Please turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 5. The song that we have just sang is appropriate as we consider this portion of God's law. As we sing to the Lord, Turn away my reproach and fear. Your righteous judgments I confess. To know your precepts I desire. Revive me in Your righteousness. A confession of how crucial it is for us to see God at the center of His own Word. To see that the Word of God comes from the person of God and that to love God and to love His Word takes a remarkable work of God of grace within our hearts. And we'll consider that this evening as we look at Deuteronomy 5 along with Lord's Day 39. and the back of the blue Psalter hymnal, number 52, after we read from Deuteronomy 5, we'll read question and answer 104 together. You thought I chose this text because it was Father's Day, didn't you? But I chose this text because it's part of our ongoing study of the Ten Commandments and it's a sweet providence that we can consider fathers as well. Hear now from Deuteronomy chapter 5. Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the rules that I speak in your hearing today, and you shall learn them and be careful to do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. Not with our fathers did the Lord make this covenant, but with us who are all of us here alive today. The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain out of the midst of the fire while I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord. For you were afraid because of the fire and you did not go up into the mountain. He said, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, you shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in the heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love Me and keep My commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant. or your ox, or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder and you shall not commit adultery and you shall not steal and you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor and you shall not covet your neighbor's wife and you shall not covet your neighbor's house or his field or his male servant or his female servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. May the Lord bless the reading of His Word for us. And in particular this evening, we look at the Fifth Commandment. And the Heidelberg Catechism helps us to approach the Fifth Commandment with a brief explanation of what God's will for us is in it. The question is, what is God's will for us in the Fifth Commandment? Please read with me in response, that I honor, love, and be loyal to my father and mother and all those in authority over me, that I obey and submit to them as is proper when they correct and punish me, and also that I be patient with their families, for through them God chooses to move us. Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Ten Commandments summarize for us the godly life, or we might even say the good life. The first four commandments tell us how we are to honor and love God. And then we are told how to honor and love those who are made in God's image. Remember the two parts of the Catechism. For the last number of weeks, we've been walking through the first part And now we begin the second part, this part of God's law that explains how we are to honor and love those whom God has made. In particular, we think about the fifth commandment tonight and how we are told to honor and love our parents and those in authority. Deuteronomy 6 verse 4 says that we are to honor your father and your mother. And as the catechism explains, we are to expand that idea of our father and mother to all of those in authority over us. The commandment goes on to say that we are to honor them as the Lord your God has commanded you. that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. In the book of Ephesians chapter 6, the Apostle Paul observes about this commandment that it's the first commandment with the promise. The command is clear. That we are to honor our fathers and our mothers and those in authority over us. And the promise that Paul identifies is that your days will be long and that it would go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. I must say that that promise is a bit of a difficult one for me. I did a lot of studying to understand the significance of that promise, not only in the context of Deuteronomy 6, but also as Paul identifies it in Ephesians 6. Well, as I was doing my studying of commentaries and theologians and the scriptures, I was also doing some pleasure reading and was dabbling in a new book on Western culture. And it could be a massive book, but this one I chose because it was a littler book. And some of you might have stumbled over its findings in a PBS special just a few weeks ago. They did a series of documentaries on the... I think they called it Civilization, a History of the West and the Rest. And what this book and this documentary series talked about was why the western part of the world or the western countries of the world have so outpaced other countries and overall quality of life. Things like government and education and the arts. Society in general. We might quibble over whether or not that's really the good life, but many people would observe western culture as being the more desirable. And this book wonders why the West has so outpaced the rest. The author argues that there are about six principles that have really made the difference. And he talks about things like competition, science, competition, science, individual property rights, and medicine. Those may not be overly surprising, those hallmarks of Western society. But reading on, there was a surprise. This author was raised an atheist and he remains an atheist to this day, but he believes that the Ten Commandments are solid ethical codes by which we should live. And so I was surprised that towards the end of this book, his focus came to be on what he called the Protestant ethic. And he cultivates a whole host of evidences to demonstrate that there is a profound value to any society that embraces and employs the Protestant work ethic and the Protestant ethic in general. In fact, one of the evidences he looks to is the recent developments in China, in communist China. Just in our generation, a whole host of social scientists have been studying, a whole host of Chinese communist social scientists have been studying what has made the real difference for Western culture, and they write this, that we were asked to look into what accounted for the preeminence of the West all over the world. