HENCEFORTH!
January 1, 2026 | by: Bill Burns | 0 Comments
Posted in: Guest Writers
“Honor your father and mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12)
You might have only noticed because of Paul’s comments in his letter to the Ephesians, but it’s there we read that the Fifth Commandment (“Honor your father and mother…”) is the “first commandment with a promise.” (6:2) He may not have graduated High School English, because he never seems to get around to telling us about a second one with a promise. But I routinely fail to close parentheses. Nobody’s perfect (humanly speaking, anyway.
If you take a look at this commandment, he’s referring to the part where God says to honor our parents, “that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Exodus 20:12) But, what’s up with that? What is the big deal about length of days in the land? And what’s it got to do with us? We’re not ancient Israelites, and neither were his Ephesian hearers who he wrote this to. So, what gives?
There’s a recurring theme in Scripture, appearing right from the git-go, starting in Genesis 3. Immediately following their encounter with Satan in the Garden, Adam & Eve are exiled from the garden, and God bars re-entry, setting the Cherubim with flaming swords at the gates of Eden. Later on, after the Israelites are rescued from bondage in Egypt, God causes them to wander in the wilderness for forty years, most of the original generation never entering the promised land. Just a remnant makes it. Not even Moses makes this first cut.
In the beginning of John’s gospel, (2:1-11) he records what is often referred to as Jesus’ first miracle, which, appropriately enough, foreshadows the glorious end of all He came to do. Jesus attends a wedding celebration at Cana. Everyone’s having a great time; even Jesus’ mom’s there, helping out with the festivities. Mary notices they’re running out of wine, so she tells Jesus, who answers, sorta cryptically: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.” It’s here that Jesus connects changing the water into wine for the wedding feast to His “hour,” which according to Him, is still well into the future. Mary simply tells the servants of the feast to “do whatever He tells you.” Always good advice, I say.
In Matthew’s gospel, (interestingly enough, which starts with a parable about a wedding feast) when Jesus is asked what is the Great Commandment, He replies, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:34ff) Then he mentions a second commandment that is, “like unto the first.” Here He tells us that we are to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and then comments that, on these two commandments, all the Law and Prophets depend. They undergird everything. So, let’s go back to the beginning, now, and talk about honoring father and mother.
Clearly, the Great Commandment undergirds the Fifth Commandment. It’s that last bit, about loving your neighbor, that seals the deal. Our earliest “neighbors” are our parents. And note, it says nothing about honoring only the ‘good’ parents, or the ones we like. It just specifies, like the term, ‘neighbor,’ that we are to love them. Depending on your particular parents, or circumstances, this can be challenging, to say the least. But what Jesus is teaching us with His summation of the Great Commandment(s) is that if we make a practice of loving one another like this commandment intends, we will be trained in righteousness, and in loving our neighbor, we are loving our God.
Training, or preparing ourselves for the future is precisely what our whole lives as disciples (get it, discipline…disciple?) should be all about. If we learn to love one another like this, we’ll reap the promise, the blessings of long life in the land in the here and now, as well as the land of God’s future promises, including another Wedding Feast, and new wine to gladden the hearts of those who have entered into His rest.
Isaiah 46:10 depicts God as He who declares the end from the beginning. But we don’t particularly like to think of our end. It’s easy to be distracted by present concerns. But we would be wise to give more thought to how we want to finish our journeys as saints on the way.
Charles Spurgeon, the “Prince of Preachers,” the great 19th Century Baptist, when musing about 1Samuel 7:12, has this to offer us:
“…Hitherto hath the LORD helped us!”
The word ‘hitherto’ seems like a hand pointing in the direction of the past…But the word also points forward. For when a man gets up to a certain mark and writes ‘hitherto,’ he is not yet at the end; there is still a distance to be traversed. More trials, more joys, more temptations, more triumphs, more prayers, more answers; more toils, more strength, more fights, more victories; and then come sickness, old age, disease, death. Is it over now? NO...” (Morning & Evening, December 29th AM)
I wish there was more room to finish that Spurgeon quote, because he goes on at length, and it’s gloriously worth your time. So, starting January 11th, come start the new year by joining our Adult Christian Education class, Sundays at 9:30am, where we’ll spend the next few weeks talking and learning about what Spurgeon’s on about here, and what it means to persevere in Christ as we move toward that great feast, the Christian’s Finish Line: The Chief’s End.
