Chapter 1: What is the significance of the Fifth Commandment?
The Ten Commandments, or the Ten Words, as they're called in the Bible, are a pathway to life. They're not just a list of rules to check off. They're a collection of wisdom that invites us to reframe how we think and relate to everything. The first four commands tell us about how to relate to God. No other gods, no idols, carry the name of Yahweh and keep the Sabbath.
And then the last five commands become all about how we relate to other humans. Don't kill, don't commit adultery or steal or lie or covet. But right in the middle is command number five.
Chapter 2: How do parents relate to God according to the Fifth Commandment?
And it acts like a hinge between how we relate to God and how we relate to other humans. In particular, two humans. Honor your father and your mother.
And this is the only command that comes with a promise. So that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh your Elohim gives you.
So it seems that honoring your parents is connected to receiving life from God. But there's a lot of people we could honor. Why focus on these two humans?
Your father and your mother are the ones who gave you life. And your Elohim is the one who gives you and your father and mother a land where you can have life. How I relate to somebody who generated and sustained my existence, that's a unique relationship and that needs to be treated in a special way. And that special way is called honor.
For followers of Jesus, the wisdom of the fifth command became how they honored everyone who came before them.
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Chapter 3: What does it mean to truly honor your father and mother?
especially the widows, creating a culture where the elderly are taken care of, even if they're not your biological parents.
I think part of what made the early Jesus community so socially powerful over time was how they relativized blood ties and created a sense of family bonds beyond that of actual physical lineage and kinship. And that's a way to honor God.
Today, Tim Mackey and I talk about the Fifth Command and how it's a command with a promise. Long life in the land with durable, caring communities. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey, Tim. Hello, John Collins. Hello. Working through the ten words, the ten commands. Big ten. We've talked about how all the commands of God are an invitation into life.
It's not about a checklist, duty and obligation. It's about how do you find life, true life.
Yep, God's commands, yeah, are for life. And they invite us into habits, practices that lead to life. And they also...
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Chapter 4: How can we expand the concept of honoring the elderly?
keep us away from things that will bring us towards death. Thou shalt and thou shalt not.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and when they're presented that way, thou shalt, thou shalt not, it feels like just a strict set of things to adhere to. And it seems like what we're doing is we're inviting ourselves into looking at these as God's wisdom for us and to mine them deeply. It isn't about just crossing these off a list. It's about reframing the way that we think Think and interact.
Yeah. And live. Yeah. I mean, every time that you tell someone what to do, underneath it there's a set of reasons.
Mm-hmm.
That presumably have been thought out. That the command is an effort to get them to something good or better than they presently experience. On large scale and small.
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Chapter 5: What unique relationship exists between parents and children?
Don't run out into the street, Johnny. Which is in essence like preserving your life is good. Getting run over is not. So we're trying to mine the commands for these subterranean values and pointers towards the good.
The ancient context is that Israel has just left Egypt. They were slaves there. They're now in the wilderness. God wants to prepare them to be his people who are going to bring blessing to the world as a result. This phrase, kingdom of priests, these kind of like intermediators of God's life to the rest of the world.
And there's all sorts of laws and statutes and regulations that God's going to give to Israel throughout the course of their time in the wilderness. These are the first 10. Yeah, it's the first 10.
Yeah. And they stand apart, right? Yes. Yeah, they have been set apart because there's 42 more after them that come very quickly in Exodus 20 through 23. And many of them take their cue from the 10 and fill out through case studies and examples, work out in more detail the 10. Which means that somebody set these 10 apart for a reason and called them the 10 words. Yeah.
Chapter 6: How does honoring parents impact community well-being?
That's what they're called. And drew attention to that these were inscribed in stone. Yeah. Uniquely, these were put on the stone tablets. Yeah. So we looked at 1 through 4. Yes. And we pointed out that all of these are emphasizing your relationship with God.
Yes.
Yeah. There's this repeated phrase of... God saying, I am Yahweh your Elohim. This is how you act in relationship with me.
Yeah. Honor me alone, not any other gods, because those gods are creatures, not creators. Don't make any physical representations of God and honor them as if they are your creator. Don't carry the name of Yahweh your Elohim for a futile purpose.
Chapter 7: What role does the Fifth Commandment play in modern Christian practice?
Don't misrepresent me, essentially, in word or in deed. And then honor the seventh day rest and imitate Yahweh's rhythms of work and rest. That's commands one through four. Humans relating to God. What's interesting is commands six through ten are a lot shorter. Literally commands six, seven, and eight are two words each in Hebrew. Yeah. don't kill, don't... Adulterize. Adulterize, don't steal.
And then number nine, don't bear false witness. Number 10, don't covet or desire what isn't yours. Those are all very clearly like about you and other humans. So you go from four about you and God, the last five are you and other humans. And then in between them, is a command that sticks out and is different from the others in a number of different ways. That's command number five.
And that is honor your father and mother. It's like this hinge.
Chapter 8: How does Jesus reinterpret the Fifth Commandment in his teachings?
And essentially, the logic of how the command works is that how you relate to a particular pair of humans bears special importance on your relationship to God. How you relate to God is really connected to how you relate to these two humans. Now, how you relate to all humans is also how you relate to God. Yeah.
Love God, love your neighbor, like that little pairing that Jesus distilled the laws of the Torah. Yeah, but who is my neighbor? Who is your neighbor? One thing's definitely true, your parents are your neighbor. In fact, your parents are more than your neighbor. Yeah. Parents have a really unique relationship to the humans that come from them. And that's what we're going to meditate on. Okay.
Yeah. So honor your father and mother stands at the hinge between how you relate to God and how you relate to your neighbor. Yeah. So shall we look at the fifth command? Let's do it. Great. Fifth Command reads like this in its Exodus version. Honor your father and your mother so that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh your Elohim gives you.
There's a little promise in there, a little so that.
Yeah, a little so that.
Yeah.
Yeah. So there's a command. There's just one verb, honor. We'll need to talk about that verb. Then there's your father and your mother. Why them specifically? We'll need to talk about that. But then we do have this little result, so that you live long days in the land.
So in the last conversation, we talked briefly about how many of the Ten Commands feel immediately universal for anybody of any time, any place. Don't kill. Don't commit adultery. The Sabbath feels pretty particular to a specific religious liturgical calendar of ancient Israelites.
But this command too also has a pretty specific connection to the story of Israel being told in the first five books of the Bible. So that your days may be prolonged in the land Yahweh your Elohim is giving you. That's referring to a very specific part of the plot line.
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