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Transcript 274A — Are We to Always Obey Our Parents?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: In one of the Ten Commandments (I'm not sure which number it is), we have, "Honor thy father and thy mother."
HC: Yes. The Fifth Commandment.
CALLER: Yes. Okay. Now if something comes up for example, in my case, I have something I have that against the will of my father, my Dad, not my Heavenly Father. And I wonder if I'm wrong in having this thing, because it's against his will. I mean legally there's nothing he can do about it. It's not hurting anything. But assuming it is something that he would rather I not have, am I not honoring him in keeping this?
HC: You don't have your own home? You're still in your parents' home?
CALLER: Well no, I moved out. I'm renting.
HC: But you haven't established your own home? You are not the head of a house yourself?
Now the question that you are raising is: How do I relate to my parents when I know my parents don't want me to have something? And yet I feel that legally I can have it. Am I showing obedience to my father if I go my own way?
Actually, what do we read in Ephesians 6? It says there that, in verse 1, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and mother. This is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth."
Let me read to you of the Lord Jesus. Maybe this will be a way of getting at this question. In Luke we read in verse 51 of Chapter 2. Now remember that Jesus lived with His parents. That is, He remained a part of the family unit until He was about thirty-five years of age, according to everything we can read in the Bible, about thirty-five.
CALLER: I thought He was thirty-three.
HC: No. He began to preach the Gospel when He was about thirty, He was about thirty. The Bible doesn't say He was thirty. He was about thirty. That's in Luke 3:23. But when we actually work out the timetable accurately, we find that He was crucified in the year AD 33. And we find that He was born, in all likelihood, in the year 7 BC. We know that Herod, who killed all the body babies in Bethlehem up to the age of two years, died in the year 4 BC. And so Jesus would have been born before then. And since he killed all the babies up to two years of age, the likelihood is that Jesus was born at least two years earlier than that.
In other words, putting all the information that we have available together, the circumstantial evidence points to 7 BC. Now 7 BC to AD 33 are thirty-nine actual years. And so He was either thirty-nine or forty when He went to the cross. That means that He would have been either thirty-five or thirty-six when He began to bring the Gospel. He was about thirty, but in actuality He was closer to thirty-five or thirty-six, which is still about thirty.
Now in Luke 2:51, with regards to this let me say, here is Jesus, who is Eternal God, who absolutely never, never would do an unwise thing. Now you and I can do unwise things. Even though they're legal, they may be very, unwise. But Jesus is perfect in His wisdom. And so He would never do an unwise thing. But He had parents, one a real parent, Mary, one a stepfather, Joseph and they were human beings. And they certainly laid down lots of rules that were in themselves very unwise, because they were typical parents.
And so here we see the Lord Jesus, Eternal God, living in this home with parents who are capable of doing and certainly did all kinds of unwise things. And yet in Luke 2:51 we read: "And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them."
"And was obedient to them."
Now Christ is our example. And Christ many times could have said to his father and mother, "Hey, look. You want me to do this, but that doesn't make any sense. I'm going to go my own way, which is a much wiser way." But He was obedient to them. Even if they asked Him to do an unwise thing, He did it, because they were His parents.
Christ perfectly obeyed the command, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord." And so, if you want to obey your Heavenly Father, then you want to obey your earthly father. If you disobey your earthly father, then effectively you're not obeying your Heavenly Father.
Now if your father or mother asks you to do something sinful, that's a different matter. Then you would have to disobey them and take the consequences, because God's authority overrules. But if they ask you to do something unwise, or even something that might appear quite stupid, you must still obey them. Then you know that you're right before God. Then you know that you're walking in a way with your will surrendered to Christ.