Dishonorable | Sunday, November 15, 2020

Good morning, Cross Connection Church family! Welcome to church online at home. Before we cut over to Anthony and our worship team this morning, would you please send out a link to a friend or a group of friends? Send them that link, live.ccchurch.com, so that they can join with us this morning, or post it on social media.

As we now cut over to Anthony and our worship team, let us pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank You for this day. God, we thank You, Lord, that You are an awesome God. You are faithful and true, and Lord, You fight for us; You fight our battles. 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. God, we bless You and praise You in Jesus' mighty name. Amen.

Let's worship.

The dog tried to hide, You stole Your way. 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. Jesus has triumphed over the grave. Sing hallelujah! Nothing can stand against our God.

Miracle Maker, Your might is safe, awesome in power, relentless in love. Jesus, 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.

Jesus has triumphed over the grave. Sing hallelujah! A battle is won; nothing can stand against our God.

Hey there, Cross Connection Church! Welcome to another week of church at home. It’s so great to have you here.

Before we get going any further, I want to share a couple of things. 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. If you're interested in joining the prayer team, you can also do that at the same website. Either way, we would love to have people 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.

Additionally, we are looking for host homes so that we can have more watch parties. It’s no fun watching alone; it’s much more enjoyable to watch together. There’s a sense of community in gathering. You can sign up to host a watch party at your house at home.lifeinconnection.com. We’ll share more details as we move forward.

This week's mission focus is Haven City Church and Pastor Josh Taranski. 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 help center for those in need. They are involved in all kinds of great initiatives, and they recently started their Spanish ministry service as well. Please pray with me for Haven City Church and Pastor Josh Taranski out there in Baltimore.

Now, it’s time to set aside a moment to give here at Cross Connection.

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 Seven Oaks Road, Escondido, California, 92026. If you give, thank you so much! It's such a great opportunity to watch God work through what you give.

Thank you, everyone. We're going to send it back over to Anthony. God bless you all, and have a great week.

I was lost, but He brought me to know His love for me. Oh, His love for me! Yes, I am. Jesus died for me. There's a place for me.

I set free. There's a place. Yes, I am. Lord, we do believe that 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 to hide these things in your heart and your 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 be able to hide the Word of God, or at least the...

The commandments of God should be in our hearts. I think it is important for us to memorize Scripture, and we will see when we get into Deuteronomy chapter 6 that it is also important for us to teach these things to our kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, and those we are related to.

David, in the Psalms, specifically in the longest Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 119, says in verse 11, "Your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against You." In Psalm 19, 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. Moreover, 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 believe 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 will consider committing them to memory. As we see in that passage in Psalm 19, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

If you want to become wise and if you want your soul to be transformed, then commit these things to memory. They will begin to transform your mind, heart, and life, 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 can demonstrate God's perfect will in our daily lives while interacting with friends, family members, co-workers, and neighbors.

Although most people we meet probably cannot tell us the Ten Commandments word for word, there is still a cultural memory of these things within our society. They might be able to tell you to honor your father and mother, or they might say that the commandments say you shall not kill.

Which, as we'll see, isn't really what the command says. 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 Matthew chapter 7. 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," which is also not really in the Bible. However, there is a bit of a recollection of these things in our culture, and they're 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 are 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.

This morning, I want to zero in on the fifth commandment, which we find in Deuteronomy chapter 5, 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. So, Deuteronomy 5, verse 16.

There 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 is distinct among the commandments because the others are negatives: "Thou shalt not." 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 and positive, but it is also distinct because it has a promised blessing associated with it. That is one reason why I want to zero in on it.

The second reason is that this commandment sometimes causes a little bit of confusion for people, which I will 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 of father, mother, children, grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, and 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 within the family.

The family is central, not just here in the West, but throughout the world. 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 be taught within the family. The training and understanding of that were to come from the family. Deuteronomy chapter 6 is...

