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This sermon was recorded on July 5, 2026.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's Word you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find [email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Good morning to everyone. Hope you had a great weekend, man. For me and my family, it was great to just have all of our, our kids at home and just enjoy that time together, eating food together, playing games together, just enjoying their company.
It was a great weekend. I hope that you had the same kind of experience that we did. You know, when you think about celebrating 250 years of freedom here in the United States, that's something that we hold onto, that we're excited about, that we appreciate, and we've set a marker, if you think about it, 250 years ago, a pivotal point in this nation's history where we were given freedom. And as I thought about that in connection with what we're studying, it made me stop and think about how the Israelites must have felt about that time that God brought them out of Egyptian slavery and brought them into this land of promise, that the, that he had given that promise to Abraham so many years ago.
And I think they set that date as a time if you look back over and over in the scriptures, you're going to hear them referring back to the God who brought you out of Egypt. That was a pivotal point in time in their history. And if you think about it, after they brought out of that, they get over there into the wilderness and they find themselves at Mount Sinai and God's presence descends upon Mount Sinai and thunder and lightning and, and rumbles and there's fire and it's just kind of a thing of unbelievable awe. And they're struck by that and God's voice bellows and he begins to share with them the things that are going to build their relationship together. That's going to help them understand who he is, how to live in this land and how to be prosperous and how to be taken care of. And so it's interesting that we're studying these 10 commandments and we call them 10 commandments because it's the way we were brought up to. To memorize them.
And they are commands. And so we don't want to diminish that at all. But when we think about it, this was basically what the Hebrews refer to as the ten words of God that were affiliated with the connection that they would feel with Him.
It was to build their relationship. So this is how you become successful in this land is, you know, you. You trust me. And so he gives them their. The first four commandments, or the first four of those 10 words, as the first one is that you shall have no other gods before me. And so we looked into that, and that word before me has a lot of different meanings that can be utilized. And so really, what it boils down to, there's no God beside, close to, besides, or against God. There's nothing that compares to who he is.
And so because of that, there's no need for us to make any graven images. That's one of the things that he said. You won't make any graven images. You know, think about it. To take God, who He is, and all of his power and awesomeness, and then to come down and create some kind of thing that we can identify here on earth and to give that the same thrust and the same deity and the same authority that he has, just makes no sense whatsoever.
So that's the first of those two. And if you think about these first four commands are really meant to demonstrate, like, this vertical relationship that we have with God, the idea that we love him and love him most of all, that we put him in his proper place and we keep him there. We hold him there. And that's why it says, the next one is, you don't take the Lord's name in vain. And of course, we understand that taking the Lord's name to mean that we carry His Name a certain way, we reflect his character, we show to people who he is by the way we live. And so when you take on his name, when you're God's chosen people, then you go into this land, you're supposed to represent me in all of these different ways. And. And that's another way of honoring God.
But then last week we talked about this fourth commandment, or the fourth of the ten words. And it was, remember the Sabbath day? To keep it holy. And of course, he goes into a lot more discourse about that one because he explains why that's the case.
If you go back to creation, God created the earth and everything in it for those six days. And Then on the seventh day, he consecrated it, he made it holy, and he decided that that would be a day of rest. And so God rested from his labors and he looked and he saw everything, that it was good. So when he says this in Exodus chapter 20 and he's talking about remembering the Sabbath day, what he's saying is, hey, I want you to work hard as my people. I want you to give it all you got, provide for your families, work hard, earn a living, all of those kinds of things. But when you get to that Sabbath, I want you to take a moment and thank me and to worship me and to take part in that rest in me and to acknowledge that all of this makes you a better person.
And so Andrew, last week, I thought, did an unbelievable job in explaining that when we remember that Sabbath, when we take that time to rest and recuperate and to recover, but also purposefully focus on God and what he's done in our lives, it helps us to not only be a person who honors and respects God, but also a person that builds relationships that are strong together. When we're our better self, we're better not only for God, but we're also better with each other.
And it's also kind of a pivot, it's a bridge that takes place from this particular concept over into the next six. And they are all directed at our relationships with one another.
