Dishonorable | Sunday, November 15, 2020
November 12, 2020 · Pastor Miles DeBenedictis
In this teaching
Pastor Miles continues his study of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, focusing on the Fifth Commandment to honor father and mother. He shows that honoring parents ultimately means walking in the wisdom of Scripture they taught us—illustrated by David's grievous sin and his repentance—and that when we fail, forgiving grace is found in Christ.
- The Fifth Commandment is distinct: it is stated positively and carries a promised blessing of long life and well-being in the land.
- Honoring father and mother is not blind, lifelong obedience to every parental wish; "honor" (Deuteronomy 5) differs from "obey" (Ephesians 6, addressed to children).
- The family is the seed of civil society; as the family breaks down, society grows increasingly uncivil.
- To dishonor parents is ultimately to break God's law they trained us in—illustrated by David's adultery, deceit, and murder in 2 Samuel 11.
- Jesus deepens the commands in Matthew 5: hatred equals murder and lust equals adultery, so all of us are guilty.
- The right response is confession and repentance, as David models in Psalm 51, receiving forgiving grace through Christ.
Readable is a lightly edited reading copy; Verbatim stays close to the spoken words. The audio and video are the record of what was said.
Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. ()
When we break God's law, we dishonor the parents who raised us in it—but in Christ there is forgiving grace.
Hiding God's Commands in Our Hearts
This year I have been working slowly through the book of Deuteronomy, considering the statutes and judgments of God. Most recently we have come to the actual Ten Commandments. While the phrase "the Ten Commandments" is fairly well known in our culture, the actual words of them are not. My aim in teaching through these commands has been to help you hide them in your heart and mind by memorizing them.
You may remember that a couple of months ago we made available a PDF to walk you through memorizing the Ten Commandments easily. You can go to lifeinconnection.com/commands to download it. It is important for us to memorize Scripture, and as we'll see in , it is also important to teach these things to our kids, grandkids, nieces, and nephews.
David says in , "Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You." And in we read:
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes... More to be desired are they than gold... For by them Your servant is warned, and in keeping them there is great reward.
If you want to become wise and have your soul transformed, commit these things to memory. They will begin to transform your mind, your heart, and ultimately your life—which is what God desires. He wants to transform us by the renewing of our minds, so that in our daily interactions with friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors we would demonstrate His perfect will.
A Cultural Memory of the Commands
Although most people we meet cannot recite the Ten Commandments word for word, there is still something of a cultural memory of them. People might say, "Honor your father and mother," or "You shall not kill," which as we'll see isn't really what the command says, or "You shall not steal." I once had someone tell me one of the Ten Commandments was "You shall not judge"—which is obviously not one of them. That's right up there with "God helps those who help themselves," which is also not in the Bible.
Most of the remaining commands are straightforward. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet. You don't need a degree in the biblical languages to grasp these or their importance. Murder is bad, adultery is bad, theft is bad, lying is bad. So I'm not going to spend an hour each week unearthing the nuances of the Hebrew behind "you shall not murder."
Why Focus on the Fifth Commandment
This morning I want to zero in on the Fifth Commandment, found in . Whereas the Sixth through Tenth Commandments are presented as negatives—"thou shalt not"—the Fifth is presented as a positive, and it comes with a promise.
Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
I want to focus on this command for several reasons. First, it is distinct: it is a positive command, and it carries a promised blessing. Second, it sometimes causes confusion. Third, as one commentator said, it is justly regarded as asserting the foundation of all social ordinances and arrangements.
In other words, the family—ordered around a father and a mother—is the seed of all society and community. If you get family wrong, you get society wrong. If you destroy the family structure—father, mother, children, grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins—then civil society falls apart and begins to manifest murder, adultery, theft, deception, greed, and covetousness.
The development of civil society was supposed to happen through the training and rearing of children within the family. The knowledge of the "thou shalt nots" of this passage was originally to come from within the family, as will show. So I don't find it odd that our society is increasingly less civil as families in the West have fallen apart. The union of a father and mother joined as one flesh and bringing forth a family has been under attack for a very long time, and the breakdown of society follows the breakdown of the family.
