Description
FIRST & 10 SERMON SERIES
HONOR ROLE
JANUARY 31, 1999
ED YOUNG
Feel the gears, the slight shift as you press the clutch and move it out of fourth into fifth. You experience that torque, those RPMs. You are really cruising now. I am not describing riding in an Italian sports car. No. I am describing reading the Ten Commandments. This fifth commandment is a transitional commandment. It bridges the vertical commandments with the horizontal commandments. The first four, those vertical ones, had to do with our relationship with God or theology. The last six are the horizontal directives and they deal with our relationships with our fellow man, the ethical aspect of life. Thus our theology determines our ethics.
In our culture today it is very popular to have the ethical thing going on and then we let our ethics determine our theology. But God says, once you put me at the rightful position in your life, then your ethics and behavior will change. So this fifth precept is the connective commandment, a segue way, a sort of bridge linking the two sides together.
God, being God, could have chosen a number of significant relationships to highlight, but He picked the parent-child situation. He picked our relationship with our parents. He said these words in Exodus 20:12. “Honor your father and your mother.” God said it. Why did God choose the parent? Why was He into this deal? I truly believe that our parents and this relationship we have with them is a critical cog to our connection with God himself. But if you look around our society today, it is not popular to honor our parents. Movies and sitcoms and songs paint parents out to be mumbling, stumbling idiots who have no clue about life. And on top of that, the Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, or in this case the Blaming Boomers and Generation Excusers, are riding the pop psychology wave, that victim driven wave that shirks responsibility and shifts it to their parents. We say as members of these generations, “My parents messed up. They dropped the ball. They pinned my diapers on too tight. They painted my nursery the wrong color. And it is because of them, of their problems, that I have a problem.” Sound familiar? Sound very 90s? It sounds really hip these days to ride that wave.
We are talking about the Ten Commandments. I am in a series called FIRST AND 10. We have been hitting on the major priorities of life, as we start the first portion of 1999. Today we are talking about the fifth commandment, honor your father and mother. Like with the other commandments, we are going to lob the same three questions at this one. The meaning, what was the meaning, what was God driving at? The mentality, what was going through His psyche when He thought this one up? The implication, the how, the so-what principle, the applicational aspect of this commandment. The meaning, the mentality, the implication. We need to consider these when we read the Bible. Remember, the Bible was not given to us just for our information. It was given to us for our transformation. The Bible is not to be worshipped. We are to take the words from God that He inspired certain men and women to write and we are to take those words and to live them out, to put shoe leather beneath them. That is why we are studying these timeless principles.
Remember this. When God penned these words, when He literally forged them in stone on Mt. Sinai with Moses, He had our best interests in mind. God was taking on the picture of a loving and guiding and perfect parent. So having said that, let’s look at the meaning of number five.
What is the meaning? See the word honor? We have to understand what the word honor means. Some of you would immediately say, honor means respect. Not quite. You are kind of getting there. I understand why you would think that because in our society, the word honor and the word respect are used synonymously. But here it is a little bit different. The word honor in the Hebrew is a stronger word, a more all-encompassing word. To respect your parents means to hold them in high esteem but here, the honor thing means we are to take our parents seriously with our attitudes and our actions. We are to take our parents seriously with our attitudes and our actions. I like that. It is a dualistic thing. My attitudes and actions should reflect how seriously I respect and hold them in high esteem.
I am going to stop here and ask you a very penetrating question. Are you honoring your parents? Are you honoring your parents? Well, right up front this commandment assumes a lot, doesn’t it? Honor your father and your mother. It assumes that we know our father and mother. Some of us don’t even know our parents. And furthermore, some of us don’t have that good a relationship with our parents. So this verse assumes that we know our parents and know them well enough to honor them, to bestow them appreciation and love and all those things we are going to talk about. Well, God understands that. God understands that many of us have painful backgrounds. Many of us have been hurt and abused and taken advantage of in regard to our parents. Just to think about a Dad or to think about a Mom causes some of us to break out in a cold sweat. It causes some of us to get really upset. But I have got to tell you something. There are no exemptions here. There are no escape clauses here. A bunch of attorneys didn’t draft this one. I don’t care what your parents have done. I don’t care how awful they have been, the Bible tells us to honor them. If you have gone through abuse or pain, I am going to get into that in just a second because God has a tough word to your parents who hurt you. God was driving at taking our parents seriously. That is the meaning behind this directive.