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next, we focused on your economic system. But in the past 20 years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion, Christianity. That is why the West has been so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life. Isn't that remarkable? Here we have an atheist from Harvard and a communist Chinese social scientist appealing to the moral laws of Christianity as really the key to living the good life. I just find it quite stunning. And yet, as you study this further, it becomes very, very alarming because what these leaders reject is God and the Gospel that makes this morality they find so attractive possible. Brothers and sisters, we need to be on guard for that way of thinking. This evening as we look at the fifth commandment and its promise, we need to correct and clarify the problem in that way of thinking. We need to be on guard against the society patterns that would embrace aspects of the law of God while rejecting God and the Gospel that makes the whole of it even possible. And we need to be on guard because what is out there, you know this, it comes in here. It comes in here. And we too, being children of Adam, find ourselves susceptible to the errors of men. So this evening as we take a look at the fifth commandment, we want to do so in light of the conflict that is around us and while longing that God would guard us from those errors of men and to help us grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. And we'll do so this evening with three points as we consider God's will for parents and those with authority. The second, God's will for children and those under authority. And then, God's will for His own Son. We begin with God's will with parents and those with authority. And it won't surprise you, I'm sure, for me to say that Adam and Eve, They were the first. They were really the first for almost everything, weren't they? Well, they were also the first parents and those with authority. We can look back to Genesis chapter 1. And in Genesis chapter 1, we find in verse 27 that God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them and He said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Now, the first thing we want to recognize is that from the very start, God is clearly identified as the source of all that follows. And when we think particularly about the fifth commandment, God is the source of authority that is referred to in the fifth commandment. He made Adam and Eve to be the first to bear His image, the first to bear children, and the first to govern in creation. God is the source of this authority and He's the one who institutes the family to be the ones to carry out that role and authority. God's the source and He's also the standard. God gives His law. He gives His mandate to those who bear His image. Not only in the spoken word, but through the moral law that is written in the heart and impressed upon the minds of those who are made in His image. Adam and Eve were given the authority to be parents and rulers in society and they were expected to exercise that authority with a God-like righteousness and holiness. And so we see from the very beginning that God is the one who gives authority, that God is the one that sets the standards for authority, and that God is also the one who establishes a pattern, a visible pattern for which authority is to follow. And that pattern are parents. Mothers and fathers, even with Adam and Eve, they would have been responsible to nurture their children, to provide for their children and instruct them in the ways of God. Even with Adam and Eve, the very basic things of bearing children and nurturing children and providing for them and doing whatever it takes to instruct them and educate them with the ways of God would have been basic to the responsibilities as parents and they would have known that that parental authority was serving as a pattern for their children and the ways or the responsibilities of authority that God would one day call them to fill. Parental authority is basic to the created order and it serves to be a visible pattern for other expressions of authority, whether it be teachers or employers, governors, other civil leaders, presidents, even pastors, elders, and deacons parents raised within their homes future parents parents and their exercise of authority demonstrate to their children what others with authority might do and this was the case even after the fall we can think of after the flood in genesis 9 as god comes to noah and his little family and restates to them the same mandates given to Adam and Eve that they are to be fruitful and multiply and that they too are to be governors within the broader creation. That they were to be rulers within the state. Even bearing the sword as necessary. There are many examples we could draw from this theme of authority this evening, but we're going to keep focusing in on the family. And we find in Genesis 18 that God calls Abraham out of the peoples of the world and He tells him why. In Genesis 18, God is walking and He's talking with Abraham and He says that I've chosen him so that He would command His children to follow the ways of the Lord. Adam, rather Abraham, is chosen by God so that he would instill within his children and his