Clearing Up the Confusion
So what does this command mean? Some people assume that honoring father and mother means obeying everything your parents tell you to do, right on through adulthood. Obedience is important—Paul says in , "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." So there is a New Testament command connected to this one in Deuteronomy. But it is not identical.
The command in Ephesians is spoken to children: obey your parents. The command in was spoken to adults, and the word "honor" is not the same word as "obey," even if there is a connection between them. So to the adult who feels they cannot make decisions outside their parents' direct will, that's not what's being taught here.
Hopefully your parents raised you in the training and admonition of the Lord, so that as you grow older they remain a source of wise counsel. When you become an adult, there is a leaving that takes place as you become an autonomous individual. But even then, the command to honor your father and mother remains, and so does the promise—your days may be long, and it will be well with you in the land. I have counseled people in their twenties and thirties who feel conflicted about decisions outside what their parents want, saying "I need to honor and obey." That's not necessarily what this passage is speaking of.
What It Looks Like to Dishonor Your Parents
So what does it actually mean to honor your father and mother, if it doesn't mean obeying in every single point? The best commentary on the Bible is the Bible. I want to illustrate this from Scripture by showing what it looks like to dishonor your father and mother.
Living in the West, we live under what has been described as a guilt-based society. But much of the rest of the world, including the Hebrew world of the Old Testament, lived under an honor-and-shame culture. If you did not live in a righteous way in that culture, you would bring dishonor and shame upon your family. This is clear in the Proverbs of Solomon. says, "He who mistreats his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings reproach."
So a huge part of honoring your father and mother is living according to the wisdom of the Scriptures, in which—biblically speaking—mom and dad are supposed to train you.
David's Dishonorable Sin
To illustrate what it looks like to bring shame and reproach, I want to read a long passage from , the life of King David, who lived 3,000 years ago—the great king and psalmist of Israel, a man after God's own heart.
It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants... but David remained at Jerusalem. ()
So the king sends his armies off, but he stays home. One evening he arose and walked on the roof of the palace, and from there he saw a woman bathing, very beautiful to behold. He inquired about her and was told, "Is this not Bathsheba... the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" Then David sent messengers and took her, and she lay with him. She conceived and sent word: "I am with child."
Here is the picture of the king. He covets another man's wife. He commits adultery. Then David sends to Joab and has Uriah brought back from the battle, trying to get him to go home to his wife so the child would appear to be Uriah's. But Uriah, a man of godly character and integrity, would not go down to his house. He said:
The ark and Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents... Shall I then go to my house to eat and drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing.
David kept him another day and even got him drunk, but still Uriah would not go home. So David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by Uriah's own hand: "Set Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retreat from him, that he may be struck down and die." That is premeditated murder.
That is exactly what happened. When word came back that Uriah was dead, David told the messenger, "Do not let this thing displease you, for the sword devours one as well as another." When Bathsheba's mourning was over, David brought her to his house, and she became his wife and bore him a son. And then we read the last words of the chapter: "But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." You might underline those words—it may be a bit of an understatement.
Breaking Every Command, Dishonoring His Parents
So what does it look like to dishonor your father and mother? This is it. David—the great king and psalmist, a man after God's own heart—in a moment of weakness took another man's wife, committed adultery, lied about it, and conspired to murder. He broke all of the commandments: do not covet, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not murder. And in doing so, he dishonored the father and mother who raised him to walk in the ways of God.
Honoring your father and mother is not merely obeying everything your parents say. It is obeying the teaching of the Scriptures they taught you. When you break the law of God, you dishonor those who trained you in it. To honor them is to not lie, not covet, not steal, not commit adultery, not murder—to walk in the ways of the Lord.
At this point you might think, "Thank God I'm not anything like David. I've never murdered or committed adultery." But Jesus updates these things in the Sermon on the Mount in . He says, "You have heard it said, 'You shall not murder'—but I say, if you hate someone, you've committed murder in your heart." And, "You have heard it said, 'You shall not commit adultery'—but I say, if you look upon a woman to lust after her, you've committed adultery in your heart." So hatred is equated with murder and lust with adultery. The law of God is a heavy burden, and we dishonor our father and mother when we do not walk in what is right before God.
