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"BECAUSE I SAID SO!" #2

BUT MY DAD IS SUCH A DOLT!

You know, sometimes I wonder if the Internet isn't more of a curse than a blessing these days. So many great little factoids and pithy quotes that people have passed around as authentic for years may actually be from the fabricated side of the railroad tracks. And according to several web site sources, the one I'm going to share with you now may actually not be from Mark Twain at all.

upposedly the Reader's Digest, circa September 1937, gave him credit for it, but now it appears that one Samuel Clemens might have been fishing on the Mississippi that day with Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer and didn't actually say this. But it bears repeating anyway, and there are certainly 20 million other young men in the world, including myself (once upon a time), who could sign their names to it. Anyway, it went like this:

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."

Isn't that an encouraging word for parents? If your children are constantly sighing at what you say and wear, rolling their eyes at your attempts to be cool or funny, and insist that you drop them off three blocks away from the school so their friends will never see you — and for heaven's sake, don't kiss me! — then take heart. Five or ten years from now they may actually let you back into the family.

Moms and dads have spent the last 6,000 years awkwardly explaining to their kids where babies come from, but has anyone ever stopped to explore the issue of where the parents get here from? Who picked these people to be our mothers and our fathers, and to try to boss us around? Who said they could do that?

Yesterday we began to dig into the sixth and final chapter of Ephesians, where the apostle Paul decides to tuck in a little parenting seminar.

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord," he writes, "for this is right."

Now in verses two and three he reaches across the centuries of time — in both directions — and cites a very familiar source: Commandment #5 in the Exodus list of ten. Here it is:

"‘Honor your father and mother' — which is the first commandment with a promise — ‘that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.'"

What does it mean here to "honor"? Many children do lip service and "honor" their parents with a 50th-wedding anniversary bash at the country club, and pay very little attention to them the rest of the time. Is that "honoring"? Well, the context of the Ephesians passage makes it very clear that Paul is equating honor, first of all, with obedience; that's precisely what he led into this chapter writing about. And in one of the commentaries we've been studying for these radio messages, they go right there too.

"The honor here spoken of," they write, "is not a sentimental respect, but actual obedience." Then the same writers add this, and we think right away of that perhaps apocryphal Mark Twain quote: "This honor is shown in a variety of ways. It includes the little attentions that youth should show to age, confidence in the word and judgment of the parents, and loyalty to the family name and integrity."

We had a lot of fun two weeks ago borrowing from the 1966 Christian classic, The Gospel According to Peanuts. And author Robert Short borrowed a Charles Schulz strip where Lucy is ranting and raving and screaming, pounding her fist on the ground in anger: "You promised me a birthday party, and now you say I can't have one! It's not fair!" And little brother Linus, who has apparently been studying Ephesians 6 in his personal devotions of late, patiently instructs her that Mom is right and that Lucy should accept and respect her mother's judgment. He gives her, on cue cards, a little memorized speech that she ought to humbly deliver. "I'm sorry, dear Mother, I admit I've been bad, and you were right to cancel my party. From now on, I shall try to be good!" Lucy rehearses the painful, sticking-in-her-throat lines, and then just mulls it over. In the last frame, she screams to the universe: "I'D RATHER DIE!" But here in God's Word we're instructed to give our parents the honor and respect of obedience, of accepting their wisdom. As we studied yesterday, though, this brings to the parents the duty to train and discipline children "in the Lord" — meaning, in accordance with the Word of the Lord.

One interesting and important point that this New Testament teaching makes is that even the apostle Paul considered the Ten Commandments from the OLD Testament to have validity for born-again Christians. Even on this side of Calvary, he cites them as having authority. In their Commentary on the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, the incomparable E. K. Simpson and F. F. Bruce strengthen that tie:

"Observe that the new dispensation," they write, "does NOT abrogate the moral law, but enhances its dignity, and that the mother's authority obtains a place side by side with the father's in this realm of her special supervision." And now, please listen to this too: "Both the parental relationship and the filial can only be safeguarded by recognizing them as DIVINE APPOINTMENTS. The Christian child in particular is born into the household of faith and in a special relationship to the covenant promises. In any case their responsibility for the little one's welfare gives to the commands and prohibitions of fathers and mothers a weight attaching to no other human authority."

So this answers the question we posed earlier. Where did Mom and Dad come from? Listen, kid, the Bible tells you that your parents are both "divine appointments." God chose them to be your loving guardians. God chose them to be in gracious but firm authority over you. And in all homes, but especially in the homes of believers, the words "Please clean up your room" and "Time for bed" carry a power that goes beyond just size and weight and the fact that these two certain big people control your allowance and Internet access. Their orders carry weight because the King of the universe has given them weight. We should also notice that, going back to the dusty days in the wilderness when God gave the Ten Commandments, He made both a prediction and a promise.

"Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." In Deuteronomy 5, Moses adds this extra benefit: ". . . And that it may go well with you."

Francis Foulkes points out, in his Tyndale New Testament Commentary:

"Then [in Moses' day], as in any generation, it could be seen that the strength of family life, and the training of children to habits of order and obedience, were the means and the marks of the stability of a community or nation. When the bonds of family life break up, when respect for parents fails, the community becomes decadent and will not live long."

We mentioned in our Monday study a recent Newsweek cover article — this is just weeks ago, back in June — that made this same assertion God is promising here. "When kids obey, things go well. When kids don't, they mess up. Do as you're told — good life. Don't do as you're told — disaster." Friends, this isn't rocket science here. When Mom and Dad follow the heavenly blueprint — and we should point out again that only when parents follow the counsel in Ephesians 1-5 does Ephesians 6 work according to plan — and when kids follow that same heavenly blueprint, then the results are, well, heavenly. And Gamma girls get good grades when they obey their good parents.

It's always heartwarming when people write or call — or sometime I meet them at a speaking appointment or out on the summer "camp meeting" circuit — and they say to me: "I took that Discover Bible Course your ministry offers . . . and it changed my life. I learned what the Bible said about this issue and that one — how to raise your kid, how to have a daily devotional time, how to forgive my enemies — and it really works! I never thought this old Book my husband and I ignored for so long . . . the whole time, it had all the answers we needed."

You know, friend, we've been here in Ephesians a long, long time. But it doesn't matter where we roam in these 66 books. On all the Bible's pages, we just feel a loving Father reaching out with this perfect master plan. "Try it!" He pleads. "Do this and you'll have a long life. Accept these guidelines and you won't experience any of these diseases. Sample My Word and My love and just see for yourself what an abundant life I can create for those who love Me."
King David sometimes tried it God's way — and did good. And sometimes his own way — and invariably messed up. But he learned his lesson, and in his 34th Psalm, humbly advised you and me:

"Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him."