Honour Your Parents
“Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.”
We have to treat our parents with proper respect. We have got to take care of them in their old age. Jesus Himself underlines this in the Gospel of Mark in chapter 7.
He said to the Pharisees, “You look after yourselves but you teach your people to neglect their parents.” It’s no use doing the good works for the church and neglecting your mom and dad. That is basically what the Lord is saying to you and me.
But you say to me, “Aah, but Uncle Angus, you have never met my mom and dad. They are impossible!” - Folks this is a commandment, it's not optional. It is, in fact, the first commandment in the Bible, with a promise added to it. Honour you father and mother so that your days may be long, in the land…
“But”, you say, “they are so grumpy”.
Oh but my dear friend maybe you don’t understand the physical pain that they are going through at the moment. Maybe they are battling with back-ache and with problems that you know nothing about. You know, they say that growing old is not for sissies.
My old dad was an absolute stickler about food. We could take as much food as we wanted on our plates when we were children but the golden rule was that we had to eat it all and waste nothing. One day we went to our mom and we said to her: “Why is dad always so fussy about food?”
She sat us down and she told us: “You know your dad was in the Second World War, and he was captured and put in a prisoner-of-war camp for three and a half years, and there was no food to speak of there at all.
He saw many of his dear friends die, literally, of starvation.”
That was why food was so important to him and he couldn’t stand anybody wasting it.
You know I would give a million dollars to sit down and have a cup of tea with my old mom and dad. I had the privilege of leading them to Christ before they died but I have to wait until Heaven to see them again.
What about you today?
Don’t waste time - pick up that phone after this message and say, “Mom, Dad, I just want to tell you I love you.” Write them a letter or a note because they need you very much in their old age.
God bless you and have a wonderful Sunday.