The Good News: Repentance and Grace
So what do you do if you have lived in a way that dishonors your family by greed, theft, deception, adultery, or murder? How do you respond when you realize you've broken the commandments of God? There is good news. The same man who committed these grave sins in confessed with great repentance in .
The heading tells us this is a psalm of David "when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." He had lied about it for a year. And then he prayed:
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness... Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin... Against You, You only, have I sinned... Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow... Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me... Restore to me the joy of Your salvation... Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted to You.
The same David who committed those horrible sins confessed and repented gloriously, speaking of God's lovingkindness and His ability to purge and forgive. That is the wonderful joy we learn of in Jesus, the Son of David. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord laid on Him our iniquity, so that we could be forgiven and receive His grace.
So while there is heavy news in the commandments—when we realize we have all broken them and dishonored our father and mother as liars, adulterers, and murderers at heart—we also realize that in Christ Jesus we can experience forgiving grace as we come to Him and confess our sins. My encouragement is that you would call out to the Lord, realize your sin, and confess it. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Closing Prayer
Father, we thank You for Your grace. We thank You for Your goodness. None of us is deserving of it, but we rejoice that You have blessed us with that grace and forgiveness when we realize that, just like David, all of us are sinners who fall short of Your glory. While it is our desire to honor You and to honor our father and mother by walking in obedience to the Scriptures, Lord, we all fall short. And we thank You that when we fall short, we have Your forgiving grace. So once again we confess our sins to You and pray that You would forgive us. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
I won't forget the wonder of how You brought deliverance, the exodus of my heart. And You found me; You found me. You freed me and held back the waters for my release.
Oh Yahweh, You're the God who fights for me, Lord of every victory. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! You have torn apart the sea. You have led me through the deep
Into the promised land, I will not forget you. I will sing of all you've done. Death is swallowed up forever, and the fury of your love. You stepped into my Egypt, took me by the hand, and marched me out to freedom.
You are the God who fights for me, Lord of every victory. Hallelujah! You have torn apart the sea and led me through the deep.
Good morning, Cross Connection Church family. Welcome to Church Online at Home. Before we cut over to Anthony and our worship team this morning, please send out a link to a friend or a group of friends. Share the link, live.ccchurch.com, so they can join us this morning, or post it on social media as we now cut over to Anthony and our worship team.
Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you for this day. God, we thank you that you are an awesome God.
You are faithful and true. Lord, you fight for us; you fight our battles. God, we are just so blessed to be able to sing, to praise you, to read your Word, and to hear from you. We ask that you would speak to us and give us ears to hear what the Spirit has to say to us this morning. So we bless you and we praise you. In Jesus' mighty name, amen.
Let's worship. Death tried to keep you inside of the grave. The enemy fought you, tried, but he lost. You cannot be stopped. When we cried for freedom, you tore down the walls. The weight of our burdens you carried it all. Fears and our failures hang dead on the cross. Oh, you cannot be stopped.
Mover of mountains, breaker of chains, Jesus has triumphed over the grave. Sing hallelujah, the battle is won. Nothing can stand against our God. We stand on your victory. We shout out your praise. Miracle maker, you're mighty to save.
Awesome in power, relentless in love. You cannot be stopped. Mover of mountains, breaker of chains, Jesus has triumphed over the grave. Sing hallelujah; the battle is won. Nothing can stand against our God. There is nothing that can stop our God. There is nothing, there is nothing.
There is nothing that can stop our God. No, there is nothing that can stop our God. There is nothing, there is none. You cannot be stopped. There is nothing that can stop our God. So strong. We believe it.
Mover of mountains, breaker of chains, Jesus has triumphed over the grave. Sing hallelujah; the battle is won. Nothing can stand against our God. Mover of mountains, breaker of chains, Jesus has triumphed over the grave. Sing hallelujah; the battle is won. Nothing can stand against our God.
Oh, sing hallelujah; the battle is won. Nothing can stand against our God. Thank you, Jesus.
Hey there, Cross Connection Church. Welcome to another week of Church at Home. It’s so great to have you here!
