Honoring vs obeying parents

Short teachings from Hillcrest Church further exploring Sunday's teachings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, uh Tim here. Hope you are doing well. And we are diving deep into the 10 words of life. So yesterday we talked about honor your father and mother. And I was just going to follow up some on that. You know, in this first episode this week, I thought I'd just touch on like what well, this is how I'm going to look at it in scripture, and then I'll talk about how I think that might apply to our life. But scripture has multiple examples of children of children, and I don't mean young children, I just mean like the offspring of parents whose parents are in some ways not walking in the way of God. Like they're they're unrighteous, they're idolaters, they're wicked in some way. And scripture has multiple examples of children kind of operating in those circumstances. And um and I think and I and I think that can be helpful. And it's not a direct one-to-one analogy, but I do think it can speak into our because I think one of the questions that comes up is, hey, what does honor your father and mother mean I always need to obey them? I always need to do what they what they say? Um what do I do when if they're if they don't love the Lord or if they they they say they love the Lord, but they're living in really uh inappropriate ways. And they um like how do I how do I interact with that? And so I think uh I think scripture gives some hints uh towards this. I'll just give um a few a few examples uh that come to mind here from scripture. Um number one, uh Judges six, uh flip there now. Uh Judges six is the story of um Gideon and uh and um Gideon uh an angel of the Lord appears to him, and Gideon's dad has an altar to Baal and Ashra pole. And the angel of the Lord says um to tells Gideon to tear down his father's altar to Baal and cut down the ashrool, and then build a proper altar to Yahweh God on top, um, using the wood for the ashropole as a burnt offering. And so uh so he does this at night, does this in hiding, people find out about it, they're very upset. Um uh but I think uh uh and then the story goes on, Gideon ends up being uh a judge delivering uh the Israelites from the Midianites, but the whole story begins with uh essentially Gideon's dad is caught in idolatry, and God directs Gideon uh to resist the idolatry of his father, um very directly and concretely. Um so story number one, um let's see, story number two that comes to mind is uh Jonathan and um Saul and David. So uh if you know the story of uh Jonathan, Saul, and David, um Saul is king of uh Israel, um and uh because of his disobedience, God rejects him as king. Through this prophet Samuel, God anoints David to be the next king. Uh but David will not take the life of the current king. He trusts that into God's hands. Meanwhile, David and Jonathan build this great friendship, and Saul is not so honorable as David. Saul is literally trying to murder David in different ways, and Jonathan, in in, you know, in a way that you could say deceitfully, goes behind his dad's back to warn David and protect David and to keep him from being killed by his father Saul. And again, it's this picture of um of a of a parent um choosing this path of wickedness and the child saying, No, I'm gonna do the right thing. Um Jonathan never uh actively dishonors his father, but clearly um for Jonathan to honor Saul is not the same thing as some kind of slavish obedience and kind of fall along uh uh with Saul's plans. The third example that comes to my mind um is all over and over again when you read through the books of Kings and Chronicles, we see um we see this picture of the kings being evaluated uh kind of in relationship to in relationship to uh their their uh the fathers who came before them. So here, let me um I think let's see, like Hezekiah, like before Hezekiah, King, I'm in Second Kings here. Um let's see, Hezekiah's dad. Um I'm sorry, I'm not following I'm not finding the exact verse that I was looking for. I mean, you know, a simple example is like Manasseh, who's after Hezekiah. Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king. Um he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord is driven out. Um then you get Ammon after Manasseh. Uh this is 2 Kings 21, 19. Ammon was 22 years old when he became king. Uh he did evils in the eyes of the Lord as his father Manasseh had done. Um and then you get Josiah in 2 Kings 22. Josiah, who's Ammon's son. Josiah was eight years old when he became king. Um he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning from the right or to the left. And it's referring to his father David there, not because David is his literal biological father. David is his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, um, but he's walking in the ways of David, not in his immediate father Ammon. And so another example of Scripture showing this pattern of these kings are measured not by their slavish obedience to their parent, but by um did they did they walk in the ways of the Lord? And so I, you know, over and over and over again, I guess the big picture that I want us to see is it's scripture is very clear that to honor your father and mother is not simply to obey them, to um to do whatever they did, to worship whatever they worship. Um it's you know, you can convey uh dignity and respect while your ultimate allegiance is to loving God and loving the people the way God would have you love. Um and that honoring your parents is not counter to that. You can honor your parents and be uh your highest commitment is to Yahweh God, um, to the triune God who rescued you, um, and to loving people the way God says people ought to be loved. And I think even as we, you know, whether that is active decisions that we're making, you know, parents asking us to do things, uh, parents resisting our commitment to Jesus, or even, I think, even the way we process, I mean, because some of us, our parents may not even be with us anymore. And yet we continue to process the impact our parents had on us, the memory of our parents, um, and to allow ourselves uh, to allow ourselves even in the way we interact with their memories, to say, I honor you, I'm grateful that you gave me life, I can name these these gifts that you gave me and provided for me, I'm grateful for those things. And I can name the ways that you didn't lead me toward towards uh God and didn't lead me towards health. And I and I'm and I resist those, and I choose the way of Jesus, and I choose Jesus, and I think those two things, these this can exist at the same time, um, to have both gratitude and respect, and um that that resistance, that naming of like, but this part wasn't good, and I'm grateful that God is redeeming that part of my life and that part of my story. And I think um Gideon would say, I'm grateful, you know, I'm grateful that God that my father gave me life, and I'm grateful that that God stepped in and told me to step away from Baal and Ashrah. That um Jonathan, um, you know, like Saul is my dad, and yet I am going to stand by um David and warn him, God's anointed king. Um, you know, Josiah, like I'm grateful to the life I have, I'm glad that I'm alive, um, I'm grateful for the privileges of kingship, and yet I'm gonna choose the ways of my great great great great grandfather David, not my immediate father Ammon. And so, over and over again, this pattern of honoring is not slavish obedience. That we can convey respect, um, but our highest allegiance, our highest devotion is to the Lord our God. So, grace and peace. We'll see you next time.