God goes into the mentality, though, and He talks about the perks of this principle. I love that God always shows His hand to us. God says, “OK, here is what I want you to do and now I want to show you why I had this mentality.” God did not want us to miss number five. That is why He repeated it about four times in the Bible. And I want to read to you the perks of this principle that God gives us. You can follow along on the side screens.
Exodus 20:12. “…that you may live long.” That is the final part of the fifth commandment. That is longevity. I want some of that. Deuteronomy 5:16. “…that it may go well with you.” So if I honor my father and my mother, what is going to happen, it is going to go well with me, go well with you. That is stability. So I have got longevity going on and stability going on. I want to be stable, too.
Ephesians 6:1. “Honor your father and mother for this is right.” That is sensibility. We are on a roll now. Longevity, stability and sensibility. And finally, Colossians 3:20, “…for this pleases the Lord.” That is tranquility. Longevity, stability, sensibility and tranquility. I want to sign up for that action. How about you? I really want some of that. And God says to us time and time again, that will be your life, that will be the result, that will be what you will reap if you get number five right. If you hit this gear, you are really going to cruise, you will feel the torque, the RPMs because you are living within My guidelines. You are going down My freeway. You are within My guardrails. And I love God for that.
But I know what is going on here. A lot of us, I am talking to adult children now, have toxic tendencies and attitudes and rebellions going on. We have taken this stuff and we have buried it in our tract of land. We have buried it in places that most people can’t even see. Yet it drives a lot of junk in our lives and we don’t really want to deal with it. We like to have this toxic pollution going on beneath the surface.
A friend of mine in this church has a company that cleans toxic waste off large tracts of land. The other day I went by his company and he told me how they pinpoint tract after tract after tract of land and go in and clean it up. I want you to open your heart and your mind to this fifth commandment. Challenged by God, Himself, I want you to allow God to take care of this pollution, this toxic stuff, the rebellion, the attitudes, the moments that you have dishonored your parents and allow the Lord to clean you up. I want you to honor your father and your mother.
God is family friendly. He thought the whole design up. Go way back to the book of Genesis. God was always dealing with the emerging family. He dealt with Adam and Eve and all of their family. He dealt with Abraham. He dealt with Noah. In this situation, he dealt with Moses. He dealt with the children of Israel. You have the prevailing family. It is God’s divine structure. For some reason, this structure supernaturally links us to God, Himself. As we talked about a couple of weeks ago, most of us get our concept of God from our families. That is how we understand and that is how we really know the God that we serve.
We talked about the meaning of honor, that we are to take our parents seriously by our attitudes and actions. We talked about the mentality and the perks of this principle. We are really starting to cruise now, aren’t we? We kind of feel it getting in gear now. We are cruising down the track.
Let’s talk about the application. Let’s talk about the implications of number five. How do we make this real? Do you remember that I talked about God putting this whole thing in gear? That is what I want to challenge you to do. That is what we are to do for this commandment. We are to go through and hit on five major gears. We can’t jump from one to five. We have got to hit number one, number two, number three, number four, number five. If we skip around, we are going to forego the fifth, we are going to turn our backs on the fifth and we will miss out on the great stuff that God has in store for us. If we don’t do number five right, it will mess up the very fabric and framework of our lives. And a lot of people here are running into problems because they have neglected God’s word regarding this.
What is the first gear? The first gear is the gear of love. Jesus said it over and over again. Specifically, He said it in John 15:10. Check the words out on the screen. “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love.” What was He talking about? Abide in His love. Well, notice here, if we keep the Ten Commandments, if we allow our theology to determine our ethics, we can abide in Christ’s love. Abide in His love means that if I do life by these directives, I will do life with the favor of Christ on my existence. Isn’t that cool? Isn’t that an incredible deal? Wouldn’t you like to live beneath and enveloped in the favor of God? I would.
What does it mean to love your mother and your father? Love is not just saying I love you. When Jesus saw that we had messed up, fumbled the ball, committed cosmic treason, He didn’t just stand there and say, “Well, I see this cosmic chasm. I love you.” He didn’t just say it. He did something. He put it on the line. He sacrificed. He took the initiative. He bridged the gap between man and God by dying a sacrificial death and He rose again and He offers us eternal life. He did something about it. So if I am going to get into first gear with my mother and my father, I have got to do something about it. Yes, I can say I love you all day and night. But I have got to do something, take the initiative. I have got to put it on the line. I have got to sacrifice. Am I describing your relationship with your parents? Am I talking to you, student? Am I talking to you, teenager? Am I talking to you, single adult? Am I talking to you, Generation Xer or Baby Boomer? Am I talking to you? Are you really doing this love gear? Are you?