A couple of things before we get going any further: We are a church that loves to pray. We would love to pray for you and with you. If you're interested in sending in a prayer request, you can do so at prayer@LifeInConnection.com. Also, if you're interested in joining the prayer team, you can sign up at Prayer.LifeInConnection.com. Either way, we would love to pray for you, pray with you, or have you pray with us. We are a church that loves prayer, so I encourage you to take part in that.
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This week's On Mission is Haven City Church and Pastor Josh Teranski. We have been supporting them for years. They are located in Baltimore and are doing great work there. They have a vibrant homeless ministry and a health center for those in need. Recently, they also started their Spanish ministry service. They are doing wonderful things, so please pray with me for Haven City Church and Pastor Josh Teranski in Baltimore.
Now, it’s time to set aside a moment to give here at Cross Connection Church. If you are interested in giving, you can do that at Give.LifeInConnection.com. You can also text your donation to 84321 or mail it to the church at 1675 7 Oaks Road, Escudillo, California, 92026. If you give, thank you so much! It’s a great opportunity to watch God work through your generosity.
We’re going to send it back over to Anthony. God bless you all, and have a great week!
Oh, the sun sets free. Oh, it's spring day. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. He has ransomed me; His grace runs deep. While I was a slave to sin, Jesus died for me. Yes, He died for me.
Oh, the sun sets free. Oh, it's spring day. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. In my Father's house, there's a place for me. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am.
I am chosen, not forsaken. I am who You say I am. You are for me, not against me. I am who You say I am. I am chosen, not forsaken. I am who You say I am. You are for me, not against me. I am who You say I am.
Oh, I am who You say I am. Oh, the sun sets free. Oh, it's spring day. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. In my Father's house, there's a place for me. I'm a child of God. Yes, I am.
Oh, the sun sets free. Oh, it's spring day.
I'm a child of God. Yes, I am. And, Lord, we do believe that, Lord God. Our identity is found in You, found in Jesus, and we're so grateful for that. So, Lord, would You bless our time in Your Word now? In Jesus' mighty name, amen.
This year, I have been working slowly through the book of Deuteronomy, and we have been considering the statutes and judgments of God. Most recently, we have finally come to the actual Ten Commandments. While the phrase "the Ten Commandments" is fairly well known in our culture, the actual words of the Ten Commandments are not. It has been my aim in studying and teaching through these commands to hopefully help you hide these things in your heart and mind by memorizing them. I hope that you've been able to do that to make it a little bit easier.
You may remember a couple of months ago that we made available to you on our website a document, a PDF, that would walk you through how to memorize the Ten Commandments really easily. You can simply go to lifeinconnection.com/commands to download that PDF, and hopefully that will help you to hide the Word of God, or at least the commandments of God, in your heart.
I think that it is important for us to memorize Scripture, and we're going to see when we get into that it is also important for us to teach these things to our kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, and to those that we are related to. David, in the Psalms, in the longest Psalm in the Bible, , says in verse 11, "Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You."
In , another favorite passage of mine, we read, "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb."
For by them is your servant warned, and in keeping of them there is great reward. My commitment to studying and teaching through these things is because I think that they are very important for us. My hope and prayer is that you will come to realize how important these are for you as well, and that you'll consider committing them to memory.
As we see in that passage in , "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." So, if you want to become wise, and if you want your soul to be transformed, then commit these things to memory. They really will begin to transform your mind, your heart, and your life ultimately, which is what God desires to do in us. He wants to transform us more and more by the renewing of our minds so that we would be able to demonstrate in our daily lives, in our interactions with friends, family members, coworkers, and neighbors, God's perfect will.
Now, although most people that we meet probably are not able to tell us what the Ten Commandments actually are, word for word, there is still something of a cultural memory of these things within our society. They might be able to tell you, "Honor your father and mother," or maybe they might say that the commandments say, "You shall not kill," which, as we'll see, isn't really what the command says. Or they might remember that the commandments say, "You shall not steal."