Going to show that you are to teach these things to your children and your children's children and so forth. So, being the case, I don't think it is in any way odd that our society is increasingly less civil as families in Western society have fallen apart or 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 am going to do this a little bit differently than I might normally do it. At this point, I am preaching from my home office here. It is not as if 2020 has any sort of rhyme, reason, or pattern to it, so everything is kind of chaotic in 2020. This may not be exactly how I normally go through a passage of Scripture. Normally, I go through verse by verse and break it down, looking at various points as we go through it. So, I will 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 that your parents tell you to do right on through adulthood. Now, 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." So, there is a New Testament command that is connected to this command in Deuteronomy that we are to obey.

Our parents' roles are important, but they aren't identical to what we find in Deuteronomy. The command in Ephesians 6:1 to children is to obey your parents, while the command in Deuteronomy chapter 5 was spoken really to adults. The word "honor" is not the same as "obey," even if there's a connection between them.

So, the command in Ephesians 6 instructs children to obey their parents, while the command in Deuteronomy 5 tells us to honor our father and mother. Although they might be connected, and Paul even links them by discussing the blessings that come through obedience to parents, they are not the same. For the adult who feels they cannot make decisions outside of their parents' direct input or will, that is not really what is being taught 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. However, when you become an adult, there is a leaving that takes place as you become what we might refer to as an autonomous individual. 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. 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 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, "I need to honor and obey my parents." That's not necessarily what is being spoken of here in this passage.

So, what does it actually mean to honor your father and mother if it doesn't mean that we have to obey them in every single point? To answer this, I want to illustrate from the Scriptures. I like to use the Bible as an illustration because the best commentary on the Bible is the Bible itself.

What does it look like when you not only honor your parents but also dishonor your father and your mother? It is important to understand that living here in the West, we exist in what has been described as a guilt-based society. However, 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 righteous way within this honor and shame culture, which existed two to three thousand years ago, you would bring dishonor and shame upon your family, particularly upon your father and your mother.

This concept becomes 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, emphasizing the importance of honor and the need to bring honor to your parents. Proverbs 19:26 states, "He who mistreats his father and chases away his mother is a son who causes shame and brings reproach." This illustrates the idea that dishonor and shame are brought upon your parents if you do not walk in accordance with the Scriptures.

A significant part of honoring your father and mother involves living according to the wisdom of the Scriptures, which, biblically speaking, your mom and dad are supposed to train you in and raise you to understand. So, 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. This message today is a bit different from the normal way I approach the Scriptures, but I believe it is important.

I will be reading from the book of Second Samuel. Second Samuel chapter 11 is the passage I want to focus on. If you have your Bible or your Bible app, you can open to Second Samuel. This chapter discusses the life of David, King David, who lived three thousand years ago. He was the great king of Israel and the great psalmist of Israel. This story may not be unfamiliar to many people, but it is a challenging one.

In Second Samuel chapter 11, 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."

All Israel destroyed the people of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. David remained at Jerusalem. The king sent his armies off to battle; it was springtime, a time for war. However, David stayed in Jerusalem.

It happened one evening that David arose from his bed and walked on the roof of the king's house. From the roof, he saw a woman bathing, and the woman was very beautiful to behold. David sent and inquired about the woman. He asked one of his messengers, "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 lay with him, for she was cleansed from her impurity. Afterward, she returned to her house, and the woman conceived. She sent and told David, saying, "I am with child."

This is not an unfamiliar passage to many people. You may have been around the Bible long enough to have read the story of David and Bathsheba. Here is the picture: the king took another man's wife, violating the commandment, "Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's wife." He committed adultery, breaking the commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

When David found out that Bathsheba was with child, he sent to Joab, the commander of his army, and said, "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." 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 did not go down to his house.

David brought Bathsheba's husband back from battle and tried to get him to go down to be with his wife for a night, but Uriah did not do that. 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 to David, "The ark of the Lord and Israel and Judah dwell in tents, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are encamped in the open fields. 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."

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."

Then David 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 still did not return home.