Well, there is another gear we have got to hit. After we have hit the love gear, we have got to hit the second one, forgiveness. We have got to forgive. And this is a two-sided one. We are going to camp out for awhile on this one. We are going to do the KOA thing, take out the tent, sleeping bag and roast some marshmallows. When you talk about forgiveness, it is a big time, all encompassing, involved subject. Here is what the Bible says about forgiveness. Ephesians 4:27. “Don’t give the devil a foothold.” I love that text. Is that clear, or what? Don’t give the devil a foothold. In other words, if you have unforgiveness in your spirit, if you are harboring hurt, if you are holding onto something, you are giving the devil a foothold. He is the ultimate rock climber, human being climber. He is just hanging there. And if you have unforgiveness in your heart toward a mom or dad or single parent or whoever, you had better watch out because Satan is hanging on to your life. The good news is, you can be released. You can be cleansed. You can let go. Because the word forgive in the Bible means to send away, to be done with. Isn’t that a great word? Today, after this service, you can be done with it. You sins and rebellions can be forgiven and forgotten.
In about seven weeks I will be 38 years of age. After every birthday my parents IQ increases. It is amazing. They get smarter and smarter. Those of us who are adults remember when we were teenagers. We thought that our parents were brain dead. It is part of being a teenager. But they are smart now. For the most part, our parents did the best they could with what they had. They are not perfect. They are not infallible. But they did the best that they could. If you have any kind of problem with them, if you are holding onto anything, any kind of unforgiveness way down there in the depth of your spirit, it is time to let it go. It is time to come clean.
But some of you are saying, and I am talking to the group I mentioned earlier in the message, “You don’t know what I have gone through. You don’t know what it was like growing up in my family. You don’t get it, Ed. You had great parents. I had horrible parents. There was abuse going on. There was alcoholism going on, drug addiction going on, fighting going on. You don’t get it.” You are right. I don’t get it because I am not you. There is no way I can identify with you. I can’t get on your same level. However, there is someone who can and His name is Jesus Christ. Jesus can identify with your hurt, with your pain. Think about it. When Jesus was dying on Calvary for your iniquities and mine, His best friends turned their backs on Him, people spit in His face, He was cursed, He was abused, He was tortured just for you and just for me. So you can take your hurt and your problems and your pain to Jesus. And I am going to tell you something. God does not turn His back on what you have experienced.
Let me give you a very strong word you can hold onto. Because you don’t have to get back with your parents. You don’t have to get retribution. Let God settle the account. Here is what Jesus said in Luke 17:2. “If anybody causes a little one to stumble, it is better for them to tie a millstone around their neck and have them thrown overboard into the bottom of the sea.” That is pretty strong language. Wouldn’t you agree? So think about it. Putting a big, old 400-pound boulder around your neck and being thrown into the depths of Lake Grapevine. It would be horrible. Well, Jesus said that doesn’t scratch the surface compared to what is going to happen one day to those who have abused and messed around with their children, with their little ones. So, you don’t worry about it.
However, you are still called to release, to send away, to let it go. You are still called to say, “Satan, get off of my rock. Get off of my mountain, man. I want to live clean and pure before God. I want to release my parents.” I don’t care how numbed out they are. I don’t care if they are clueless about this whole deal, you are commanded by God to do it.
Satan has a lot of real estate in Christ’s follower’s lives. Did you hear what I said? Satan has a lot of real estate in Christ’s follower’s lives. And you can always see the real estate that he owns because it has a sign on it, Unwilling To Forgive. Stan wants you to have that sign, he wants me to have that sign. Let’s right now take that sign, pull it out of our real estate and trash it, get rid of it, burn it. Say, “God, I want you to take my entire real estate. I want to have a spirit of forgiveness even to those parents who hurt and abused me.”
I told you we were going to camp out here for awhile, didn’t I. Now let we just say a word to those who are living at home under the authority of your parents right now. There is some release work, there is some forgiveness work that needs to be done in your life. Hey, when was the last time that you walked up to your mom or your dad and said, “I am sorry. I was wrong for having such an attitude. I was wrong for my disrespect. I was wrong for my rebellion. Will you forgive me?” When was the last time you did that?
