Honoring God and Parents

Amos 5:20-22 "…20 Will not the Day of the LORD be darkness and not light, even gloom with no brightness in it? 21“I hate, I despise your feasts! I cannot stand the stench of your solemn assemblies. 22Even though you offer Me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; for your peace offerings of fattened cattle I will have no regard.…"

There are so many things we do that purport to celebrate God and others. Many people say, Happy Birthday, Happy Mother's/Father's Day", Happy Easter, Merry Christmas ", and other greetings pertaining to holidays they wish to celebrate, but really have nothing to do with the people they claim to honor.

When society requires a celebration for someone, it usually involves oppressive expectations of that person they claim to celebrate.

God's response to human holidays that are supposedly created by humans for Him is that He "hates and despises them."

When His commands tell us that divorce and remarriage offend Him and that His commands and rules are for our own good and the response is to ignore them and make up our own rules about them, we are not honoring Him in His way; we are requiring Him to honor us by doing our bidding. The culture requires God to bless their holiday that offends Him.

Many people claim to be Christian but have no reverence or devotion to most of what He says in His Word. They do not value His wisdom, even making up their own version of His commands to satisfy their own fleshly desires.

When honoring someone requires the honoree to do the bidding of others to please them so the giver can feel good, that they did something, this is not honor, it is dishonor and a burden to the one supposedly being honored.

The honor goes to the one who sets the obligation to reverence and admire the one who gives the gift rather than the one who receives it. This sort of honor is a burden to those who are required to engage with those who set the rules.

In our day, "honor your father and mother" has become "send them a card" or "give them a call" while all the rest of the year acting arrogantly and disrespectfully against them as though they have no wisdom or value. The card and the call have replaced actual honor.

This is the same way Christians act toward God; they make up their own rules about honoring God, usually involving words, songs, or manmade special days, but negate Him when it suits them.

Matthew 15:8-9 "8 “‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me; 9 in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

Jeremiah 14:12 "Although they may fast, I will not listen to their cry; although they may offer burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Instead, I will finish them off by sword and famine and plague.”

Honor has nothing to do with our gifts to God, our holidays for God that He never commanded. Honoring God means we deeply value His wisdom and His commands while seeking Him for guidance, counsel, and personal transformation.

If someone becomes angry because we do not celebrate the culturally man-made rules, then we know they celebrate them for their own good feelings and not for the one they claim to bless.

Malachi 1:10 “Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would no longer kindle useless fires on My altar! I take no pleasure in you,” says the LORD of Hosts, “and I will accept no offering from your hands."

God would prefer we do nothing at all than to falsely honor Him our own way.

Jeremiah 6:20 "What use to Me is frankincense from Sheba or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable; your sacrifices do not please Me.”

Before Christ came, God's requirement for an offering to Him had to be without blemish.

Leviticus 3:1-5 “If one’s offering is a peace offering, and he offers an animal from the herd, whether male or female, he must present it without blemish before the LORD. / He is to lay his hand on the head of the offering and slaughter it at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. Then Aaron’s sons, the priests, shall splatter the blood on all sides of the altar. / From the peace offering, he is to bring a food offering to the LORD: the fat that covers the entrails, all the fat that is on them,"

When our gifts to others are tainted with expectations and rules they must follow to satisfy our own desires to be elevated and admired, then it is no gift at all.

Psalm 40:6-8 "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but my ears You have opened. Burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not require. Then I said, “Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll: I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.”

Wouldn't it be better to value a person caring about their thoughts and wisdom than to give them a gift and ignore them, or even disdain them, every other day of the year?

Hosea 6:6 "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."

Proverbs 21:3 "To do righteousness and justice is more desirable to the LORD than sacrifice."

Manmade holidays are always about the one who celebrates them, not about the one they claim to honor. Perhaps this is a matter everyone should pray about, asking God to reveal a selfish heart of false honor to understand what real honor looks like.