We live in a child-centered culture where emotions are enthroned, and parents are expected to seek approval from their children instead of leading them with their God-given authority. This isn't compassion—it's confusion—and it is hurting our homes and harming the rising generation. The key to turning this around is for parents to disrupt the idolatry of self in the family and uphold the Fifth Commandment, “Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise” (Eph. 6:2). So, parents—stop listening to Freudian psychobabblers and raise your children after God’s Word. Show them what honor looks like, and rebuild the walls of your home with the mortar of authority and truth. 

Sermon: https://churchandfamilylife.com/sermons/686b6318fa360db97f9d7637

What if I told you that there's a lost parental duty that is so powerful and it holds the key to the success of children? It restores families, it heals broken homes, and it really shapes the future generations. It's not a secret formula, it's not the latest parenting trend. In one word, It is the biblical principle of honoring authority. It's the fifth commandment.

And yet our culture has almost completely forgotten it. Even worse, has rejected it. Romans 12, 10 says, "'Give preference to one another in honor.' And Ephesians 6, 1-4 calls children to honor their father and mother, and it's a command with a promise that it might go well with them and that they might live long on the earth. The New Testament makes it very clear that the apostles desired a very specific child raising culture in the churches of Jesus Christ. We live in a child-centered culture where emotions are enthroned, parents are expected to seek approval from their children instead of leading them with their God-given authority.

This isn't compassion, it's confusion And it actually is hurting our homes and harming the rising generation. Is there true parental authority in your home? Because the job of a parent is to shift who the child honors, who the child obeys, to shift from himself to the honor and obedience to God and his father and mother, who are the authorities given by God. The Bible says all authority is given by God. So let me say this really clearly.

Parents, your chief job is to disrupt the idolatry of the self in your family. You're not raising peers. You're not raising influencers. You are dealing with eternal souls that God has entrusted to you by the living God and he's placed you in a position of authority. Now we live in America, America has suffered a parenting revolution that really ramped up in the 1950s.

It was really a reflection of some things that came before. But this featured psychologists and parenting experts who's absolutely smashed biblical commands and wisdom that actually people always relied upon like your great-grandmother. You had Sigmund Freud, Dr. Spock, now you have the gentle parenting movement that is highly focused not on honor of authority but empathy, respect, honoring children's autonomy, the whole backdrop of inclusivity of everything, permissiveness. We should stop listening to psychologists and pop culture experts who deny the sinfulness of man and reject God's explicit commands for the home.

The truth is, your great grandmother likely raised her children with a lot more biblical wisdom than the experts today because she was tethered to a culture that was influenced by the Word of God. Let's be families that raise our children according to the Word of God and not according to the psychobabblers. Let's reject passivity, take the position of authority, and train like athletes how to raise our children for the sake of our children's souls. Because when we recover the power of honor that is promised in the Bible, we shape future generations. So let it be said of us, this was the generation that experienced the success that the fifth commandment promises.

And let it be said of us, we did not capitulate to the idols of autonomy and emotion. And let it be said of us that we raised a generation that honored God by honoring the authority of fathers and mothers. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Scripture applied as a production of Church and Family Life. Visit churchandfamilylife.com for more resources.