I once had someone tell me that one of the Ten Commandments was, "You shall not judge." Now, that's obviously not one of them. I guess it's a good try, and we can talk about that in another passage of Scripture, as Jesus kind of says that in , but that's for a study some other time. It's right up there. "Thou shalt not judge" is right up there with "God helps those who help themselves." That's also not really in the Bible.
But being that there is a bit of a recollection of these things in our culture and they are not entirely foreign to people, I've been thinking a lot about how best to present them in a message because, frankly, they're pretty straightforward. We've already been looking at the command to not bow down to any other god, to not have any other god before the Lord. We looked last week at the command having to do with rest and the Sabbath. The remaining commands that we have in the Ten Commandments are very straightforward. I don't think that there's a lot of confusion around several of them.
They're very clear: Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not covet. That's super straightforward. You really don't need a degree in the biblical languages to understand what these things mean or to grasp their importance. So, I'm not going to spend an hour each week unearthing the nuances of the Hebrew behind "You shall not murder." I think that you probably get that murder is bad, adultery is bad, theft is bad, lying is bad, and so on. We don't need to spend a ton of time really going in-depth on those.
But I do want to zero in on the Fifth Commandment, which we find in , verse 16. We'll look at it in a moment. Whereas the Sixth through the Tenth Commandments are presented as negatives—"Thou shalt not, thou shalt not"—the Fifth is presented as a positive. Not only is it presented as a positive in the scripture, but it's also presented with a promise, which I think is really interesting and important.
In , verse 16, we read, "Honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord God is giving you." I want to focus on this Fifth Commandment for several reasons this morning.
First, I want to focus on it because it is distinct. As I said a moment ago, it's distinct among the commandments because the other ones are negatives. But this one is a positive: "You shall honor your father and your mother." Not only do I want to focus on it because it is distinct as a positive, but it's also distinct because it has a promised blessing associated with it.
The second reason is that this commandment sometimes causes a little bit of confusion for people, which I'll talk about briefly in a moment. The third reason is that the Fifth Commandment is, as one commentator said, justly regarded as asserting the foundation of all social ordinances and arrangements. In other words, the family, as ordered around a father and a mother, is the seed of all society and community.
It is the family from which community and civil society grow. If you get family wrong, then you get society wrong. If you destroy the family, then you destroy society. If you do away with the structure—father, mother, children, grandpa, grandma, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, cousins—the whole family structure, then civil society falls apart. Civil society begins to manifest things like murder, adultery, theft, deception, greed, and covetousness. Ultimately, it was supposed to be the pattern that the development of civil society would happen through the training and rearing of children, through the family.
The family is central, not just here in the West, but throughout the world. The family is central. The knowledge and understanding of the law, the "thou shalt nots" of this passage—thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not covet—all of the "thou shalt nots" of the Ten Commandments were originally supposed to come from within the family. The training and understanding of that were to come from the family. shows that you are to teach these things to your children and your children's children and so forth.
Given this, I don't think it is in any way odd that our society is increasingly less civil as the families in Western society have fallen apart or as family has come under attack. This whole union of a father and a mother coming together, the two being joined together as one flesh and bringing forth a family, has been under attack for a very long time. It is no surprise that we see the breakdown in the fabric of society as we see the breakdown within the family.
My hope today, in the time that I have this morning, is to deal with the confusion around this command. I want to show you what I think it actually means by illustrating what it looks like when someone breaks this fifth command. When someone breaks the command to honor your father and mother, what does it look like? Then, as we close, I want to show you how we ought to respond when we realize that we've broken this and the other commandments in Deuteronomy. What should be the response of a person who realizes that they have not kept these commandments?
I'm going to do this a little bit differently than I might normally do it. At this point, I'm preaching from my home office. It's not as if 2020 has any sort of rhyme, reason, or pattern to it; everything is kind of chaotic in 2020. So, it may not be exactly how I normally go through a passage of Scripture. Normally, I go through verse by verse, breaking it down and looking at various points as we go through it. I'll be a little bit different this morning.
