Honor Your Mother

 Three mothers were talking about how devoted their sons were to them. One

bragged, ““My son is so devoted to me, for my birthday he gave me an all-expenses-

paid cruise around the world.”” The second boasted, ““That’’s nothing. Mine threw a

huge catered affair for me, and he flew in all my friends from the East.”” The third

woman smirks at them both. ““Without a doubt, my son is the most devoted. Three times

a week he goes to his therapist. A hundred and thirty dollars a session he pays. And

what does he talk about the whole time? Me!””

On May 9, 1914 by an act of Congress, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the

second Sunday in May as Mothers day, a day for public expression and remembrance of

our Mothers. But 3500 years earlier God said, “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy

days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

The laws of God do not seem to be equally challenging. Some may seem to be

easier to keep than others, but I have found that the laws of God point to potential areas

of weakness in our lives. If God set it down as a law, then it must be an area in which by

nature we are prone to failure, for by nature we break every law of God and this law is

no exception. All the way from You shall have no other gods before ME to you shall not

covet your neighbors possessions there is no law that the society of fallen man has not

broken, reworded, watered down, replaced, changed or simply ignored.

Jesus argued this point in the sermon on the mount. Matt. 5:21-22; 27,28. In both of

these examples Jesus goes to the heart of the issue. What is it that leads one to

murder? It begins in the heart with anger, jealousy, contempt, impatience or some other

issue. It was anger that moved Cain to murder his brother. The term Raka denotes an

attitude of contempt and is probably the motivation for the cruel treatment and killing of

many of the African/Americans in the earlier years of our country. Fool is a term that

means empty headed or idiot, a term that I used last week when a thoughtless driver

pulled out in front of me as I was driving my truck. After thoughts of what I could do with

80,000 pounds of truck to that car in front of me, it occurred to me that I was feeling

what is now called road rage, and then Jesus words in Matthew 5 came to mind. And

yes I did confess my sin, and I have to tell you that I’m glad God is so ready to forgive!

Jesus argues His point again in Matt. 15:1-6...

We must infer by this passage that at least part of God’s intention in the law “honor

your father and mother” had to do with financial support in their old age if necessary.

Some of Jesus audience in this passage had made a loophole in the law. It’s a rather

technical issue but allow me to illustrate it like this. Supposing you had an apartment in

your home that you used to generate supplementary income. At some point your

parent... no, lets change that... your mother-in-law finds herself in a situation where she

needs financial assistance for her living accommodations. Because you are frustrated

with your mother in law you decide to tell her that you’ve promised the Lord that you

would dedicate the proceeds of the apartment to the missions pledge you made at

church. So you can’t really help her right now without robbing from the Lord.

Thus vs 5... By this action you make the command of God of no effect, and incur

Jesus accusation in vs 7.... It again comes back to a heart issue.

Jesus brought up the issue of honoring parents multiple times in His ministry, and

again later through the Apostle in the epistles, so it must be an important issue to Him.

How important is it to us? Do we honor our parents, and on this Mothers Day specifically

do we honor our mothers?

One girl was struggling with this issue as she reviewed how unreasonable and

difficult her parents were, but she also had a desire to honor the Lord, so as she argued

with herself on this issue she reasoned that, the Bible DOES say "Honor thy mother and

father." Yes, said the other side of the argument, but I wonder if the Lord actually knows

my parents and if so does this still apply to me. She finally concludes, It doesn’t say,

"Honor thy mother and father if they are worthy of being honored." It doesn’t say, "Honor