children's children an understanding of the ways of God, the righteousness and justice of God so that they would be a blessing to the world. Well, the same responsibility was impressed upon Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 5 and 6. We've read of how the Lord came to them and reminded them of the Ten Commandments, the summary of the moral law. We find that in chapter 5. And then in chapter 6, we read, beginning with verse 4, how the Lord comes and impresses the parents about their responsibility to exercise authority within the home. Hear, O Israel, our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. the responsibility that God established for the family by virtue of creation that was restated to Noah after the flood that was explained to Abraham is fleshed out in far even greater detail to Israel, impressing upon the parents the responsibility and the obligation to raise their children in the fear and knowledge of the Lord. That when they consider their priorities in life, the number one thing God places upon them as parents is that they would pass on the covenant to their children. And that is the great reminder that we as parents are given when we bring them to receive the sign of baptism. That sign of grace and that proclamation of the promise of the Gospel that calls us into this covenantal obligation to also educate these children, to teach them about the Lord God Almighty, that they would know Him from their earliest days. And this wasn't simply an Old Testament obligation, was it? Because the Apostle Paul develops this very same command in Ephesians 6. When he exhorts fathers in particular, surely mothers too, to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. And so what we have here is a pattern. From the creation of Adam and Eve to the new creation of Jesus Christ and His church, the responsibilities of parents are basic to life. Finding their source in God, their standard in God, and providing a pattern for the rest of life as God designed it to be. And yet, oh, how we know that those with authority are far from perfect. Whether parents, mothers, and fathers, oh, do we know how weak we are, right? Our sin is always before us. As we consider teachers, even pastors, elders, deacons, we are sinful people think of governors civil leaders or presidents or kings other authorities that the scriptures make clear have been instituted by God to be servants for the good of the people and yet so often submit themselves to their own interests their own desires their own pleasures at the expense of the people and bringing it back home how often do we as parents find ourselves neglecting the basic responsibilities we have in raising our children in the fear and understanding of the Lord or simply delegating it to others. It's not an option to simply delegate the duty to others. We are called by God to be responsible before God to ensure that our baptized children understand the covenant of God and the call of God upon their lives, the moral law of God impressed upon their heart and proclaimed to them through the Scriptures. And yet we fall so far short. Even so, God's will for our children and all of those under authority is clear that we are to honor them. And children, I hope you do. Because isn't it true that the most natural of all relationships to honor is the relationship that you have with your parents? Parents, they bring you into the world. Parents bring their children into the world. They provide for them. They protect them. Let me say it a different way. Children, your parents have brought you into the world. They provide for you. They protect you. They love you. They care for you in so many profound ways. We can say it in a word that they nurture you. And we see this natural relationship develop as infants cling to their mothers and as I've experienced through much time, they might cling to their fathers as well. Toddlers, they grow up a little bit and they adore their parents. And young children will often see their parents as heroes. They want to walk like their parents and talk like their parents and dress like their parents. There are many painful exceptions to be sure. And yet God's design is clear. The children are to honor their fathers and their mothers. One pastor observed how monstrous a child when we see it otherwise. Well, this honoring of parents has three parts. We are to revere our parents, to obey our parents, and to assist our parents. As I've explained, while children are younger, the revering of our parents is quite natural. We think they're the best things in the world. For most of my kids, I think I'm still in that place. Dad's the hero. Father's Day is a good day. Mother's Day is one of the best. We write cards for our moms and our dads and we say all kinds of sweet things about them and we revere them, we honor them, we love them, we adore them. As we get a little bit older, we come to see them as God's gift to us. And yet, when we get a little older still, it becomes harder, doesn't it? To honor our parents is to revere them as God's gifts to us. God's gifts to care for us and to raise us. And to honor our parents is also to obey them. And that can be so hard. But children, you need to hear tonight that it's not an option. your obedience to your parents is not something you can take or leave. And I want you to hear this very clearly tonight because we live in a culture that not only likes to mock parents. Think of a half dozen TV shows like that, right? We also live in a culture that likes to suggest parental authority is really of equal authority to children. Or to put it another way, parental instruction is to be determined by the child as acceptable or not. And that's a grievous sin before the Lord. When our parents call us to attend corporate worship on the Sabbath day and when our parents put boundaries in the use of the Sabbath day, when our parents speak to us and give us instruction as to