In the morning, it happened that David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it by the hand of Uriah. He wrote in the letter, "Set Uriah in the front of the hottest battle and retreat from him, 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. This is premeditated murder.

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 was struck; there were other people as well. Joab knows that the king is not going to be too happy about this, so he says, "Make sure you tell the king that, by the way, Uriah is dead."

The messengers came and told David just as Joab had said. They reported, "Your servant Uriah the Hittite is also dead." Then notice this in verse 25 of 2 Samuel 11. 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; encourage him.'"

When the wife of Uriah heard that her husband was dead, she mourned for him. When her mourning was over, David sent and brought her to his house.

Became his wife, and she bore him a son. Then we read the very last words of verse 11: "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? This is what it looks like to dishonor them: to bring shame upon your household, upon your father and mother who raised you, who trained you in the Word of the Lord, and who taught you to walk in the ways of God. David, the king of Israel, the great psalmist, a man referred to in the Scriptures as a man after God's own heart, at a time of weakness, was not engaged in battle. He was on the rooftop and saw a woman, Bathsheba, bathing. He took her, who was the wife of another man, and committed adultery. Then he lied about it and conspired to murder the man.

Through all of this, he broke the commandments: "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." In doing so, he dishonored his father and his mother. Honoring your father and mother, that your life may be long upon this earth, is not just about obeying everything your parents say; it is about obeying the teachings of the Scriptures that they taught you. When you break the law of God, you dishonor those who hopefully have trained you in that. You dishonor your father and your mother.

So, this is what it really looks like to dishonor your father and your mother. To honor them is to not lie, not covet, not steal, not commit adultery, and not murder. It is 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, "Well, 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, and I haven't committed adultery." Unfortunately, Jesus updates these things a little bit for us in Matthew chapter 5, in what is called the Sermon on the Mount, where He says, "You have heard that it has been said of old time, 'You shall not commit murder.'"

But I say unto you, if you hate someone, you've committed murder in your heart. He says, "You've heard that it has been said of old time, 'You shall not commit adultery.'" But I say to you, if you look upon a woman to lust after her, you've committed adultery in your heart.

So, 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. That’s the picture; that’s what it looks like to be dishonorable. It's not just this idea of obedience to everything that they say, but it's obedience to the law that they hopefully have trained you in.

What do you do if you live in such a way that you dishonor your family by greed, covetousness, theft, deception, adultery, or murder? How do you respond if you do exactly what David did in this passage, where he blasphemed and brought shame upon God, the kingdom of Israel, and his whole family? What should you do in response if you realize that you've broken the commandments of God in a dishonorable fashion?

Well, there is good news. The same man who committed these grave sins in Second Samuel chapter 11 confessed with great repentance in Psalm 51. Before I pray and before we close today, I just want to read from Psalm 51 and David's repentance in this passage.

If you look at Psalm 51, 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." After David's sin, he lied about it for a long time—about a year. Then this is his prayer of repentance in Psalm 51:

"Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; 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 Second Samuel chapter 11 confessed and repented in a glorious way in Psalm 51. He talks about God's lovingkindness and God's ability to purge his sin and to forgive him. That 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, when we realize that we have all broken these things and have all dishonored our father and our mother by being liars and adulterers at heart, and murderers at heart, we understand 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, we find hope.

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 that forgiveness. When we realize that, just like David, all of us are sinners and we all fall short of your glory, it reminds us of our need for you. Lord, 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 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.

The weapon may be formed, but it won't prosper. When the darkness falls, it won't breathe, because the God I serve knows only how to triumph. My God will never fail, and my God will never fail. I'm gonna see a victory; I'm gonna see a victory, for the battle belongs to You.

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. But I'm gonna see a victory; I'm gonna see a victory.

Belongs to You. 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 goodness. You take what the enemy meant for evil and you turn it for good, eternity. You take what the enemy meant for evil and you turn it for good.

The battle belongs to You, Lord. Yes, and I'm gonna see Your victory. 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.

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—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 five 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. It did great filming stuff outside.