do our study in the Ten Commandments, we come to one where, I mean, literally, you could do ten weeks on this commandment. There's so much more packed in here, I think, than meets the eye. It says, And so, I'll tell you how I wanted to approach this commandment this week. As I said, you could do, you could do, we could do five weeks just on this commandment, but what we're doing each commandment just in a single service. And so if I was going to do this over five weeks, I would do these five messages, and that's what I want to do for you today. Each of these five points would represent an entire sermon that we could do over the fifth commandment that I think would really help us in a direction of what the scripture is teaching here. So I'm not going to do full sermons on these, but I'll give you the main point and then we'll kind of tease it out a little bit in the fifth commandment. So let's move in that fashion. Alright, so five points, the first one will be the longest, the last one will probably be the shortest, so bear with me. The first thing we would say about the fifth commandment is this, is that love and respect for people is inextricably bound up with love for God. We might put it this way. In Christianity, sociology is driven by theology. Sociology springs out of theology. What we believe to be true about God bears itself out in the world with how we treat other people. So here's the modern Western narrative. Here's what a lot of our neighbors here in Ridgefield or in Danbury would believe. They would say, as long as you live the golden rule, it really doesn't matter what you believe about God. So the golden rule, of course, is do unto others as you'd like them to do to you. And people say it doesn't matter what you believe about God as long as you treat other people in a golden rule fashion. As long as we treat people with respect, as long as we treat people with love, as long as we believe in human rights and civil rights and equality for all. We care about the weak, we care about the elderly, as long as we live the golden rule, it really doesn't matter what you believe about God. I think this is kind of a narrative you're finding, presidential debates, find it on lawn signs, we find it on slogans, it's probably in the corporate world, in the HR department. And before we kind of critique that worldview a little bit, let's first of all show our profound appreciation for something like that. I mean, you know, our neighbors could do far worse than this, wouldn't we all agree? We may not believe just like God and just like Christ, but I think it's great that we live in a world that values something like rights. Because a lot of the world and a lot of history hasn't valued this way. Now I'm gonna argue in a minute that our modern secular world is actually borrowing from Christianity. It's very convenient today to stand out and say, well, we believe in rights, we believe in equality, we believe weak people should not be taken advantage of. That's an easy thing to say, but that's easy to say after a good thousand years of Christianity in the Western world. So to a large degree, the secular world is borrowing from Christianity, but I appreciate that they're borrowing from Christianity. I'm gonna keep lending that capital if they want, because better that they borrow from a worldview like Christianity, of course I'm gonna say this is a Christian, than from something else. And so I think that's great. Our neighbors could do much worse, and I greatly appreciate people that think along these lines. But what the modern Western world fails to take into account is the why behind the what. Why treat people with respect? Why treat people with love? Why do we not put 60-year-olds in coal mines? Why do we stand against sex trafficking? Why do we think sexual harassment in the workplace is a bad thing? Why do we want people to be equal and get equal treatment under the law? We may agree on the what, the golden rule, but why do we value those things? And that's where we part company with the modern secular worldview to a large degree. Now let me just point this out real quick. There are three very popular reasons that people give for why we should treat other people with respect. Three reasons that the world would give, and I just want to point out that I think all three of these fall short. First, there's a group that says it's just self-evident. It's just, it's obvious. Obviously, we would treat people well. Obviously, we wouldn't put six-year-olds in coal mines. Obviously, we would want our nursing homes to be everything that they could be. And so, to a lot of people, fighting for love and fighting for justice and words like empathy and sympathy, those are just self-evident. In other words, everybody just naturally believes these things. It's only self-evident, I think, to a lot of our world because we grew up breathing this air of equality. But the idea that the rest of the world finds these kinds of values self-evident is frankly ridiculous. And to say that throughout history all people find these views self-evident is also naive. I'm rereading a great little book by Luke Ferry, Brief History of Christian Thought. Luke Ferry is a French philosopher. He's not a Christian, he's an avid secular humanist. But he talks