What are the ten commandments?

I have been agonizing a little bit today as I have been preparing to preach tomorrow on the fifth commandment – “Honor your mother and father.”

One big reason I have been struggling is that all the commandments are traditionally taught and understood as “rules.”  And frankly, I think sometimes – at least in our context – that understanding may be the wrong approach.  But how else do you teach them?  Especially this one?  I mean its pretty cut and dried right?  Honor your parents.

But the thing is – these aren’t best understood as rules and this one is not that cut and dried.

I occurred to me that instead of rules, perhaps they should be understood as the instructions for living a redemptive life in a broken creation.  Perhaps if we begin to understand the circumstances of our own existence a little bit better and understood that God is not calling us to be good, but to something so much better, we might understand all the commandments, especially this one, just a bit more fully.

I hate to give a spoiler, so instead lets call it a teaser.  Tomorrow, we will be talking about how this commandment is a gracious gift from God that teaches us not “how to be good.”  But how to live differently and experience a fuller and more fulfilled life.

Family systems are broken and  full of dysfunction.  But this commandment, if we follow it well, will allow us to live differently and experience true freedom in a broken and fractured system.

Hope to see you Sunday Morning at 10:15.