Do you know what the penalty was for dishonoring your parents in the Old Testament? Thank the Lord that we don’t have this going on now. Hey, you dissed your parents, spoke to them in a condescending way, a sarcastic way…bop, it is over. See ya. But we don’t live under that deal any more. It might cut the membership of our church in half! It might wipe us all out.
When LeeBeth was eight years of age, she had an attitude problem for a couple of days. She was belittling her mom. It is tough to have children. Some of you don’t understand because you don’t have them. But you wait. Once you have them, you will understand where I am going. Lisa had had enough. My wife said, “LeeBeth, don’t say another word. Don’t say another word. I want you to march upstairs to your room and I want you to do something. I want you to ask God to show you how specifically you have been rebellious and disrespectful to me.” She added, “Oh, by the way. I want you to write out all the ways you have been disrespectful.” The door closed. LeeBeth was in there about an hour. She came out and Lisa read the list. Then she began to remind her of some things that she had forgotten to put down. “By the way, LeeBeth, when you finish this list you will present it to your father over dinner.”
Three hours go by. I drove home and hung around for awhile. We had dinner together. We were eating and having a good time. I could tell LeeBeth was kind of zoned out. I sense feel those frosty feelings between her and Lisa. Then Lisa looked at LeeBeth and said, “Ed, LeeBeth has something that she wants to present to you.” I looked at what she had written, the many items of disrespect and sarcasm. I said, “LeeBeth, what do you need to do. It is great that you wrote it up, but what do you need to do?” She looked at Lisa and said, “Mom, I was wrong. I am sorry. I apologize to you and I apologize to Dad. Will you forgive me?” We both said yes and hugged her and kissed her. And then my wife did something that I thought was incredible. If you know my wife very well, you know I married way, way over my head. Anyway, she took this list and asked LeeBeth, “What would you think if your dad and I put this list on the refrigerator with all your artwork for everyone to see?” LeeBeth said, “No!” Lisa said, “LeeBeth you know we wouldn’t do that. I want to show you what we are going to do which is what God does every time we ask Him for forgiveness and do the release thing vertically and horizontally.” She took the list and ripped it into little pieces and dumped it in the waste paper basket. She just dumped it right there in the trash can. She said, “LeeBeth, that is what God does.” What a great example. What a great illustration.
But I have got to say this to you children, this to you students, this to those who are living under the authority of your parents. If you don’t do the forgiveness thing, if you don’t hit this gear, it is like you have this big old hulking sign on your refrigerator. “Hey, I am disrespecting, dishonoring my parents. I am messing up. And I think I can get by with this bad list.” Who are you trying to kid? Who are you trying to fool? This is the best way to go. Keep short accounts with God and short accounts with the people mentioned in number five.
Love, forgiveness. Now let’s hit the third gear. Cooperation. We are cruising now. The car is going faster now. One of the ways I can honor my parents is to cooperate with them in a spirit of love and in a spirit of forgiveness. I am to have this attitude and this action aspect going on. Are you cooperating with your parents? After all, they were placed in your life by God, Himself. God has a chain of command. He has a flow chart. He puts people in authority positions in our lives to mold us and to shape us into the kind of image bearers that He wants us to become. He has that boss in your life for a certain reason. He has that manager in your life for a certain reason. He has that pastor in your life for a certain reason. He has that coach, that teacher in your life. It is always better to discover what the chain of command is, what the flow chart is and get yourself beneath it and involved in it and under it and your life will always go better. We have got to be cooperative with our parents.
My children and I have made up a game called Supersonic Candyland. No, it is not the normal Candyland. This is Supersonic Candyland. We use two Candyland games. One is kind of trashed and the other is kind of new. We combine them. We have two boards, two decks of cards and the kids and I team up and we have some intense battles for the Young Supersonic Candyland Championship. A couple of nights ago it was EJ and Laurie versus Landra and Big Daddy. And we were into it. We were rumbling. It was intense and believe it or not EJs team got all the way to the end. All that he had to do was to draw one more Candyland card with any color on it and they would get into Candyland. It would be nirvana for them. They would have the Young Family Supersonic Candyland Championship. But guess what happened. When EJ reached for that card, it was Molasses swamp. He had to go all the way back to almost the beginning of the game. Landra and I high-fived. “Yeah, we got this one.” See, we always teach sportsmanship in the Young household. Landra and I were able to win the Young Family Supersonic Candyland Championship and we held this title for about a week. Now we are no longer reigning champions.