about how modern people just take this for granted. You take for granted that six-year-olds shouldn't be in coal mines. You take for granted, you and I take for granted, and our neighbors do, that sexual harassment in the workplace is a bad thing. Child labor laws, Bill of Rights, Me Too movement, racial justice, these things are taken for granted. But Luke Ferry points out that it's easy to take things for granted after 1,500 or 1,000 years of a worldview that you've been living on. And so Ferry is arguing that the modern world is borrowing from Christianity. This is something that was birthed in Christianity that now people take for granted, and we want to level the foundation, and we think the house is going to stand. I just want to point out that this is not self-evident. At the street level, at the street level, people may just think this is self-evident. But no philosopher in the academy takes this as self-evident. They understand that not everybody in the world would think this way. Number two, some people say the state the state. We don't need God to protect our rights because the state protects our rights. I remember Bill Nye, the science guy, he was asked the questions, how does secularists determine what is right or wrong? And Bill Nye said, well, a consensus is the tribe or a vote or the state. And I thought to myself, I can't think of anything more horrifying than what the majority says is right is right. Did we learn nothing in the 20th century, the bloodiest century in the history of mankind? A hundred million people massacred under political regimes? that the majority would be the arbiter of truth is not only not true, it's irresponsible and it's dangerous, then some people say, well, it's from natural law. It's not self-evident, it's not from the state, but if you look around and observe nature and you look at natural law, then you'll see that we should have empathy and you'll see that we should have sympathy for each other. And so we respect each other because nature teaches us this regarding people of other races fighting for the rights of children, respecting women, respecting men. Natural law teaches us these things. That's what Annie Dillard believed. Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize winner, lived here in Connecticut, I think, and taught in Connecticut for some 20 years. She wrote the story about Tinker Creek, which is in the Blue Ridge of Virginia. And she lived by that creek, and she said, I want to be inspired by nature, and I want to get my life in harmony with natural law. But after observing that creek for a number of years, she came to realize and understand that if you really observe nature, it operates by the same principle, violence by the strong over the weak. To say that we learn empathy from nature means you've never admired or looked at a praying mantis. It means you don't realize what hammerhead sharks do to each other. You don't realize that in the real woods, like in the Disney movie, bears talk to each other and build houses and sit around the table. In the woods, they bite and devour each other. They're not to be played with. So Annie Dillard writes, I had thought to live by the side of the creek in order to shape my life and its free flow. I seem to have reached a point where I must draw the line. I must part ways with the only world I know." She says, we value this individual supremely and nature values him not a whit. There is not a people in the world that behaves as badly as the praying mantis. She goes on to say, we are freaks, the world is fine. What does she mean when she says we are freaks, the world is fine? She says the rest of the world lives by natural law, the strong eat the weak. If you have sympathy and you have empathy, your life is not in line with nature, your life is against what nature is doing. See, Annie Dillard believed that you could observe nature, and if you observe nature long enough, you'll have sympathy and love for your brothers and sisters in the world. But just look at nature, Annie Dillard says, and nothing could be further from the truth. So I'm just kind of teasing this out a little bit. Are we going on and off with the mic? Am I good? Yeah, okay. Yeah. Apologies. Do I need to click this one off? Yeah. All right, how's that? We good? Okay. Where do we love and respect people? It's certainly not self-evident, and it's certainly not from the state, and we're certainly not going to get it by observing nature. Where does it come from? For Christians, it comes from our theology. It comes from what we believe about God. And that's what the Ten Commandments are all about. In the Ten Commandments, the first four tell us to love God. The last six tell us that we have to have love for other people. And that sociology is built on the foundation of who God is. Jesus was asked, what are the greatest commandment? Love the Lord thy God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. There's a great little passage in the book of James. where James talks about people cursing each other. Remember this verse? And he says, with our mouth we bless the Lord our Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. You hear what James is saying? Why would you not curse somebody? Why would you not curse somebody when probably they