And so what God is trying to say is when we have all this right with him, it helps us be right each other. So this fifth commandment is honor your father and mother. Now I want to tell you, God has a sense of humor. And sometimes the things that you're studying are the things that you need the absolute most. I will tell you, last weekend would have been my parents 57th wedding anniversary. And so I decided, you know, that's a tough day for my mom. I'm going to go and I'm going to spend some time with her and go show up at her house, take her to lunch, maybe spent some time and try to boost her spirits. Well, you know, I walked in the door and she kind of burst into tears a little bit and so did I. And we had a little moment there where we were just still in that grieving process, right, Trying to figure some things out. And so I thought this is good that I'm here and it's great to spend time with her. And so we went to lunch and everything was fine. But you know, she asked me my opinion about something and I shared with her my opinion about that. And And I guess what happened is it sort of spiraled out into not so hot, you know, so here it was. I was there to build her up, to show her honor and love. And in the middle of this, my mouth couldn't stop itself, and I said some things that hurt her feelings. And the rest of that, you know, experience was not so hot. So as I'm finishing that up next weekend or last weekend, and I get to my studies for this week.
Oh, yeah. Honor your father and mother.
And so I had to stomp on my own toes all week long with this. I've called my mom, I've apologized. I was way out of line. I just said some things I should not have said.
And it hurt me even more as I studied this.
Well, when you think about it, we're all kind of struggling with that at times, right? And we don't always do exactly what we need to do.
The important thing is that we rewrite those wrongs and we make things right and we change our behaviors and we do a better job of those kinds of things.
Well, you know, what does honor look like now for you guys? You may have in your mind what honor looks like. Maybe it's an award of some sort. Maybe it's some kind expression, or maybe it's, you know, some kind of valuable time with someone. And we may say those things are honoring. I want to share with you a few things that my kids have done pretty well that have helped me. And they didn't know that I was going to do this. Well, sort of they did. You know, they knew that when their dad became their preacher that this kind of stuff was going to just show up on a screen somewhere. But I got this really cool message from one of my kids. It was super sweet. You don't have to read all that. But it was just like, dad, I love you. I respect you. I appreciate you so much. You've been a good dad. I hope to be a good dad someday, too. And it's the kind of thing that, you know, makes your heart warm. And so I clicked the heart button.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Boo.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: I love that one. That was good, right?
A couple of maybe a year ago, we were studying the Book of Ruth, and Kinsey sent me a message about, you know, studying the Book of Ruth. And she loved it. And she sent me a screenshot. She probably doesn't remember this, a screenshot of her Bible.
And it was one of those things where when I looked at it, it kind of filled my heart up. Not because she had taken notes from my sermons. I couldn't find any of that on there. But it was the fact that she spent time in her Bible. Look at that. Marked up. And it was just something that kind of spoke to my heart. It was spiritual in nature. And it was like, oh, that is so great. And then, of course, you're gonna have moments like that. And then you're gonna get a card like this that says, a dad's love is like elastic in his underwear.
And you wait for the punchline, right? And the punchline is worn out, stretched in, but never, ever replaced. And I felt like that was a really long way to go into the idea that I'm irreplaceable, you know what I'm saying?
And no pun intended, but I felt like it was a stretch, you know what I'm saying? And so I didn't know if that was a commentary on my waistband or if it was really a remark about my fatherhood. Anyway, I guess the point I'm saying is if you know my personality, you know that I loved all of those things, that every one of those things was a way to honor me. I like a good. I don't mind being the brunt of a joke, but I sure do love the appreciation. And I absolutely love spiritual things. And so in all those ways, my kids have done things that showed me a little honor, even though it comes from their different personalities and their way of doing things, too. Honor looks different for every person, I guess, in some ways. But there are some things that are for sure, honoring. So if we want to, let's look at what this means. What does honor mean?
And I want you to see that definition. It means heavy, weighty, burdensome, or something of great value.
The idea here is that if I'm going to show someone honor, it's that I recognize their significance in my life. It's giving them, like, a special precedent or them significance in my life and making certain that they understand their value to me. But in the same way, the other side of that is that if I take my family or my parents too lightly, if I don't respect them, if I dishonor them, if I speak evil of them, if I do all these things that are not very honoring of them, that is also something that we have to be careful that we don't do in the process.