The first thing is the confusion. What is the confusion around "Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you"? Some people assume that the command to honor father and mother means that you are to obey everything your parents tell you to do, right on through adulthood. I do think it is worth acknowledging that obedience is important. Paul, in the New Testament book of Ephesians, says, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." There is a New Testament command connected to this command in Deuteronomy that we are to obey our parents, but it isn't identical to what we find here in Deuteronomy.
The command in to children is to obey your parents, while the command in was spoken really to adults. The word "honor" is not the same as "obey," even if there is a connection between them. The command in , "Children, obey your parents," and the command in , "Honor your father and mother," while they might be connected—and Paul even connects them by talking about the blessing that comes through this obedience to parents—are not the same. They are not identical.
To the adult who feels that they cannot make decisions outside of the direct input or will of their parents, that's not really what's being taught here in this passage. Hopefully, your parents have done a good job of raising you in the training and admonition of the Lord, so that as you get older, they remain a source of wise counsel for you as you become an adult. When you become an adult, there is a leaving that takes place as you become what we might refer to as an autonomous individual. However, even when that happens, the command to honor your father and mother remains. You don't have to obey every single thing they say throughout your entire life.
To be one who honors your parents is essential. At least that's how I read the scriptures, and I think we'll see that as we go through this. If you fulfill the command to honor your father and your mother, then the promise continues as well: your days may be long, and it will be well with you in the land.
With the confusion hopefully sorted out a bit, I have counseled people in the past who are at a conflict point. They are in their 20s or maybe their 30s, and they feel like they are making decisions that are outside of what their parents want them to do. They say they need to honor and obey their parents. However, that's not necessarily what is being spoken of here in this passage. Hopefully, that clarifies things a little.
What does it actually mean then to honor your father and mother if it doesn't mean that we have to obey in every single point? To answer this this morning, I want to illustrate from the scriptures. I like to use the Bible as an illustration of the Bible. The best commentary on the Bible is the Bible, as it has been said.
So, what does it look like when you not only honor your parents but also what does it look like to dishonor your father and your mother? It is important to understand that living here in the West, we live under what has been described as a guilt-based society. Much of the rest of the world, including the Hebrew world of the Old Testament, lived under what is referred to as an honor and shame culture. If you did not live in a good and right way—in a righteous way—in the honor and shame culture of the Hebrew world 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, you would bring dishonor and shame upon your family, upon your father and your mother.
This becomes really clear when you read through the Proverbs of Solomon. There are many exhortations from a father to a son or from a mother to a son in the book of Proverbs. It speaks about this honor and shame and the importance of bringing honor upon your parents. says, "He who mistreats his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings reproach."
So, there is that idea of dishonor and shame that you bring upon your parents if you do not walk in the scriptures. A huge part of honoring your father and mother is living according to the wisdom of the scriptures, which, biblically speaking, they—mom and dad—are supposed to train you in. They are supposed to raise you in an understanding of the scriptures.
What does it look like to dishonor your father and your mother and to bring shame and reproach upon them? To answer that question, I want to read a long section of scripture. The message today is a little bit different from the normal way that I approach the scriptures. I will be reading from the book of 2 Samuel.
is the passage. If you have your Bible or your Bible app, you can open to 2 Samuel. This chapter discusses the life of David, King David, who lived 3,000 years ago. He was the great king of Israel and the great psalmist of Israel. This is probably not an unfamiliar story to many people; it is a challenging story found in .
We read in verse 1, "It happened in the spring of the year, at the time that kings go out to battle, that David, King David, sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem." The king sent his armies off to battle. In the springtime of the year, it was kind of like football season; it was time to go out to battle. However, David stayed in Jerusalem.
In verse 2, it happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house, the palace. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. David sent and inquired about the woman. He sent one of his messengers and asked, "Hey, who is that lady over there?" Someone replied, "Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?"
Then David sent messengers and took her. She came to him, and she lay with him carnally, for she was cleansed from her impurity, and she returned to her house. The woman conceived and sent and told David, saying, "I am with child."
Of course, this is not an unfamiliar passage to many people. You may have been around the Bible long enough to have read the story about David and Bathsheba. Here is the picture of the king taking unto himself another man's wife. "Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife." He commits adultery, and "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Then David sent to Joab.