deserve to be cursed? It's not because you're going to get in trouble at school. It's not because the HR department's going to come down on you, though that may be true. It's because they're created in the image of God. That's an image bearer of God. And so all this to say that the reason behind all moral behavior is God. When Joseph is seduced by his boss's wife in the book of Genesis, what does he say? He says, how can I sin against God? When David commits adultery and murder against you, oh Lord, have I sinned, Psalm 51. And see, all moral behavior, what stands behind that is not the state, and it's not nature, and it's not self-evident, it's God. And for the Christian, our sociology flows from our theology. Number two is this, family. Family is rooted in creation, but frustrated by the fall. That's what's implied in the fifth commandment. What do we mean by that? What we mean is that family is not just a good idea, family is a very godly idea. Remember when we talked about the fourth commandment, which is on work and rest? And we said that there's a rhythm that's built into the very fabric of the universe. Six days shall you work and rest. Whatever that rhythm looks like, it's a creation idea. Same with the fifth commandment. Family is built into the fabric of the very universe. It's more than a good idea, it's a godly idea. And I don't have to tell you that family comes under attack. You say, well, yeah, the left is attacking family. The right is attacking family. Family is being attacked. I was reading David Brooks in the Atlantic a few years ago. The nuclear family was a mistake. I mean, Brooks is not a secular humanist here, very conservative. He comes from both angles. But in our creation story, we know that God created everything. And of course, he created the family. The family is that original unit that God created. Family is not a good idea. Family is a godly idea built into the very fabric of the world that God created. And God has given authority to various offices in the world and various people, we realize that, but the important unit in the book of Genesis, the first one, is the family unit. Even a phrase, be fruitful and multiply, is one that was given to a family. Christians don't regard the family as a good idea, we regard it as a godly idea. And I don't have to go into all the socioeconomic studies that tell us that our society is healthy to the extent that we value things like family, right? And the fifth commandment, when it says, honor your mother and your father, and then it says you shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, the very first one is the who. It's the parents. Parents, you are your first, you're the first line of socialization for your children. And what's implied in the fifth commandment when he brings out the family before we broaden it to the rest of society, how important it is that parents learn to raise their children, nurture admonition of God, that's for the betterment of society. Family is not a good idea. Family in scripture is a godly idea. There's a passage where Eli in the Old Testament was a priest, and Eli is allowing his sons just to wreck havoc in the community, especially there at the temple area. They're sexually harassing people, they're throwing parties and causing all kind of violence and danger, and God holds Eli accountable, not for what his kids do, but for failing to socialize and discipline along the way. The family is not a good idea. The family is a godly idea. That said, the family has also been frustrated by the fall. There's an ideal in our world. I already mentioned that. The community is going to be healthy to the extent that we value family. But we also realize that in a fallen world, the ideal is not always possible. And we don't want to be naive about sin. We don't want to be naive about fallenness. God created family to be a blessing to the world. But in the fall, there are consequences that fall out in families. And so Adam and Eve, as soon as they fall into sin, they struggle in their relationship with each other. What's the first crime in the Bible? It's brother on brother crime. One kills the other. Noah has this bizarre episode when one of his children is cursed. Abraham passes off his wife as his sister. He has an affair with another woman and then expels them into the wilderness, her and her child. Isaac and Rebecca play favorites with Esau and Jacob. They create a rivalry that would last in the brothers' lives for as long as they lived. Jacob has multiple wives and there's all kinds of frustration and strife, all kinds of anger. We're still in the book of Genesis. We haven't even got out of Genesis and there's all this chaos in the family. In a fallen world, we as Christians realize things happen, whether it's sin or consequences of the fall. Now this is where I'm going with this point. If you fell asleep, wake up just for another minute. As Christians, we have to do the hard work of holding two thoughts at the same time. Number one, as Christians, we value the family. We value the ideal. We want to work with husbands and wives to see reconciliation. We want to work with children and see them extend forgiveness and love to their parents. We want to work with families. We serve single parent families, but we also