So here's what the Hebrews understood as they got these commands. Again, you think about God giving them the Ten Commandments. And we look at those Ten Commandments, and we kind of imagine them, you know, on stones. And maybe they make a Good prop in a courthouse somewhere and those kinds of things. But what he's saying is, here is how we have this great relationship together. You honor me first, but then I want you to understand that you have an obligation to honor your parents. And so what they would have understood, first of all, is because God is saying this and because he's speaking it into a covenant, that this would have been legally binding for them. Like, there was no way that they couldn't do this.
They had to find a way to honor their parents. They had to demonstrate that. But a part of that was that they would take care of their parents financially, that they would have a role in. In covering their care as they aged and got older.
Now, what I want you to understand is these days were not like our days. They didn't have Social Security, they didn't have Medicare. They didn't have some of those things like that.
The obligation, the burden, the weight of it was on that family person, like the children of those elderly parents. And so they were to give them that kind of support. Now, you may say, well, that seems odd, but even Jesus was dealing with this. I don't know if you remember in Mark, chapter seven, the Pharisees came to Jesus and they were complaining about the fact that he had.
His followers were not washing their hands ritualistic. They weren't washing their hands before they had their meal. Wasn't a cleanness thing. It was just a procedural thing that they did, kind of to honor a tradition.
And so Jesus says to them, as they're complaining about that, he says, well, you guys are honoring that, but you're losing some of the most significant parts of the law. And you're finding yourself giving yourself the freedom to do things that are not what God intended by dedicating things like the care of your parents, the money that you would lay aside to do that, declaring it corban, which was a word that said, this is dedicated to God, meaning this will be a donation at some point to the temple or to the Lord's work in some way or another. And so what happened is these people were getting to the point where they'd say, hey, that part of my money is Corban, dedicated to God. And they were keeping it back to enrich themselves and not. They were using a loophole basically to get away with storing money and not having money to take care of their family. So Jesus says to them in Mark 7, for Moses said, honor your father and mother, and whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.
But you say, if a Man tells his father or his mother, whatever you would have gained from me is corbin that is given to God, then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition. What he's saying is you Pharisees are allowing some of these things to slide like this, which is really important.
And you're allowing other things, like other traditions, step up to a higher level. And so he's saying, you fail at doing what God has asked you to do. So again, going back to what Moses has said, now here Jesus is repeating this and saying, hey, your obligation is to take care of your family. So they understood those things, that it was legal requirement. They understood that they had a financial buy in, in the middle of all this, but also it was to perpetuate the covenant. What do I mean by that?
Well, perpetuating the covenant means that this is passed down from age to age. So there's a sense in which this is a pivot to how do we teach our kids to honor their parents? Well, we honor our parents and that kind of concept allows them to learn it and to put it into practice. But it's also an edict to value the elderly, to make sure that we, you know, gleaned from their wisdom, to make sure that we held them in high regard, that we respected them and looked for their wisdom and listened to what they had to say and what they had gone through in their lives. So that's what the Hebrews would have understood in this time. And so the Israelites were expected to be a people of honor, started out with honoring God, but also that they would have a responsibility to honor their parents. Now one of the things about this, as I dug into it, it mentioned that this is kind of one of those things where God is saying to them, hey, your parents were actually partners in creation, right?
It's the idea that God is the creator and God gives life, but he uses the mechanism of a male and a female to join together to have a child and, and to create life in that moment. And so it was a way for God to say, these people are worthy of your honor and your praise and your take care of them.
And so notice what he says here. And it makes sense, doesn't it? In Deuteronomy, chapter 21, as they're doing a second reading of the law, as Moses is about to let the Israelites go into the land and he's sharing with them one more time to reaffirm some of these things that he says these things to you that I command you, they need to be on your heart.
Now, I want you to understand something. God always intended that these stone tablets, these things that we see as the Ten Commandments, that those would not just stay on those stones written by the hand of God, that they would be more of the things that we would, you know, internalize, that we would live those things out, that we would take those concepts and begin to pattern our lives after those things. And so God always expected that. So he goes on to say that you should teach these things diligently to your children. So I hope you're understanding that as we talk about honoring father and mother, there is an education that takes place to help our children understand that. So it's not just honoring your father and mother, but it is all of these concepts that God is putting out there, all of these rules and laws and statutes and precepts, they're all meant to. To help our kids understand who God is and how we follow him. And it's supposed to shape the way we live our lives. That's why he said, you teach these things to your kids when they rise up in the morning, when they walk by the wayside, when they sit at the table, or when they go to bed at night, that it's a perpetual conversation where they are understanding what God needs them to be.
