-Honor your father and mother. Both of them. They are partners in raising the children, in raising them up in the instruction and fear of the Lord. But, ‘honor’. What does it look like to honor your parents? We honor the Father and the Son, we honor the king, we honor widows. It means to value as precious and costly, to attach weight or value to something. We pay attention to and esteem it highly because of its worth and prestige. And of course there are those things - widows, parents - which may require a concerted effort on our part. Because let’s be honest, in our flesh, when we are younger we are tempted see parents as a nuisance, cosmic killjoys, uncool. As we get older and get on with our lives they can become an afterthought, still a nuisance, increasingly flawed, eventually breaking down as death encroaches. But not so, says Paul. As children, we obey our parents. We attach weight to their words, we listen to them and do what they say - this finds favor with God. This is how He designed it. Children must learn to follow and love the Lord from their parents. But as adults we still are to honor them. We still listen to them. They still have incredible value and worth. And we care for them (cf Matthew 15.4-8, Leviticus 19.3, Deuteronomy 27.16, Ezekiel 22.7, Proverbs 19.26, Proverbs 23.22, Proverbs 30.17). We see the contrast painted - honor, value, esteem, and curse, despise (Leviticus 20.9, Exodus 21.17, Proverbs 20.20, Proverbs 30.11). Remember we have been looking at God’s design for marriage and family, and how the fall has adversely affected that. Part of the curse is that we curse our parents. We disobey them when we are younger (emerging from the womb thus inclined as surely as sparks fly upward), and we increasingly dismiss and disrespect them as we grow into adolescence and adulthood.
-And yet the promise stands, ...in order that you may have a good and long life. Mr Spock’s dream come true, this. You want to live long and prosper, in other words? Here you go. The verse here is actually is the second version of this, the 5th commandment. The initial version found in Exodus 20.12 (the Mount Sinai version) does not mention life going well, only life lived long. And I suppose that a long-yet-unpleasant life is nothing to which one would normally aspire. But then when Moses repeats it some 40 yrs later in Deuteronomy 5.16 (the across-the-Jordan version), he adds the part about a good life, about ‘it’ going well with you. There we find this second phrase used at the end of Moses’ recounting of their journeys and expounding of the Law which constitute the first four chapters of Deuteronomy (4.40). Moses then repeats the phrase (that ‘it’ may go well with you) 8 more times in that book. The context is 40 years after the people failed to trust God and did NOT do what He asked, and it did NOT go well for them, wandering in the wilderness the way they subsequently had to do. Now Moses is addressing God’s people who are in a season where that entire older generation (of first-hand eye-witnesses) has died, and the Word and works of God will be passed down to a generation which was not there to see or hear it. These youngers must pay close attention to their parents, learn those lessons and teachings and learn to trust and follow the Lord. From their parents. So that it may in fact go well for them and that they may live longer. Generally speaking,
-And ‘it’ is everything - survival, relationships, overall peace and well-being - all that pertains to life as God intended. Note however that ours is no guarantee of prosperity nor of perfect health. The only guarantee this side of heaven, with all the attendant brokenness of life, is death. But joy is on the menu, ours for the taking. Joy is guaranteed conditionally IF you follow this command. And it is joy which enables my soul to declare, it is well. It is well, come what may. That it may go well with you? Joy is what you want. Tired? Sick? Stressed? Bothered? Hurt? Angry? Unhappy? Dissatisfied? Joy is what you want. And so start here: obey and honor your parents - that sets you on the right path.
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