He finds out that she is with child. He sends to Joab, the commander of his army at that time, and says, "Send me Uriah the Hittite." Joab sent Uriah, her husband. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing, how the people were doing, and how the war prospered. David then said to Uriah, "Go down to your house and wash your feet." So Uriah departed from the king's house, and a gift of food from the king followed him.
However, Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of the Lord, and he did not go down to his house. David brought Bathsheba's husband back from the battle and tried to get him to go down to be with his wife for a night, but Uriah did not do that. He slept at the door of the king's house and did not go down to his house. When they told David that Uriah did not go down to his house, David asked Uriah, "Did you not come from your journey? Why did you not go down to your house?"
Uriah replied, "The ark of Israel and Judah are dwelling in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields. Shall I then go down to my house and eat and drink and lie with my wife? As you live and as your soul lives, I will not do this thing."
We see that Uriah was a man of right character, godly character, and integrity. While all of his brothers were away at war, sleeping out under the stars in tents, he said, "I'm not going to go into my home and be with my wife."
David then said to Uriah, "Wait here today also and tomorrow, and I will let you depart." So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day and the next. When David called him, he ate and drank before him, and he caused Uriah to get drunk. That evening, Uriah went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, and he did not go down to his house. Even though David got him drunk, Uriah did not return home.
In the morning, David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter, he wrote, "Set Uriah in the front of the hottest battle and retreat from him so that he may be struck down and die." David sent Uriah with this message to take to his commander Joab, instructing him to send Uriah to the very front of the battle and, right at the heat of the battle, pull everybody back so that he dies. "Thou shall not murder." That is premeditation.
So, of course, that's exactly what happens in the next portion of the passage. Word comes back to David, and it wasn't just Uriah who got struck; there were other people as well. Joab knows that the king's not going to be too happy about this, so he says, "Make sure you tell the king that, hey, by the way, Uriah is dead."
The messengers came in verse 22 and told David just as Joab had said. In verse 24, they informed him, "Your servant, Uriah the Hittite, is also dead." Notice this in verse 25 of . David said to the messenger, "You shall say to Joab, 'Do not let this thing displease you, for the sword devours one as well as another. Strengthen your attack against the city and overthrow it, so encourage him.'"
When the wife of Uriah heard that Uriah, her husband, was dead, she mourned for him. When her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house, and she became his wife, and she bore him a son. Then we read the very last words of verse 11: "And the thing that David had done displeased the Lord." If you haven't done so, you might want to underline those words in your Bible. The thing that David did displeased the Lord. That might be a bit of an understatement.
So, what does it look like to honor your father and your mother? Well, this is what it looks like to dishonor them: to bring shame upon your household, upon your father and mother who raised you to not do this, who trained you in the word of the Lord, to walk in the ways of God.
David, the king of Israel, the great psalmist of Israel, a man who is referred to in the Scriptures as a man after God's own heart, at a time of weakness—when he was not engaged in the battle—was on the rooftop. He saw this woman, Bathsheba, bathing, and he took her, who was the wife of another man, as his own. He committed adultery, then lied about it, and conspired to murder the man through all of this.
"Thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife or anything that he has." He breaks all of the commandments, and in doing so, he dishonors his father and his mother. Honoring your father and mother is essential for that your life may be long upon this earth.
Honoring your parents is not just about obeying everything they say; it involves obeying the teachings of the Scriptures that they have imparted to you. When you break the law of God, you dishonor those who have hopefully trained you in that law. You dishonor your father and your mother. This is what it truly looks like to dishonor your parents.
To honor them means not to lie, not to covet, not to steal, not to commit adultery, and not to murder. It means to walk in the ways of the Lord. That is what it ultimately looks like to honor your father and mother.
At this point, you might think, "Thank God I'm not anything like David. Praise God I'm not doing any of these things. I'm pretty good. I haven't murdered anybody. I haven't committed adultery." Unfortunately, Jesus updates these concepts for us in in what is called the Sermon on the Mount. He says, "You have heard that it has been said of old, 'You shall not commit murder.' But I say unto you, if you hate someone, you have committed murder in your heart." He also says, "You have heard that it has been said of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you, if you look upon a woman to lust after her, you have committed adultery in your heart."