That's how you are blessed. So you can't be blessed by the next generation if you haven't first embedded these things into their hearts.
And so when I look at this, and I'm looking at this, honor your father and your mother. One thing that is inescapable is this honoring father and Mother has to be accompanied by discipline and obedience.
From a parent perspective, our children will not learn honor. They will not learn to honor God. They will not learn to honor, respect, and the authority of their parents unless we teach them those things. And so that's critically important. That's a secondary piece. And of this honor your father and mother. So he says, here's a promise that comes as a result of that.
And the promise is this, that you're going to live a long and fulfilling life.
Now, you got to think about what he's talking about here. They're going into the land of promise, they're going into Canaan, and everything is great. They're looking at that blessing in front of them, and he's saying, if you do these things, if you obey these things, if you put these things into practice, what's going to happen is you're gonna be blessed with a long Life. And it doesn't just mean like number of years, but it's kind of like a generational thing. Like, if you will learn these things, put them into practice and teach your children, then they themselves will learn those things, put them into practice, teach their children, and over time, what happens is you and your family and the nation of Israel will live a blessed, blessed life. Because we're perpetuating this covenantal promise that God has given us, and we fulfill it by honoring him.
But here's the problem with that. In the same way that we have life and we have abundant life. Remember, Jesus even said that In John chapter 10, he said, I came that they might have life and life more abundantly. He wasn't just talking about, you know, in eternity, he was talking about life. Even here in this life, obedience brings with it a lot of joy.
But disobedience brought some extreme consequences.
And I'm talking maybe stuff that we don't talk enough about that God brings us. Let's talk about this Hebrews. I mean, Exodus, chapter 21, verse 15 says this.
Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.
And whoever curses or dishonors his father or his mother shall be put to death. Now, just one second.
That's one chapter over from these ten commandments, right? And it's God saying, hey, this has gotta happen. If you disobey or you strike your mother and your father, you curse them, you dishonor them in any way, that child will be put to death. So what we're gonna do is today on the way out, I'm gonna have a signup sheet. And for any parent who feels like their kid has disrespected them, you can go ahead and write it down and we'll just take out stones. And all of a sudden, all these faces were looking up at me. That is amazing.
There's a lot of uneasiness with that, right? It's not a comfortable thing to think about. Put your kids to death. That seems shocking and ridiculous, right? But listen to these words of Deuteronomy, chapter 21, starting in verse 18, I'll read them kind of slow because I want us to get this. It says, if a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and though they discipline him, understand, this is not like a first time offensive type thing. This is one of those things where this child has been disciplined over and over, will not accept that discipline is rebellious in all these things it says, and will not Listen to them. Then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives.
And they shall say to the elders of his city, this, our son is stubborn and rebellious.
He will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard.
And this. I want you to understand something. This is not like a checklist of what it must take for a person to be stoned. What this is is parents coming. And they had to declare exactly what it is. What is the rebellion? What is the struggle that they're facing? Why are they so disobedient? Why are they rebelling? Is it drunkenness? Is it gluttony? Is it a lot of other things? It could be anything. That's just a list. That's here. It's not necessarily a specific thing, but more or less present your argument on why you have reached your limit and this can no longer be tolerated.
And then it says, then all the men of the city shall stone him to death.
Now, that's.
That's harsh.
That's hard for us to hear.
We know that God values life. We'll hear more about this in upcoming commandments.
We know that he values life, but he says, clearly put them to death.
That's tough. How many of us have been rebellious and disobedient and all that kind of stuff? I mean, raise your hand. You don't have to. I'm just saying we're all kind of guilty of that, right? We've all had these moments. But hear why he says this. He says, so you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel caged it shall hear.
Do you understand what God is saying?
How can you honor your father and mother?
Well, you can't do it if you're disobedient and rebellious.