serve ministries that help keep the family together because we value the family. At the same time, this is our second thought, we want to realize that for whatever reason, things don't always fall out that way for people. And we never want people to feel like they're second-class citizens because they're not a part of a family. They're part of God's family. And they're part of the church. And we extend the same love and respect to everybody. So we want nothing less in our community and in our churches than healthy families. At the same time, we want to show love and support to those that, for whatever reason, don't have that ideal situation. As Christians, we've got to do the hard work of holding two thoughts at the same time. And honestly, sometimes we're not so good at that. Sometimes we value and talk so much about the family that if you're not a part of a healthy family, you feel like you can't belong to the church. You feel like something's morally deficient. On the other hand, sometimes we're so concerned about not making somebody feel that way that we fail to uphold the importance of what God says about family in scripture. So we have to do the hard work of holding two thoughts at the same time. Okay, closer to the fifth commandment, number three, It is God's will that people honor parents and other such authorities. There are four ways church history that Christians have historically understood the fifth commandment. All right, I'll give them to you real quick. Number one, showing value and dignity to parents. In our western world, elderly people are virtually disregarded socially. They're hopelessly out of touch. They're a burden on society. At best, we kind of maximize their blind spots and minimize their contributions. That's a view of older people in our community. When it says, honor your mother and your father, that's not a command to little children. That's a command to adults to honor their elderly parents, right? And so what does that mean? Well, the word honor, the Old Testament word is chabad. That's a word that means value. or weight or heaviness, it's a tough word to translate. It means to take your parents seriously, to give them priority in your life. It is true that we treat everybody with respect, but the fifth commandment says, mark out your parents for a certain unique kind of respect. I want you to picture with me, Will, if you go into your attic. You don't have an attic, go into the basement. You don't have either, you're in a closet. You pull out an old box, and in that old box you find all kinds of old pictures about when you grew up. You take out those old pictures, you're rifling through them. You value all those pictures. Look, there's Uncle Louie on the seesaw. Wow, I remember Uncle Louie. And there's Grandpa George eating, I don't know, corn on the cob. You value all these pictures. But in that box, there is one picture that really reaches out to you. It's a picture of you, maybe when you were really young with your parents. And so you take that picture out of the box, and you frame it, and you put it on the wall. You're not going to let anything happen to that picture and you want to put it right out there. What have you just done? You value all the pictures, but you've marked this one out in a little bit more serious way. That's the fifth commandment. We value everybody in the community. We value all the elderly in the community. We value all men, women, young, old, but there is a special put this one on the wall of the fifth commandment. Mark this one out for special respect and special dignity. That's the idea here. Isaiah shows us the opposite of this. The people will be oppressed. Everyone and everyone by his neighbor, the child will be insolent towards the elder and base towards the honorable. In other words, in a dysfunctional society, the young disrespect the old. That's what Isaiah is saying. Now, I want to show you something about the commandment that I don't think we're going to see, because we're modern people, but in the ancient world, there's one word here that would jump off the page. Anybody want to guess what word it is? Honor your father and your father. Who would do that? Because in the ancient world, this is patriarchy. You honor your father. Your father is everything. The father and the firstborn son, that is the priority relationship in the ancient world. That is the family. That is everything. But that's not what the commandment says. Honor your father and your mother. There's a radical equality given to the parents here in the ancient world in the scriptures. Something that is unparalleled throughout the ancient Near East. And I'll show you how unparalleled it is. When you get a chance, you can flip over to Leviticus 19.3. I'll read it to you, though. It says, each of you must respect your mother and your father. That's even more radical than the fifth commandment, because the fifth commandment said, honor your father and your mother. Leviticus 19 said, honor your mother and your father. It puts mother before father. Leviticus 19.3 is so radical that if you go to ancient translations of Leviticus 9.3, like there's a Greek translation, it's called the Septuagint. There's an old Latin translation. They mistranslate this verse. They continue to put father