Thomas Edison, said, “ I did not have my mother long, but she cast over me an influence which has lasted all my life. The good effects of her early training I can never lose. If it had not been for her appreciation and her faith in me at a critical time in my experience, I should never likely have become an inventor. I was always a careless boy, and with a mother of different mental caliber, I should have turned out badly. But her firmness, her sweetness, her goodness were potent powers to keep me in the right path. My mother was the making of me.”

Social value shift in 70’s now it is all about me.  New Rules created quite a stir in the early ’80s. In the book, professor Daniel Yankelovich of New York University documented a shift in social values in the ’70s, a shift more massive and more rapid than any of the recent past.

The book was subtitled, “Searching for Self-Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down.” The old rules, Yankelovich said, stressed duty to others, the new rule is, it’s all about me, and Christians are no different than the rest of the world.

There are some things our mothers teach us when they aren’t happy:

Religion: “You’d better pray that comes out of the carpet.”

Time Travel: “If you don’t straighten up, I’m going to knock you into next week.”

Foresight: “Make sure you wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident.”

Gymnastics: “Look at the dirt on the back of your neck.”

Osmosis: “Shut your mouth and eat your dinner.”

Envy: “There are millions of children around the world who don’t have parents like you.”

Weather: “It looks like a tornado went through your room.”

The Circle of Life: “I brought you into this world and I can take you out.”

Honor Your Mom

Exodus 20:12 says, “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.”

Dwight L. Moody. “I have lived over sixty years, and I have learned one thing, if I have learned nothing else: No man or woman who dishonors his father or mother ever prospers.”

The Ten Commandments are divided into two categories, or two sections.

The first part of those commandments deals with our relationship with God, and we call those the vertical commands. So all of the commands are summed up in, “Love God with all of your heart” (Deuteronomy 6:5), and, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

God starts the second section in these commands, and He begins with this statement: that we are to honor our father and our mother. Now, why does God start the second section of these commands with this particular command?

It is a pivotal command, who are the first people we see, our parents.

If we cannot learn to love and respect our parents, then it’s obvious we cannot learn to love and respect any one else. What God is saying is this: The religion that doesn’t begin at home simply does not begin, because what happens at home is the basis of everything else.

If the home decays, then the church decays. If the church decays, then society and the state decay. And so we begin here. God tells us that the basis of our relationship to everybody else and everything else on Planet Earth, after we get right with God, is in our home, where we learn to honor our father and our mother.

The word honor literally means, “to add weight to.” It means to think of them with seriousness; it means to take our parents seriously, to revere them, and to respect them.

Honor Your Mother By the Way You Live

My life will either honor or dishonor my mother. I’m to live a life of obedience, first of all, to God and then to my parents.  When we are children, we are to obey our parents. And even when we’re old, we’re to learn to take their advice.

Colossians 3:20: “Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well pleasing unto the Lord”. Do you want to please God? You cannot please God by displeasing your parents. Obey your parents in all things.

Not only is there a blessing in obedience, but there’s great danger in disobedience.

God gives a catalogue of sins, the most terrible, horrible, hurtful, heinous, hellish sins that you can think of, and right in the list of that catalogue of sins He mentions the disobedience to parents.

Romans 1:28–30: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,”.

God says, in the Old Testament, that if you were disobedient to your parents, you would be put to death.

Obedience brings a tremendous blessing. It is well pleasing to the Lord. Disobedience to parents is a terrible, horrible sin.

Second Timothy 3:1–5: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away”.

Now in that horrible catalogue of sins found during the last days, again God mentions “disobedience to parents.” Disobedience to your parents is going to invite the judgment of God upon your life.

Ephesians 6:1–3: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth”.

Honor your father and mother so that you’ll live a long life. If you want to shorten your life, dishonor your parents.

What if my parents are not right? What if my parents tell me to do something wrong?” Well, this scripture says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord” (Ephesians 6:1).

Obviously, if they tell you to do something that is in direct violation of the Word of God, then you ought not to do it. There’s always the fact that we must obey God rather than man. And so you have to interpret Scripture by Scripture. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord.”

I want to say that little children are not old enough or wise enough to make choices and to know what is right and wrong. Primarily, they have to depend upon their parents. God gives little children parents, and the Bible says that we are to obey our parents.

Part of the life that I live is going to honor my parents through obedience, and then by living an honorable life. We are extensions of our parents, if I live an honorable life, then that honors my parents.

Honor Your Mother By Caring for Them

We honor our parents by helping them. We honor our parents by working responsibly.

Children must be taught industry in the home. When you are young, you’re to help your parents; and when they are old, you are to care for them.

