Honoring Fatherhood

“Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which the LORD your God gives you.” Deuteronomy 5:16

This is the only commandment that carries with it a promise. There is a blessing attached to honoring your parents. God is our heavenly father - our eternal parent. Honoring God with the tithe is to honor our heavenly father, which would seem to be a natural extension of the original commandment. In the following quotes from the book of the prophet Malachi, God says it plainly.

“Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, ‘How have we robbed You?’ In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you! Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows. Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of the ground; nor will your vine in the field cast its grapes,” says the LORD of hosts. “All the nations will call you blessed, for you shall be a delightful land,” says the LORD of hosts. “Your words have been arrogant against Me,” says the LORD. “Yet you say, ‘What have we spoken against You?’ You have said, ‘It is vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept His charge, and that we have walked in mourning before the LORD of hosts! So now we call the arrogant blessed; not only are the doers of wickedness built up but they also test God and escape.’ Malachi 3: 8-15

“For behold, the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the LORD of hosts, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings; and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall. You will tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day which I am preparing,” says the LORD of hosts. “Remember the law of Moses My servant, even the statutes and ordinances which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel. Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD. He will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that I will not come and smite the land with a curse.” Malachi 4

Most of us would have to agree that our country – and our world – is not prospering right now. In fact, the opposite would seem true as people continue to lose their jobs or their businesses or their homes or their children. We would seem to be under a curse, and the Bible makes it plain why a land is cursed – dishonoring parenthood. Mocking God. Mocking fatherhood. Punishing those who tithe.

Galatians 6:7 further clarifies, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”

We, the people, and, therefore, our government have been sowing some bad seeds. This is obvious from the harvest. If the people of this country do not repent and turn from their current path, we won’t be destroyed by foreign terrorists, but will be destroyed from within as families cease to exist. When both parents can no longer teach them biblical principles and lovingly discipline their own children, then the United States of America, one nation under God, no longer lives. Children are a heritage from the Lord, and when that heritage is taken away, there is no future.