Sermon
EXOD. 20:12. Honor your Father and your Mother, &c.
If we are not just we cannot be holy. Having shown you how servants are to honor their masters, the fathers of families, I shall next show how masters are to carry it towards their servants, that they may gain honor from them.
1. In General. Masters must remember that they have a Master in Heaven, who will call them to account (Ephesians 6:9). Knowing, that your Master is also in Heaven.
2. More Particularly.
(1.) Masters must have a care to provide for their servants: As they cut them out work, so they must give them their meat in due season (Luke 17:7). And the food should be wholesome and sufficing. It is an unworthy thing in some governors of families, to lay out so much upon their own backs, as to pinch their servants' bellies.
(2.) Masters should encourage their servants in their work, by commending them when they do well: Though a master is to tell a servant of his faults, yet he is not always to beat upon one string, but sometimes take notice of that which is praise-worthy. This makes a servant more cheerful in his work, and gains the master love from his servant.
(3.) Masters must not over-burden their servants, but proportion their work to their strength. If you lay too much load on a servant, he will faint under it. Christianity teaches compassion.
(4.) Masters must endeavor the spiritual good of their servants; they must be Seraphims to kindle their love to religion: They must be monitors to put them in mind of their souls: They must bring them to the pool of the Sanctuary, waiting till the Angel stir the waters (John 5:4). They must seek God for them, that their servants may be his servants: They must allow them time convenient for secret devotion. Some masters are cruel to the souls of their servants; they look that they do the work about the house, but abridge them of time they should employ in working out salvation.
(5.) Masters should use mild gentle behavior towards servants (Ephesians 6:9), forbearing threatening (Leviticus 25:43). You shall not rule over him with rigor, but fear your God. It requires wisdom in a master to know how to keep up his authority, yet lay down his austerity. We have a good copy to write after. Our Master in Heaven is slow to anger, and of great mercy (Psalm 145:8). Some masters are so harsh and implacable, that they are enough to spoil a good servant.
(6.) Be very exact and punctual in the compacts and agreements you make with your servants: Do not prevaricate; keep not back any of their wages, nor deal deceitfully with them, as Laban did with Jacob, changing his wages (Genesis 31:7). Falseness in promise is as bad as false weights.
(7.) Be careful of your servants, not only in health but in sickness. They have got their sickness in your service; use what means you can for their recovery. Be not like the Amalekite, who forsook his servant when he was sick (1 Samuel 30:13), but be as the good Centurion, who kept his sick servant, and sought to Christ for a cure (Matthew 8:6). If you have a beast that falls sick, you will not turn it off, but have it looked to, and pay for its cure. Will you be kinder to your horses than your servants? Thus should masters (the fathers of the family) carry themselves prudently and piously, that they may gain honor from their servants, and may give up their accounts to God with joy.
Fifthly, The Natural Father. The father of the flesh (Hebrews 12:9). Honor your natural father. This is so necessary a duty, that Philo the Jew placed the Fifth Commandment in the First Table, as though we had not performed our whole duty to God, till we had paid this debt of honor to our natural parents. Children are the vineyard of the parents' planting, and honor done to the parent, is some of the fruit of the vineyard.
Question: Wherein are children to show their honor to their parents?
Response 1. In a reverential esteem of their persons. They must [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], give them a civil veneration. Therefore when the Apostle speaks of fathers of our bodies, he speaks also of giving them reverence (Hebrews 12:9). This veneration or reverence must be shown,
1. Inwardly, by fear mixed with love (Leviticus 19:3). You shall fear every man his mother and his father. In the Commandment the father is named first, here the mother is named first. (1.) Partly, to put the honor upon her the mother, because by reason of many weaknesses incident to her sex, she is apt to be more slighted by children. And (2.) partly, because the mother endures more for the child; therefore here God gives the mother the priority, names her first, You shall fear every one his mother and his father.
2. Reverence must be shown to parents outwardly, namely, in word and gesture.
(1.) In word; and that either in speaking to parents, or speaking of them.
