked and said, "You know something, my Mum is tired, I might make her a cup of tea." I know when my daughter, Melissa, sometimes she'll say, "Can I make you a cup of tea?" and I think that is SO nice that she sees that I'm tired and that she offers to make me a cup of tea. What is says is she cares about me and that brings honour to me as her father.

And the third dimension is showing respect or fear or revering them. I mean, you know something; parents need to be respected by their children. I know I often didn't agree with the decisions my parents made. I often didn't want to do the things my parents told me to do but something that we so often fail to do, as teenagers and I know I did, was simply to show respect for the authority that my parents had in my home.

Ephesians chapter 6, verse 1 says this:

Obey your parents.

But immediately and necessarily it qualifies that and says:

In the Lord.

In other words, parents are to be shown honour but nowhere is there word to rival, to be a substitute for God’s word.

Isn't it so opposite of what teenagers want to do? The notion that they should prize their parents highly, the notion that they should care and show affection for them, the notion that they should show respect and fear or reverence for their parents is so against where society is going at the moment. "Oh, they don't know anything." I remember not even wanting to be seen in public with my parents.

You remember what it was like growing up? Moving from this complete dependence on our parents to independence and its hard because we're trying to make our own way and we're trying to set up who we are and so often we want to rebel against our parents but it seems to me that there are two ways of growing up – the right way and the wrong way.

The wrong way is using our growing independence, our desire for independence as an excuse to rebel against our parents. And the right way, the right way is to learn to honour them second only to God Himself.

I'll take you back to the Ten Commandments. The first four are about our relationship with God, the very next one is that we should honour our father and our mother. I heard a Christian psychologist on the radio recently who was saying that it's natural for boys to hurt their mothers, it's part of growing up. They need to cut the umbilical cord and that's going to involve rebellion.

Well I agree that boys need to separate from their mothers to become men, it's actually a very important stage of development but in doing that, they should always honour their mother. You know why? Because if a teenage boy doesn't learn to honour his mother, he will never know how to honour his wife.

Some people never grow up; some people never learn to honour their mother and their father. When we learn to do that there are huge blessings in that. When we honour our parents, their natural desire is to bless us, that’s what they want to do and when we honour them the blessing flows naturally from parent to child as it's meant to do and when we honour them, God blesses us because it's the way that God set it up. When we honour our mother and our father the blessing just flows.