Now there’s a serious problem in our age: the care of the old and elderly. The more pagan a society gets, the less that society cares for the aged and sick.

The Bible teaches that we cannot use our religion, our churchgoing, and our church giving as an excuse for not taking care of our parents.

Matthew 15:3–11 Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and He says, “Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;” I took what I was going to give you, and I gave it to the church.

I did something nice and religious with it.

God says that any man, any woman, any boy, and any girl in this church today worshiping God who doesn’t help take care of his parents is a hypocrite.

“Well, I don’t have time for my parents, but boy, I sure am a big church worker.”

Billy Rose told a story about Marion Anderson, the famous Negro contralto. “A few years ago,” he said, “a reporter interviewed Miss Anderson and asked her to name the greatest moment in her life. I knew she had many big moments to choose from. There was the private concert she gave at the White House for the Roosevelts and the King and Queen of England. There was the night she received the ten-thousand-dollar Bok Award as the person who had done most for her hometown, Philadelphia. “But,” she told the reporter, “the greatest moment in my life was the day I went home and told my mother she wouldn’t have to take in washing any more.”

1 Timothy 5:8 He doesn’t even make it up to infidel status if he doesn’t take care of his own.

Honor Your Mother by Learning

Proverbs 1:8–9: “My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: for they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck”

He’s not talking about chains of bondage; he’s talking about chains of ornament, like a gold chain, like an ornament.

The older we become, the smarter our parents become. When we’re sixteen, we think they’re really out of it; and at nineteen we feel that we’ve surpassed them so far that they’ll never catch up to us. At twenty-two, they’re just out of sight somewhere back there. I mean, we still know everything. But at forty, we think they’re just about perfect. The older you get, the smarter your parents will get.

In 1886, the New England Society held a dinner in New York. Among the speakers was a young man on the staff of the Atlanta Constitution who arose to speak. In simple pathos he described the Confederate soldier as he came back, ragged and wasted, in his faded gray uniform, to his ruined and desolate home in the South. The next morning Henry W. Grady awoke to find himself famous. Everybody wanted to hear him speak. Eulogy and flattery poured in on him like a flood from all parts of the nation.

One day he closed his desk at the office of the Constitution and, telling his associates that he was not sure when he would be back, disappeared. No one saw him or heard of him for a week. He had gone to the Georgia farm where his mother still lived.

When she met him at the door, he said, “Mother, I have come back to spend some time with you. I have been losing my ideals out in the world where I am living. I am forgetting the things I learned here in the old home, and God is getting away from me. I have come back to you, Mother, to live for a little while.” The famous orator was a boy again with his mother, the two wandering together over the fields, talking, praying, singing together. Then he went back to the city, refreshed and strengthened, ready to face the temptations of life.—C. E. Macartney

Learning from our mother’s doesn’t mean they’re smarter than I am, or I’m smarter than they are. It just means they’ve been a little further down the road. They have been a little further down the road, and they love me. They’ve seen things. There are detours, and beauties, and all sorts of things they want me to know about. And I can honor them; I can honor them by the lessons that I learn. The Bible says to learn from your parents is like an ornament of grace around your neck (Proverbs 1:9).

Honor Your Mother With Great Love

We are to love them with a great love, with a lavish love, because their lifeblood flows in us.

I believe that the closest thing on this earth to the love of God is the love parents have for their children. I believe that it’s the closest and greatest illustration of the love of God. And so we are to return that love.

Shakespeare said, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child”.

Joy Allison’s simple yet profound poem. Although a bit old-fashioned, it captures the heart of today’s text about the true test of love:

“I love you, Mother,” said little John; Then, forgetting his work, his cap went on,

And he was off to the garden swing,Leaving his mother the wood to bring.

“I love you, Mother,” said little Nell;“I love you better than tongue can tell!”

Then she teased and pouted half the day,Till Mother rejoiced when she went to play.

“I love you, Mother,” said little Fran;“Today I’ll help you all I can.”

To the cradle then she did softly creep,And rocked the baby till it fell asleep.

Then stepping softly, she took the broom And swept the floor and dusted the room;

Busy and happy all day was she,Helpful and cheerful as she could be.

“I love you, Mother,” again they said,Three little children going to bed.

How do you think that Mother guessedWhich of them really loved her best?

You say, well, my parents are not perfect. But you are? Do you know anybody who’s perfect? Only perfect children can demand perfect parents.

Leviticus 20:9: “For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood shall be upon him”.

Proverbs 30:17: “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it” (Proverbs 30:17).

God will bless those who honor and respect their Mothers.