Reverence
Good Morning,
Leviticus 19:30 “Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD.”
Reverence is not used very much in the Bible, and almost never used today. In the prior verse, God told Israel to reverence the place He met with them. In the times of the kings, Mephibosheth, the crippled son of Saul, fell down and reverenced David as king.
Bathsheba reverenced the king, her husband, though they had been married for decades: 1 Kings 1:31 “Then Bathsheba bowed with her face to the earth, and did reverence to the king.”
In the book of Esther, chapter 3, the people reverenced Haman, the wicked assistant to the Babylonian king (except for Mordicai; he would not bow). Psalm 89:7 says that God ought to be reverenced.
The New Testament says that two other people ought to be reverenced, the father and the husband:
Ephesians 5:33 “Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.”
Hebrews 12:9 “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence…”
There is no end of sermons on loving one’s wife, but when have you heard a sermon on the wife reverencing her husband?
There is no New Testament mention of reverence for the mother, nor is there any mention of reverence for the pastor or political leader. The clear instruction to the New Testament child is to REVERENCE their father. The wife is to be sure she reverences her husband.
(This word is so unused that my spell correction keeps changing reverence to reference. Five times it has done this as I typed this short note!)
Few, if any people, reverence anyone, let alone the dad and husband.
I was speaking to a young adult, age 20 or 21, a good person. The young adult’s dad had handled a situation in a manner that they did not approve, and said they were not sure if they should scold him or something else similar. I do not believe I said anything; I just thought for a moment. I assured the young person that the Lord will care for the situation if He wished to do so. The matter involved a family gathering of importance to this young person, and the dad did not choose to attend. I am sure that young adult loved the father, but had, at least mentally, forgotten the word reverence. (Probably, many of us have been there as well.)
I never heard my parents fight, yet one time, there was an exchange of some tense words over my step-brother who was causing difficulties in the home. I said they sounded like a couple of two-year-olds fighting. That stopped the fight for the moment, and they were both very unified in correcting me (seventeen years-old at the time). Children are to reverence their fathers, and they are not to correct their mothers. In that situation, I shut my mouth, and my parents were in agreement that I better stay that way.
Consider the word REVERENCE. In your New Testament, the two people to be reverenced are dad and husband – this is another politically incorrect thought, yet it is straight from the Good Book.
Pastor