And so he's saying to the parents, hey, on some level, you have to understand something. Part of honoring your father and your mother is the fact that they learn from a very early age. They don't strike their parents, they don't talk back to them, they don't rebel against them, that they are clear standards and that there is discipline that is involved in this process. And. And too often we have a culture now who is dismissing all of these things. And I don't mean to just be harsh about this, but I just want us to be reminded the whole point of all this was to remove evil from among us.
That was the point.
That's hard for us to hear. But what God is saying Is if you're going to set a standard and walk around carrying my name, if you are going to bear my character in front of other people, you cannot be rebellious, you cannot be disobedient, you cannot be a person who is causing such problems in people's lives.
That's not what God wants for us. So in this honoring of father and mother is the idea of discipline as well. It's like a foundational piece of their society. And why would it be that way?
Well, listen to this.
Think about all the things that are taught by us, honoring our parents and being obedient.
Obedience and rule of law, right? If God said to these parents, hey, these are the things that you're gonna teach your children, it meant that those laws happened to be in the parents hearts and they had to express those to their kids. So they were teaching these things at home. Respect for authority came as a result of that. If mom and dad are the authority, then you kind of understand submission to certain environments and who's in control and who's in charge of those areas. And you find yourself submitting to them by proxy because you understand the under the idea of authority. But also there are boundaries that are drawn. This is so important because God draws lines. And when we step across those lines, it's called transgression or trespass or sin or iniquity. And so he's saying this is a part of it. Like the do's and the don'ts are meant to help guide you to a better understanding of what it means to follow him. And then the idea also here is that when we teach our children, we're advancing God's principles, we're putting them into their hearts and they begin to live and to act in that way that they demonstrate that it's a part of the way we live our lives.
And then ultimately it's our way of taking care of family, right? It's keeping everybody true to God. It's keeping everybody, you know, encouraged in God's word.
Now I'm saying all this to say, this is so important.
And we find ourselves sometimes in this society listening to everyone else, but not paying attention to what God has to say about this.
Ephesians 6. We just read it in scripture reading earlier.
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Honor your father and mother. And this comes with the promise, right? It's the first commandment with a promise. And what is that commandment? That you live long and you have prosperous lives. I think it was Bill Cosby, not that he's A good man.
But I think he was the one that phrased this to. And my parents repeated it later in life is, you know, when you're disobedient, you know, I'll take you out here. I brought you into this world. I can take you out. And me and your mom can make another one look just like you. Right? I mean, that was something he said, but honor your father and mother. That's how we get to that long, prosperous, blessed life. Because God gives us what we need in those moments.
But here's the part that we all got to hear is in that obedience to our father and mother, he does not leave out the fathers and their role.
How many of us know of people who lived with jerks, for lack of better term?
Fathers who were harsh, abusive, difficult stayed on top of us all the time. And they were so hard that they had no concept of how to show love.
That's something that God wanted to make sure that men have to be honorable as well.
So he says, fathers, don't provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. Fathers, don't antagonize your children so they will not become discouraged. That's in Colossians, chapter one. So the point I'm making is that both of these have the same idea, is that we can't be harsh as parents. We can't come down on our children so hard that they don't understand why it is they're doing what they're doing. And that's why he says, discipline and instruction. And I want us to understand that real fatherhood, and I believe this is biblical, real fatherhood is this.
It's the discipline aspect of it, which is sometimes hard correction that stings a little bit, that makes it difficult for us to understand in the moment.
But there's another balanced side of that, which is the instruction part.
And I think sometimes what we have is we have, you know, fathers who are on this far side who are so hard and abusive, but then we got other fathers over here that let everything slide. And both of those things are equally wrong.
But I think here God is telling us in Ephesians 6 that there is a balance to be struck where the discipline is hard, but the love and the encouragement, the gentle rebuke, the explanation, the bringing clarity to why it is you receive that discipline.
That's the balance of fatherhood.
That's what brings us to an understanding that, no, there is a line. Yes, there is discipline. Yes, it's hard at times, but there is A side that says, but help me. Let me help you understand why God expects you to live this way, that you point your children back to God. In this process, we're letting our children get away with too much.
We've got to establish authority, respect, honor, and at the same time, demonstrate love and encouragement. I've said this probably too many times.
