Matthew 19:16-19 “What does it mean to “Honor” your Mother?”

Matthew 19:16-19

¹⁶ “And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?”
¹⁷ And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.”
¹⁸ He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness,
¹⁹ Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

This coming LORD’s Day will be, (as the LORD allows and by the grace of God) the 10^th time I have had the opportunity to preach a Mother’s Day Sermon to you. 

As you might well imagine, I am in danger of beginning to repeat myself!

Over the years, I have spoken to you about:

“Like Mother, Like Son”

“The Gracious Gift of a Godly Granny”

“Biblical Characteristics of a Godly Mother”

“The Best Gift a Child can give their Mother”

“The Best Advice a Mother Ever Gave”

“Why Marriage Matters” (Part of an 8 Week series)

Last year, I preached “Preparing Children to be Used of God!”

So, for this year, I wanted to go back to the basics and look at the original commandment about how to rightly relate to our Mother!

Our focal passage in Matthew is about the Ten Commandments. And this coming Sunday, I want to focus on the Fifth Commandment:

¹² “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”

(Exodus 20:12 ESV)

These “Commandments” are so vitally important that God gives them three specific times in the Bible!

Looking at these Commandments, it is obvious that one of the best ways to understand what God means by “honoring” our Mothers is to think about the words HE used in these verses:

Hebrew: kabad “ka-baad” It appears in the OT 116 times and 35 times it is translated (as it is here) by the verb “honor.” It means to esteem as honorable and to “give honor to” something or someone.

The Greek word means exactly the same thing.

Greek: timaho “tim-ah-o” It means to honor in the sense of attributing value to something or someone. It is translated in the NT 19 times as “honor” and 2 times as “value.”

Another very helpful way to think about what it means to “honor your Mother” is to contrast this with the idea of “dishonoring” your Mother. This would mean to see her as without value or to behave in such a way as to bring shame upon her!

We will have several “Words for Children” about honoring our Mothers. We will also have several “Words for Mothers” on this same subject as well.

Mother’s Day is a wonderful day. It is vitally important to Mothers! I hope you will be able to show your love and honor to your Mother this weekend. For those of us whose Mother has already passed on, I pray that the happy memories of them will bring joy into our life.

As my dear friend Tom Rains loves to say, “I hope to see you Sunday with your Bible in your hand, a smile on your face, and your family and friends by your side!”