before mother despite the fact that in the original, mother comes before father, but they put father first. I don't know if it's out of habit. I don't know if they couldn't believe that somebody would write it that way. But what you have here is something so incredible and so powerful that the child is not just supposed to show honor and respect to his father in some patriarchal society, but both to father and mother, and Leviticus goes a step further and says, do it to your mother first, then your father. Something crazy, radical, and important that we don't want to miss. What does it mean to honor our parents? We honor him in word, we honor him in attitude, in thanksgiving, in prayer, even willing to listen to their counsel. The Western experience. Years ago, I read this quote by Mark Twain, and I thought, this is the Western experience. It was my experience. Maybe it was yours. When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around me. But when I was 21, I was astonished how much that man learned in seven years. That is the Mark Twain experience. And if you're like me, you had that. But you know, it'd be great if we didn't have to go through that. So number one, it's talking about respect for our elderly, respect for parents. It's also, by the way, talking about support. In the ancient world, this would have overtones of practical support, financial support. that you would help your parents. They helped you early in life, and of course, the idea is you would help them later in life. That's going to be carried out different culture to culture. We realize that. But you know, if you understand the fifth commandment, remember when Ruth says to Naomi, where you go, I will go. Your gods will be my gods. Where you lodge, I will lodge. At the heart of that is actually the fifth commandment. That is Naomi saying, I am adopting you as my mother and I am going to provide for your physical needs. And what happens there in the book of Ruth is she goes out and what? She does what Naomi can't do for herself. She gleans in the field and she brings back the food and she feeds her mother-in-law. What Ruth is doing in the book of Ruth is she's fulfilling the fifth commandment. Jesus chides the Pharisees for this. What the Pharisees would do is they would have a bunch of money, or they'd have a gold ring, and they would dedicate it to God. You know what it meant to dedicate to God? It meant nothing. They would dedicate it to God, and they would keep it on their finger. And if anybody was in need, they'd say, I can't give you this, this one belongs to God. That's a crafty way of holding onto your stuff. And so their parents are in dire straits, and the Pharisees would say, I would take care of them, but I've given all that to the Lord. And Jesus chides him for this. He says, honor your mother and your father. What good is this when you devote something to God and your mother and father are destitute out there? What happens in these resurrection passages and where Elijah raises the widow's son? What's implied in that passage is the fifth commandment. He is now, she is destitute. He is now able to provide for her. First Timothy 5.8, anyone that does not provide for their relatives is denied the faith. A third way to think about this commandment, not only honor and respect, not only support where we can, but traditions of godliness. And I'm just going to touch on this. Keeping the fifth commandment, the parents are the mediator of the covenant. They're the ones that hear the promises of God and hand them down to their children. To honor your parents means you hand down that godly tradition to your own children. That's how the church has historically understood this. And the Westminster Larger Catechism applies this to honoring all of authority. And so there's a lot of different ways this is to be kept, but in God's will, it's God's will that we honor parents and we honor the elderly. I'm gonna move real quick through these last ones, but I wanna touch on them. Number four, honoring parents is an act of worship to God. It's an act of worship to God. Now I've said a lot about honoring parents. But I realize that for a lot of people in our culture, when the fifth commandment is read, you cringe. I get that. Because your experience with your parents wasn't such a good one. And for some, it's not the Hallmark commercial. It's not like everybody gathering around the table with smiles. It's contentious. It's angry. There's a lot of bitterness and strife. For some, there are patterns of abuse that have taken place. Some haven't talked to family in years. And I get it's not a Hallmark commercial. It's not always the man or woman from the Army coming home, surprising his family at Christmas, and everybody smiles. We live in a real world, and we realize there's a lot of brokenness. So how do we honor morally deficient parents? And I just want to touch on this for a minute. How do you honor the morally deficient parent? Well, I'm going to give you two thoughts. The first one is sometimes, and I say this practically, sometimes the best way to honor your parents is by honoring them from a distance. And I'm saying that after many conversations with people who came from patterns of abuse, And a lot of people come from very contentious