First, reverence in speaking to parents. Children must speak to parents respectively, and in decent language. "Ask on my mother," said King Solomon to his mother Bathsheba (1 Kings 2:20).
Secondly, reverence in speaking of parents. Children must speak of their parents honorably; they ought to speak well of them if they deserve well. "Her children rise up and call her blessed" (Proverbs 31:28). And in case a parent betrays weakness and indiscretion, the child should make the best of it, and by his wise apologies for his father, cover his father's nakedness.
(2.) In gesture. Children are to show their reverence to their parents by submissive behavior, by uncovering the head, bending the knee. Joseph, though he were a great prince, and his father grown poor, yet he bowed to him, and behaved himself as humbly as if his father had been the prince, and he the poor man (Genesis 48:46). And King Solomon, when his mother came to him, rose off his throne, and bowed himself to her (1 Kings 2:19). Among the Lacedemonians, if a child had carried himself arrogantly and saucily to his father, it was lawful for the father to appoint whom he would to be his heir. O how many children are far from this giving reverence to their parents! They despise their parents; they carry themselves with that pride and malapertness towards them, that they are a shame to religion, and bring their parents' grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. "Cursed be he that sets light by his father or mother" (Deuteronomy 27:16). If all that set light by their parents are cursed, how many children in our age are under a curse! If such as are disrespectful to their parents live to have children, they will be thorns in their sides, and God will make them read their sin in their punishment.
2. The second way of showing honor to parents is in careful obedience. Colossians 3:20: Children obey your parents in all things. Our Lord Christ herein set a pattern to children. Luke 2:51: He was subject to his parents. He to whom angels were subject, yet was subject to his parents. This obedience to parents is shown three ways.
(1.) In hearkening to their counsel. Proverbs 1:8: Hear the instruction of your father, and forsake not the law of your mother. Parents are as it were in the room of God; if they would teach you the fear of the Lord, you must listen to their words as oracles, and not be as the deaf adder to stop your ears. Eli's sons hearkened not to the voice of their father (1 Samuel 2:25), but they were called sons of Belial, verse 12. And children must hearken to the counsel of their parents, as in spiritual matters, so in other affairs which relate to this life, as in the choice of a calling, and in case of entering into marriage. Jacob would not dispose of himself in marriage (though he were forty years old) without the advice and consent of his parents (Genesis 28:1-2). Children are as it were the parents' proper goods and possession, and it is high injustice in a child to give away herself without the parents' leave. If parents should indeed counsel a child to match with one that is irreligious or Popish, I think the case is plain; and many of the learned are of opinion, that here the child may have a negative voice, and is not obliged to be ruled by the parent. Children are to marry in the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:39), therefore not with persons irreligious, for that is not to marry in the Lord.
(2.) Obedience to parents is shown in subscribing to their commands. A child should be the parents' echo: when the father speaks, the child should echo back obedience. The Rechabites were forbidden by their father to drink wine, and they did obey him, and were commended for it (Jeremiah 35:6). And children must obey their parents [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], in all things (Colossians 3:20). Things that are more against the grain, and which they have some reluctancy to, yet they must obey their parents. Esau would obey his father, when he commanded him to fetch him venison, because it is probable he took pleasure in hunting; but refused to obey him in a matter of greater concernment, namely, in the choice of a wife. But though children must obey their parents in all things, yet restringitur ad licita & honesta, it is with this limitation, things just and honest. Obey in the Lord (Ephesians 6:1) — that is, so far as the commands of parents agree with, and are consonant to God's commands. If they command against God, here they lose their right of being obeyed, and in this case we must unchild ourselves.