how we use our bodies and the other gifts that God has given to us, our intellect, our speech, our friends, we are to obey them. Because our parents are gifts from the Lord to care for us, to raise us, and to guide us. And we hear them and we obey them as in the Lord, the Apostle Paul says. Such that what our parents speak to us is providentially spoken as the Word of God to our lives and to resist the instruction of our parents is to put our finger in the eye of God Himself. To mock our parents is to mock the almighty, sovereign Lord Himself. To think lightly of their care for us and their graciousness for us is to think lightly of the death of Christ Himself. We are to revere our parents. We are to obey our parents. And one friend asked me, well, do I always have to obey my parents? Well, in general, yes, you're supposed to obey your parents. But Paul reminds us that we are to do so as unto the Lord. And there are painful exceptions that we find ourselves unable to submit to the will and instruction of our parents because it's in conflict with the law of the Lord. Because it's simply unwise to what the Lord would have us be and do. And in those times, may God have mercy for us to stand for what is true and right, for what is honoring to God. But we are always to revere them as God's gift to us as parents. And we are to obey them as unto the Lord. And thirdly, this one might sound silly, but we are to assist them. Well, how do we assist our parents? for our younger children that may not be something that you have to think much about yet but as we get older we come to see that what our parents have poured out into our lives to raise us may need to be returned our parents helped us grow old and we at times will need to help them grow older there will come a time children when your parents will need you as they dressed you you may need to dress them as they fed you you may need to feed them as they brought you into the world you may need to help them out of the world and what a grievous state we find ourselves in today where not only parents delegate the responsibility of raising their children to others but also children delegate the responsibility of caring for their parents to others. God help us. A friend of mine lives in Ireland and she's in her mid-30s and was really wrestling over whether or not the Lord was calling her to some other employment in some other place. And she said that she was really torn because she's in a small church and most of the youth have left and all that remains are the gray-haired saints. And I'll never forget her explanation of her struggle when she said, if I leave, who will help them die? If I go, who will put roses on their grave? And if I live according to that pattern, I just may find myself in a place that no one will be there to help me die either. children and all of those under authority, we are called to revere our parents, to obey our parents in the Lord and to assist them in whatever ways God and His providence call upon us to do so. And we need to realize that this honoring of God in the home is a preparation for how we honor God and other God-ordained authorities. Citizens subject themselves to the state and employees are called to subject themselves to employers and congregants are called to subject themselves to pastors and elders and deacons. If we don't learn that in the home, then where do we learn it? The home provides a pattern for us to grow and mature in and to be set out into the world as parents and leaders of our own right. And in Deuteronomy 5, we find that this commandment comes with a promise and we're going to deal with it very briefly this evening because it's a bit of a challenge. This promise that we find in Deuteronomy 5 is applied to Israel in particular, right? God explains to them how they were taken out of the slavery they were in in Egypt and how they in particular were entered into a special covenant with the Lord. And he says to them as they're on the threshold of entering into the promised land of Canaan, if you obey your fathers and your mothers and the authorities that I set over you, it will go well with you and you will live a long life. And that was a promise held out to Israel. and that time, and that place, and for that covenant. Of course, Israel didn't do so well. They didn't obey, and they didn't live long, and it sure didn't go well in the land for them. But that doesn't mean we just cast away this promise. And that's because just as the law that is given to Israel in Deuteronomy 5 is a summary of the moral law of God and the very fabric within which He wove together the designs of creation, just as the law of God we find here is grounded in creation, so also we find a promise, or we might even say a broader principle of creation that describes the way God designed the world to work. And that is, for those who bear His image, even in a fallen world, That as you obey your parents and honor your parents and those authorities that God has established over you, that in general, you will be able to enjoy a good life. How does that fit? How does that work? Is that health, wealth, and prosperity? I'd suggest to you that it is not. Because you can think of it this way. Does it matter for your life whether or not you honor your father and mother? Does it matter if you honor the authorities that God has set over you? Does it matter if you stick your finger in the eye of your teacher or tell a policeman to take a hike? It matters, doesn't it? Where on the other hand, if we commit ourselves to see our parents as gifts from God to care for us and to raise us and we revere them and we obey them and we assist them and we look to the other authorities in our lives as other God-ordained servants for our good. And we as individuals propagate that as a community. As a community, we propagate that amongst our neighbors. Isn't that a way that God will bring about a blessed state for a people? Let me