families. And there are times I have conversations with them and they're like, I don't know how to do the fifth commandment, you know, with my, and I'm like, do the fifth commandment from a distance. You know what's a great book, you ever want to read it? When You've Been Wronged by Erwin Lutzer. And we did a book study on this, When You've Been Wronged, incredibly practical book. And he's got a great passage in there about David and Saul, that Saul keeps throwing spears at David, and David has to keep forgiving Saul. And he says, what's the first thing that David should do after he forgives Saul? You know what the answer is? Duck. Get out of the way of the spear. And that's Lutzer's way of saying, in a very metaphorical way, you have to learn to honor authorities without continuing to thinking you have to stand continually in the seat where there's continued abuse taking place. Find a way to honor authority from a distance if you must. For some of you, that means managing the relationship. That means if every time you get with your family, it's contentious and it's angry, then we have to limit. Maybe we have to find shorter visits. We have to find ways to do Zoom calls, but doing everything we can to honor it at the same time, realize there's real brokenness here. But all I have to say, and here's where I wanted to get, and this is where John brought his parable, the most important thing we can say here is to honor parents is not because of the parent's behavior, but because of the rescue of God. That's the fifth commandment. I have delivered you from Egypt. Now you honor your parents. That's the motivation. In other words, they're not called to honor their parents because their parents are cool, or because their parents provided or didn't provide, or because it's best for society. Honoring parents is an act of worship to God. It's an act of worship to God. It's what the fifth commandment teaches. The last one is this. Sermon five, we would say Jesus is the keeper of the fifth commandment for his people. Jesus is the fifth commandment. We live in a world of broken relationships. Every one of us, to some degree, is gonna have a strained relationship with parents. Sometimes it's a very small strain where love covers a multitude of sins. Sometimes it's all the way at the other extreme where there's a lot of pain in the relationship and a lot of history. And we have to learn to kind of think through. And when we start to own the things and the attitudes that we have, that can only bring us to the cross. We can't make somebody else repent. We can't make somebody else forgive. But as we go to Jesus as his people, we find full forgiveness and we find one that kept the fifth commandment for us. The New Testament teaches us that Jesus is the great fulfiller of the fifth commandment. He did not come to abolish the law, he came to fulfill it. And there we find that wonderful scene in John chapter 19, where the son of God is hanging on a cross, nails spiked, his head still bleeding from the crowns of thorns, they're about to thrust a spear through his side, And he looks down at his helpless mother, Mary, and next to her stands his friend, the Apostle John. And he looks at John, and he looks at Mary, and he looks back at John and says, behold, your mother. What is Jesus saying there? He's saying, John, I'm about to die. You take care of my mother. Blows my mind. It's amazing to think. that if there was one person in the world at that moment that should think all about himself, it was Jesus. But Jesus is thinking about his mother. He's thinking about her needs, thinking about what she needs, even while he's dying on a cross. That is Jesus honoring his mother and his father, even unto his last breath. You and I, we fall short. We have strained relationships. But when we go to Jesus, we can seek his forgiveness. We can seek restoration. And we see that Christ kept that commandment on our behalf so that we can have fellowship with the father and with each other. Lord God, thank you for your grace. Thank you for your love. Seems to be so much packed into this fifth commandment. We need your help. We need your strength. We ask you to forgive our sins. Lord, forgive us for breathing the air of this world where so often our world views the elderly as out of touch. They can't contribute. Maximizing the blind spots Not showing the value and respect that you call us to do. As your people, I pray we'd be countercultural. Showing love, respect and honor to mother and father. And Lord, for some that means doing it from a distance that's hard to do. But you can give him the grace. You can give him the strength. And I pray give him wisdom. For others, that means seeking your forgiveness and running to the cross. Where we see Jesus. fulfilling the fifth commandment while dying on a cross. Lord, we've disobeyed the fifth commandment for much less than dying on a cross. We've broken the fifth commandment because we were grumpy. We broke it because we just wanted to speak our peace. Jesus kept it even while dying on the cross. That's the savior for us. That's the savior we need. So when you, we do not have to feel guilty about our relationships. No, Lord, we are whole and we are free because of Christ and all glory is yours in Jesus name. Amen.