(3.) Honor is to be shown to parents in relieving their wants. Joseph cherished his father in his old age (Genesis 47:12). It is but the paying a just debt. Parents have brought up children when they were young, and children ought to nourish their parents when they are old. The young storks by the instinct of nature bring meat to the old storks, when by reason of age they are not able to fly (Pliny, Lex Pelargica). The memory of Aeneas was honored, for carrying his aged father out of Troy when it was on fire. I have read of a daughter, whose father being condemned to be starved to death, she did in prison give him suck with her own breasts, which being known to the governors, procured his freedom out of prison. To blame are such — shall I say children or monsters — who are ashamed of their parents when they are old, and fallen to decay. When parents' tears and lean cheeks may plead pity, yet children have no compassion: when they ask for bread they give them a stone. When houses are shut up, we say the plague is there. When children's hearts are shut up against their parents, the plague is in those hearts. Our blessed Savior took great care for his mother: when he was on the cross, he charged his disciple John to take her home to him as his mother, and see that she wanted nothing (John 19:26-27). The reasons why children should honor their parents are:
1. It is a solemn command of God: honor your father, etc. As God's Word is the rule, so his will must be the reason of our obedience.
2. They deserve honor, in respect of that great love and affection which they bear to their children, and that love is evidenced both by their care and cost. (1.) Their care in bringing up their children. A sign their hearts are full of love, because their heads are so full of care. Parents often take more care for their children than for themselves. They take care of them when they are tender, lest like wall-fruit they should be nipped in the bud. And as children grow older, so the care of parents grows greater. They are afraid of their children's falling when young, and of worse faults when they are older. (2.) Their love is evidenced by their cost. 1 Corinthians 12:14: They lay up, and lay out for their children. They are not like the raven or ostrich (Job 39:14), which are cruel to their young. Parents sometimes do impoverish themselves to enrich their children. All this calls for honor from the children. Children can never parallel or equal parents' love. Parents are the instruments of life to their children, children cannot be so to their parents.
To honor parents is [reconstructed: pleasing] to the Lord (Colossians 3:20). As it is joyful to the parents, so it is pleasing to the Lord. Children, is it not your desire to please God? In honoring and obeying your parents, you please God as well as when you repent and believe. And that you may see how well it pleases God, he bestows a reward upon it: "That your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you." Jacob would not let the Angel go till he had blessed him; nor would God part with this commandment till he had blessed it. Here is the blessing: "That your days may be long in the land, etc." St. Paul calls this the first commandment with promise (Ephesians 6:2). The second commandment has a general promise of mercy. But this is the first commandment that has a particular promise made to it: "That your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you." Long life is mentioned as a blessing (Psalm 128:6). "You shall see your children's children." It was a great favor of God to Moses, that though he was a hundred and twenty years old he needed no spectacles, his eye was not dim, nor his natural strength abated (Deuteronomy 34:7). God threatened it as a curse to Eli, that there should not be an old man in his family (1 Samuel 2:31). Since the flood, life is much abbreviated and cut short: some the womb is their tomb; others exchange their cradle for their grave; others die in the flower of their age; death serves its warrant every day upon one or other. Now when death lies in ambush continually for us, if God satisfies us with long life (Psalm 91:16) — "With long life will I satisfy him" — this is to be esteemed a blessing. It is a blessing that God gives a long time to repent, and a long time to do service, and a long time to enjoy the comfort of relations; and who is this blessing of long life entailed upon, but obedient children? Honor your father, that your days may be long. Nothing sooner shortens life than disobedience to parents. Absalom was a disobedient son, who sought to deprive his father of his life and crown, and he did not live out half his days. The mule he rode upon, as being weary of such a burden, left him hanging in the oak between heaven and earth, as not fit to tread upon the one, or enter into the other. Obedience to parents spins out your life — that your days may be long. Nor does obedience to parents only lengthen life, but sweeten it: therefore it follows, "That your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you." To live long, and not have a foot of land, is a misery; but obedience to parents settles land of inheritance upon the child. "Have you but one blessing, O my father?" said Esau. Behold, God has more blessings for an obedient child than one; not only shall he have a long life, but a fruitful land: and not only shall he have land, but land given in love. "The land which the Lord your God gives you." You shall have your land not only with God's leave, but with his love. All which are cogent arguments to make children honor and obey their parents.
