The Fifth Commandment

Jim ButlerDeuteronomy 5:16

The fifth commandment — 'Honor your father and your mother' — reaches far beyond childhood obedience in the home; it establishes the foundational posture of submission to divinely-ordained authority in family, church, civil society, and workplace. This exposition of Deuteronomy 5:16 traces the command through the Mosaic law, the prophets, and into the New Testament, where Paul applies it unchanged to Gentile believers in Ephesus, demonstrating the trans-covenantal abiding force of the Decalogue. The sermon examines the severity of the sanctions attached to its violation — including the theocratic death penalty and Israel's exile — as evidence that God regards the fifth commandment not as a domestic nicety but as load-bearing structure for any ordered society. Parents are called to enforce the command through discipline and instruction, and all hearers are reminded that the only remedy for its violation is the gospel of Christ, who was born under the law to redeem lawbreakers.