Jesus shows us that hatred is equated to murder and lust is equated to adultery. The law of God is a heavy burden, and we dishonor our father and mother when we do not walk in these things that are right before God. This is the picture of dishonor. It is not merely about obedience to everything they say, but about obedience to the law that they have hopefully trained you in.
So, what do you do if you live in such a way that you dishonor your family through greed, covetousness, theft, deception, adultery, or murder? How do you respond if you realize that you have acted as David did in this passage, bringing shame upon God, the kingdom of Israel, and your whole family?
There is good news. The same man who committed these grave sins in confessed with great repentance in . Before I pray and before we close today, I want to read from and reflect on David's repentance in this passage.
If you look at , it has a heading that says, "To the chief musician, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone in unto Bathsheba." This is referenced in . After David's sin, he lied about it for a long time—about a year. This psalm is his prayer of repentance.
"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness. According to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, God, and you only, have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge. Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part you will make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones you have broken may rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me by your generous spirit. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners shall be converted to you."
The same David who committed these horrible sins in confessed and repented in a glorious way in . He talks about God's loving kindness and God's ability to purge his sin and forgive him. This is the wonderful joy that we learn of in Jesus, the son of David, the Messiah.
All of us, like sheep, have gone astray. We have all turned, everyone, to our own way, and the Lord laid on Him our iniquity so that we could be forgiven and receive His grace. While there is very heavy news in the commandments of Scripture, we must realize that we have all broken these things. We have all dishonored our father and our mother by being liars and adulterers at heart, and murderers at heart, as we have done all these things.
We realize that in Christ Jesus, we can experience forgiving grace as we come to Him, confess our sins to Him, and experience the purging of our sins by His grace. My encouragement to you today, as we get ready to close in prayer, is that you would call out to the Lord, realize your sin, and confess it to Him. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
Father, we thank You for Your grace. We thank You for Your goodness. None of us are deserving of it, but we rejoice that You have blessed us with that grace and forgiveness. Just like David, all of us are sinners. We all fall short of Your glory. While it is our desire to honor You and to honor our father and mother by walking in obedience to the Scriptures, we all fall short of that. We thank You that when we fall short, we have Your forgiving grace.
So, Lord, we once again confess our sins to You and pray that You would forgive us, for we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.
It won't prosper. When the darkness falls, it won't prevail because the God I serve knows only how to triumph. My God will never fail. I'm going to see a victory, for the battle belongs to You, Lord. I'm going to see a victory, for the battle belongs to You, Lord.
There's power in the mighty name of Jesus.
Every war He wages, He will win. I'm not backing down from any giant. I know how this story ends, and I know how this story ends. I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to You, Lord. I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to You, Lord. Yes, I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to You, Lord. I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to You, Lord.
We believe in God. You take what the enemy meant for evil, and You turn it for good. You turn it for good. You take what the enemy meant for evil, and You turn it for good. You turn it for good. You take what the enemy meant for evil, and You turn it for good. You turn it for good. You take what the enemy meant for evil, and You turn it for good. You turn it for good. You take what the enemy meant for evil, and You turn it for good. You turn it for good.
And you turn it for good. You turn it for good. I'm gonna see a victory. Yes, I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to you, Lord. I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to you, Lord. Yes, I'm gonna see a victory. I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to you, Lord. Yes, I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to you, Lord. You take what the enemy meant for evil, and you turn it for good. You turn it for good. You take what the enemy meant for evil, and you turn it for good. You turn it for good.
Father, once again we thank you for your grace. We thank you for your forgiveness, and we pray that you'd help us to walk in that grace this week and to extend it to other people. Lord, we pray for you to work mightily in and through your church here in the U.S. and that you would bring a revival, because ultimately that is truly what we need, Lord, is a revival in our nation.
And now may the Lord bless and keep you. May he make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of his Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Hey, tonight we hope to see you at the church patio at 5 o'clock for a time of worship and a time of devotion in the Scriptures. We'll see you there. God bless. We are looking for people to host homes.
Isn't it great filming outside?
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