Teach Them The Promises The Fifth Commandment

Teach them the Promises

The fifth commandment

Exodus 20.12; Deuteronomy 5.16

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

Ephesians 6.4

“Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”

Kids are motivated by promise as much as we are.

Everyone is motivated in life by promise. We choose our friends, mates, work, place of living, and everything else on the basis of what we hope these choices will do to improve our wellbeing. In a secular and materialist society such as ours, the most that we can hold out to our children is the promise of wealth, health, and happiness, as a result of material things and convivial circumstances. The public schools have this as the overarching objective of their 12-year plan for your child’s life. But the Church has better promises to offer – indeed, promises so exceeding great and precious that, by laying hold on them we may actually participate in the very being of God (2 Pt. 1.4)! These promises were implied to Adam and Eve, but articulated more fully to Abraham: promises of greatness, blessing, positive influence, protection, care, influence, and an eternal relationship with the living God. Those promises are now the inheritance of all who believe in Jesus (Rom. 4). But if we fail to teach our children these promises, and to encourage them to set their course in life toward gaining and enjoying those promises, their attention will be co-opted by the secular world, their vision will be lowered from the heavens to the visible horizon, and their contribution to the Kingdom of God and the building-up of the Body of Christ will be minimized, if not throttled altogether. What promises are we encouraging our children to lay hold on with all their soul and strength?

Do you know the promises God made to Abraham? Do you regard them as precious and magnificent? Do they motivate all your choices and decisions?

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“In the Gates” is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore

T. M. Moore is editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001,2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: The use of a translation other than the Authorised Version in an article does not constitute an endorsement in whole or in part by The Christian Observer.