Can't help it. It's just part of my existence. I had the best father you could imagine.
And I do remember him walking down the hall with his belt, cracking that thing together, kind of getting our attention, making our knees tremble while we were waiting on the discipline that was coming to us.
And he would not hold back.
He would discipline us.
And then he would let us sit with it for a few minutes.
And then he'd come back into the room.
Demeanor totally different, disposition totally controlled.
He would sit down next to us, and sometimes, if we were small, he'd put us in his lap and he would say, hey, buddy, I know that hurt. And I want you to know I don't want you to feel that pain. But you've made some choices that you know were wrong. And I want to remind you again of what God says.
I want you to know that God expects me as your father to help you understand these truths, that these things are a measure of living the way God wants us to.
And so here's what God actually says about that. I want you to understand that. And he would take the time to discipline hard and turn around and love us so deeply. I never questioned, not once, not once, whether or not my father had my best interest at heart or whether or not he loved me.
Not once.
Because he found the balance, that balance between discipline and instruction.
Notice one of them is about education and discipline. The other one is about calling attention, bringing a warning, and bringing clarity to what it is they need to know.
When I was looking at the word instruction, this kind of came up. Some Greek scholars have tried to say, how do we kind of put this in words to help you understand the significance of this? And they said it's improving a child's reasoning so they can reach God's solution.
And they do that how? By going through his thought process.
If you look in the scriptures all the time, God will say, don't do this, right? But if you read a little bit further, you're gonna find out that he says, don't do this, because.
And he explains a lot of that. What I'm saying to all of us as parents, and especially fathers is find the text, find the answer.
Share that with Your kids help them to understand the nature of the discipline and what it's leading us to.
So, again, we have these extremes.
Sometimes we're too hard, sometimes we're way too light.
But instead of, you know, not just coddling our kids and making them think everything is fine and maybe protecting them from all the pain that they're going to experience in this life, maybe the best thing is for us to find some discipline.
And then in that discipline, point them back to God's precepts and help them learn to process the thoughts of what God has in store for their life. I think that is. It's exhausting.
It's ongoing, it's daily, it's repetitive. It's over and over and over and over again.
But doing that over a lifetime will teach your kids not only those boundaries, but.
But also how to honor their father and mother.
And I can feel it in the audience.
Some of you are thinking, how in the world can I do that?
You know, my parents were not honorable.
They were abusive, they were hard. I really can't think of any way that I could find a way to honor them. And yet God is still saying, to honor your father and mother.
Well, first of all, honor is a decision to kind of focus on the good things, you know, or to embrace those good things without tripping over the things that are bad. You know, I've often had people in my office talking about the experiences they've had, and they're difficult sometimes, and it's hard. And, you know, we cry together, we pray together. I can feel the sorrow that they feel, the hurt that they've experienced in their life.
And yet inevitably, they will say something like, but now, my dad was a hard worker.
Or my dad was, you know, he was very giving to his neighbors. He was very kind to people.
You know, they didn't know how to apply it in their family, but they had a way of being. I guess what I'm saying is sometimes you have to grasp onto those things that you know about them that were good and not worry so much about how you've been treated. See, relationships are not about how you are treated, but more so how you reflect the goodness of God in those relationships.
And again, I know some. Some people have been hurt, and I'm so sorry that you've gone through those things.
But I just want us to be reminded that God is still saying, hey, honor them to the best of your ability.
This verse is sort of hard to hear, too.
We've used it kind of weaponized to say, hey, anyone who doesn't take care of his family, doesn't deserve to work.
He's worse than an infidel or whatever. We kind of throw that out there. But in this context of taking care of our family, that's what's being said here. Someone who does not take care of their family, provide for them, give them what they need. You know, God says it's kind of worse than an infidel. Like a person who has no faith at all. God expects this of us to take care of our families.
So there are ways to express honor. I've shared with you several, but here are just a few things just to be reminded of. Verbalize gratitude. There's gotta be a way that you can say thank you to people and for people in our life that maybe they go unnoticed. The next part of this is familiarity. You know, that sometimes you're with family and maybe your parents, that's a great relationship, but you got other chaos going on in your life. And so it's just easy to deal with the chaos and kind of neglect the reality that you've been blessed by a good family. Well, don't let that familiarity rob you of the opportunity to honor your parents. Don't assume that they know. Make sure that you say some things to them. Also ask them about their experiences, right? Ask them about the things that they've gone through in life and spend some time gleaning from their experience.