go further and say, isn't that maybe what Proverbs is talking about when it talks about a wise life versus a foolish life? Isn't it possible that that's what Proverbs 3, 5, and 6 is talking about when it says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. In very careful terms, I'd suggest that this promise we find in the Ten Commandments, just as the law and the command itself is grounded in creation and is true to all that bear the image of God, so also the obedience to that command also will be blessed of God. But for what land? And this we want to move to our third and final point, that what God promises to Israel was the land of Canaan and it was lost to Israel. And yet I think the Apostle Paul picks it up because the land of Canaan, the promised land, was ultimately a sign, a visible representation of a far greater land that would come. And that land is heaven. Brothers and sisters, our world is corrupt. God's design has been broken and the sin in our hearts and within the hearts of our parents and teachers and sinful rulers have brought about a corruption of the family, the state, and the church that's profound. And you could consider that if divorce continues unchecked and if marriage is redefined to be neutered of any sexuality, we can imagine a day where God's design for the family is recast. made into the image of man, serving the selfish interests of man rather than the good of community and the glory of God. And in those circumstances, as we consider that present reality and how that could develop into the future, what a desperate situation we would find ourselves to be. But there's more. God did not create the world only to destroy it and He didn't share His image with you and me only to see it corrupted. He didn't establish the family only to multiply and fill the earth with the works of the devil. He didn't hold out a promise of a land to Israel only to pull it away. No, our God has exercised His sovereign authority calling out a new creation through the glad obedience of His Son to redeem His people, His family, and to establish them in the promised land that has been so long anticipated by all the saints. I think that's what we find in Galatians 4 when it says that the right time had finally come when God sent His Son, Jesus, who was born under the law who was born with the call to submit Himself to Almighty God and all of the authorities that God had established, including His parents, the religious authorities of His day, even Pilate and Herod, submitting Himself to the law even unto the curse and the death that it required of all those who are lawbreakers. We hear in the Gospel of Jesus Christ how God sent His only Son not to destroy the world, but that through Him the world might be saved. And the Gospel is that the Son obeyed the Father and that the Son submitted Himself unto a complete obedience unto death so that He would take upon Himself the disobedience of sinful parents and the disobedience of rebellious children and that He might bring a full redemption and salvation unto them and not only a justification from sin, but as revealed in His resurrection, a new life and a glorious new existence that He's sharing with us even today. You see, this law of God together with the Gospel of Jesus Christ reminds us that there is a life we are called to live as parents and as children. That we aren't simply to find ourselves condemned by the law. And we're not simply to find ourselves justified in the Gospel, but rather being instructed by the law and finding our burden removed at the cross. We are now set free, not from consideration of the law, but we are set free from the bondage and curse of sin to obey the law. To pursue the Word of God and what He commands for us as His people with joy rather than simple obligation. That parents can find not only instruction for how they are to serve the Lord, but also the inspiration and the power to do so in the Gospel. And the new heart necessary to love and care for their children. And our children can find through the sign and seal of baptism, through the means of grace that we bring them to, they can find the work of the Spirit in their heart to soften their hearts, to bring transformation to their minds as well, that they can find joy even in submitting and obeying their sinful parents. Brothers and sisters, our neighbors may think that the Ten Commandments are attractive in all sorts of ways. They may even try to harvest some of the fruit and the promises attached to them. But we need to remember that without God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the life that they describe is impossible. Without God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our lives are hopeless. But with Almighty God coming to us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the lives that He describes that is so desirable is ours in Christ. And though in this present evil age it's mingled with suffering and difficulty and pain, there will come a day when the promised land will fully be realized and we'll be home in glory in heaven. And until that day, let each of us pray for those in authority, for our parents, for our pastors, our elders, our deacons, our teachers, those civil servants that God has called to serve us. Let's pray. Dear Father in Heaven, we give thanks for Your Word and for the clear call of Your law that parents have been given this grand obligation to raise our children in the Lord. This reminder, O Lord, for our children to receive our parents as gifts from You and that they are to be revered and obeyed and assisted in whatever way is necessary. And Lord, we are so glad for the Gospel because we are unworthy. We are weak and we are needy. We call out to You, O Father, that You would give us the strength we need to be more faithful. Work within us, O Lord, that new life of Christ for the greater glory of Your name and for the good of Your people. In Jesus' name, Amen.