After we ended this episode there were some tears and some tantrums going on. That right, even pastor’s children have those problems. So I said, “OK, let’s pick the game up.” Well, Landra and I were doing it the right way. EJ and Laurie, the losers, they were taking the figurines and cards and throwing them in the box like Roger Clements would throw. I said, “Time out. Time out. I see that you are doing what I told you to do, but I don’t like your attitude of cooperation. Your attitude and actions are not linking up. Don’t throw the cards in there that way. You are not doing what I told you to do with the proper attitude.”
You see we can kind of quasi and pseudo cooperate with our parents. But I am talking about real cooperation. I am talking about real love. I am talking about real forgiveness. We are to honor our parents not because of what they have or have not done, but because of who they are.
If you are a parent and your child is here with you in the worship center, I want you to cover you ears for a second. “Hey, children, students, those living under the authority of your parents, I want to give you something that will change your family dynamic. The next time your parents ask you to take out the trash, to make up your bed, to clean your room or clean up the mess from Supersonic Candyland, say, ‘I would be glad to. I would be happy to. I would love to. It would be an honor to do this for you.’” Talk about snapping heads. Talk about changing the course of your family. Third gear, cooperation. I told you that if you want to do this honor thing you have got to love and forgive and cooperate.
The fourth gear, value. We have got to value them. Isn’t it something? We are born dependent on our parents. Then we become independent. Then after the years roll by, our parents become dependent on us. We are to value them in every stage.
I will never forget what happened a couple of years ago. Every summer I lead a beach retreat with our junior and senior high students. We were on the beach and a young girl walked up to me and said, “Ed, I have wanted to ask you this question for a long time. I am always yelling at my Mom because…..” I said, “Time out. I don’t care what you are talking about. If you are yelling at your Mom, you are wrong. You are not valuing her. You are not honoring her. You are not respecting her. You are not putting her in high esteem. You are not seeing that she was placed there by God, Himself.” Don’t talk to your parents sarcastically or flippantly. Don’t make those faces or those head rolls or the eyes thing or the body language. Don’t do that. You are turning your back on number five. Value them. It is God’s flow chart. It is God’s chain of command.
I have said this many times on this stage and I will say it one more time, children. Read my lips. Your parents are smarter than you. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that just because you can turn your laptop on and access global information better than they can that you know what is going on. Well I am here to tell you, they have experienced life on the rugged plains of reality and they know more than you know. So at the end of the day, you have got to defer to them. You have got to love them. You have got to forgive them. You have got to cooperate with them and you have got to value them.
Number five. We are going to start to pull some Gs now aren’t we? Appreciation. We are to show our parents appreciation from birth until death. I don’t see any difference between diapers and bedpans, do you? We are called to honor them throughout their existence.
Front page Thursday in USA Today said this, “More than a third of elderly parents say their grown children have failed to help them in a time of need in the past five years. But when asked the question, only sixteen percent of adult children agreed.” Appreciation, honor, respect, love, forgiveness, cooperation, value.
You know when Jesus was dying on the cross for your sins and mine, bleeding to death, He did not say much. But one thing He did say. “John, take care of my mother.” Talk about appreciation.
How are we to do this? I will give you some quick suggestions.
- Make sure that your parents needs are met. If you are an older child, make sure that your parents needs are met. Make sure that they have food and clothing. They might have to move in with you. We are called to do this. Make sure that their basic necessities are met.
- Include them in special days, birthdays, anniversaries and even vacations.
- Give them special things throughout their lives. I am talking about cards and letters and little knickknacks. Do that for them. That speaks volumes to them. It is all a part of appreciating your parents. Hey, students, parents, those living under the authority of your parents now, why not send them a card? Why not buy them a little gift? Why not make something that advertises and exhibits your love for them? Why not?
One day we are all going to get that dreaded call. The voice on the other end of the line will say, “It’s your Dad…. It’s your Mom….” At that moment in time, a nanosecond, you will either hang your head in shame because you have turned your back on the fifth or you will hold your head high with tears and sadness because you have done what God wanted you to do.
It is not too late. It is never too late as long as they are alive to put it in gear. Put it in gear. Because the torque, the RPMs, the Gs that you will pull for God, Himself, are truly and will be truly staggering.