Sometimes they just want to know that you value what they have to say.
Their feedback matters to you that you hear what they have to say and you take it in and you let it kind of shape the way you make decisions as well.
And then the other thing is to be present with them, spend time with them, call them on the phone and do those things that are really good to kind of pour into our parents.
I mentioned enemies of honor or mentioned one of them.
One of the things that we can do that hurts us is that familiarity, that closeness, that taking for granted of our families. Let's make sure that we don't do that.
Also, we can look back at those past offenses and we can keep just holding onto those things.
And the reality is God tells us to pray for people.
And it doesn't just mean that we pray, you know, about them. It means that we pray for them, that we want them to change.
Also, we can kind of tear down that honor by being hyper critical.
I am one who always has an opinion. In fact, I was at lunch one day, this is a while back, with someone and Jason Helton, and someone was talking to us and asked me, hey, Brandon, do you have an opinion? And Jason burst into laughter. And I didn't know what that meant.
He said, oh, he got an opinion now, if you want to hear it, you know, like, it was that kind of thing. I know. I have opinions, okay? I have strong opinions about some things, right? And there are some of those things that never, ever need to be uttered, you know, But I can find myself being hypercritical, and I can kind of, you know, take away some of the things that I intended. It's what I was guilty of with my mother that's a killer of honor.
So let's don't do those things.
So how do we honor those that are dishonorable? I would say again, pray with them. Pray for them. You know, it's not one of those things where you go, lord, just give them a good old case of gout. You know, that's not really what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about, you know, praying for them, for their heart, for their decisions that they make, for their openness to what God can do in their life. For you to pray for your attitude and how you receive those.
And so you are working not only on praying for them and for their good, but you are also working on your own attitude.
And then don't return dishonor with dishonor. The Bible says In Romans, chapter 12, we never will overcome evil by doing more evil. Evil. It's only going to happen when we overcome evil with good and then finally, when it all shakes out, seek God's blessing. Don't worry about whether you get their approval or not.
That's not the point of this. Sometimes we are going to have these things that just. They don't find quite the resolution that we're looking for. We're not going to, you know, turn that person around and say, we don't have that ability to do that. We can convict them, we can talk to them, we can pray for them and all those things. Ultimately, the Lord has to do that. But if you think back to what was happening here with the Israelites, they were to do what? Honor your father and mother.
What, so that the Lord is going to bless you with that long life and that blessing, that fulfilled life.
So I hope you're kind of seeing what it's saying here is forget those things in the past. Don't let those define who you are.
Move forward with forgiveness and understand that you're trying to seek the blessing of God, and that's it.
So honoring our parents says little about their character, but more about who we are.
And again, we're supposed to be image bearers of Christ, and so that matters in how we carry ourselves and how we treat other people.
Hope you're seeing that honoring your parents has an element of teaching and instruction with our children as well, so we can enjoy the blessings of that honor later on in life.
But I hope you're encouraged, even if you've been going through these difficult things.
Psalm 27:10 helps me.
Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me, and that is a blessing that we can count on.
So this morning, I don't know where you are. I don't know if you, probably all of us could raise our hand and say we've been disrespectful or dishonorable to our parents at times.
You know, that can be changed with you making a decision to treat them better, to work on your own attitude and all those kinds of things. But there may be someone who's saying, hey, I'm just really struggling with this and I need help. And we want you to come forward to receive the encouragement of your church family and getting through that and being there to help stabilize you and strengthen you and. And knowing that God will forgive you and that he will work in your heart and your life if you make it receptive to that.
But it may be that there's someone here this morning saying, I'm ready to give my life to Christ, period. I'm ready to change this course that I'm on and to give my life to Christ.
I want to confess his name and live out that confession every single day. I want to change my life. I want to have my sins washed away in baptism, and I want to walk in a new life with Him. And if that is your need this morning, I hope either of those things, or if there are any other reasons that you just need prayer and encouragement, you'll come while we stand in single.
