10x: 10x Honor with Rev. Caz Minter

Well, is a good week to be the church together, to be gathered, to sing together, to pray together. As we come together, we're reminded we're in the presence of God together, And it's a holy moment as we go through this worship time, as the band leads us. Mean, I wanna encourage you just to be lost in that, just to recognize that together, we're kind of entering into the Holy of Holies. And God's promise is that he meets us there. And it's an incredible thing to get to be led by such such talented worship leaders.

And earlier this morning, it was a choir. I mean, we have all kinds of ways that we do this. But we, when we do it, we take it seriously. This is a holy time, and I am so grateful for it. I'm I'm so glad to get to be a part of this church over the past few weeks.

I've been getting to know, many of you in the church and getting to know the things that you're involved in, and I am just blown away about all the things that we do as a church in ministry, that we minister to each other, that we're really caring for the community and ministering to the community. This past week, I interrupted all kinds of meetings. It's just what I do. You know, I kinda walk, meander down the hallways, and and there were people meeting in small groups all down the hallway, and I interrupted five or six different small groups. They were doing just fine on their own, but I wanna see if they had any extra snacks or anything, you know.

And I and I was just just checking in, and and then I popped my head into another room and realized I was in a room I wasn't supposed to be in, and it was our kids ministry team doing training. And I I'm just so thankful for incredible, so many of you that give your give yourself to that and to to our kids being raised up in the faith, to my kids. And so I was just so glad that I walked around another room and the team World Vision people were they were they were getting ready for their race. They were eating, but I didn't want any of their food. They were it was much healthier group over there.

And but they were getting ready and praying and getting ready to go. Another day I popped through and walked in, and it was our security and our safety and our and our medical team, and they were in here preparing and training. And I just thought, man, what an unbelievable church family where everybody rolls up their sleeves and everybody is part of the ministry that we do. And it's just such a gift to get to be a part of this family. Now, we're gonna we're gonna dive in on these commandments, the 10 commandments.

Today's commandment is, as a parent of four kids, is my favorite one. Right? Obey your mom and dad. So this is a good one. We get to do.

I'm gonna pray for us as we open scripture together. God, give you thanks for your word. It's your word written for us. Take hold of our hearts with him. Father, we we wanna be people of your word.

We wanna live our lives according to your... We want we wanna make decisions based on your word. Would you help us to do that? Would you fill us with your spirit so that we can live your word out? We pray this in the mighty name of Jesus, amen.

My oldest son and I were laughing yesterday just remembering a story that really was about honoring your mama. You know what I mean? And remember this command, I'll read it for you. This is Exodus 20, chapter 12. You can always, you've got your Bible with you, you can turn there, you can follow along on the screens, you may have it on your phone app.

But Exodus 20, verse 12, and I want us to look carefully at what it says. It says, Honor your father and your mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. And I was talking with my college age son, and I was saying, you know, you almost didn't live that long, you know, because you didn't honor mom a few times. And this is what the command says. You gotta honor if you wanna live long.

He was, he break, he, it seemed that he had a broken bone every year of his life. Something about the way the kid lived life. And there was one point in middle school when he actually had two arms broken. They were both broken. They were both in a cast.

He couldn't eat very well. We'd put his food down and just watch to see what he was gonna do, you know. He figured out how to play video games, but eating and things like that were really difficult. And so it kind of stopped him in his tracks, but it didn't stop his mouth. His mouth just kept on, you know, going.

And he could talk, you know. And he was giving his mom... He was saying something he shouldn't have been saying. They're riding in the van, and the two younger kids are in the van. And his mom said, hey, we're not talking like that.

No more. Stop. And he just kept on keeping on. Right? And she was like, you better stop or you're going be thrown out of the van.

And, and he didn't stop. And so now he's walking about a mile away from our house, walking down the road with his two casts and, he and I were laughing about it. Cause right as he was walking, a dog came running up and is like trying to dig its way under the fence. So now he's walking faster, you know, with his two casts trying to go down the road. And two different families from the neighborhood pulled over because they saw him walking down the road.

And they were like, Whit, do you need a ride, man? You want a ride? And he had to say, No, sir. I'm pretty sure if you give me a ride, my mom will kill me, you know. And I'm supposed to be walking, you know.

You gotta honor your mom. If you wanna live long, that's what that's what it looks like. The question is, is that really... Is is that it? Is that the whole passage?

Are we done with the sermon? Right? Honor your mom. Things will go well. Don't.

It's gonna be bad for you. This passage actually has implications. They're so much deeper, so much more. Now, what we know is that, this was written to, remember, this was written to a group of people. God gives these commandments, it's a covenant, and he gives them to this group of people through Moses that are heading into the wilderness, and then they're reminded of it as they get ready to head into the promised land.

When he gives it to them, they don't really know who they are. There are people that are just coming out of slavery, and they haven't really seen themselves as a nation, a society, a culture, a people. And so in a way, it's this law that forms them, because the law is, remember, it's a covenant. It's their relationship, and he's setting up the relationship between God and his people, and he's like, if you'll live this way, things will go well. This is how you flourish.

Remember, the the first few commandments are are how do you relate to God? Put no other gods before me. You don't have any idols. I mean, it's about your relationship with God. And then he starts to turn towards, now how do you live this out?

How do you carry the name well in your life and in your relationships? And he starts right here with the first relationship that we all have with our parents. Like when you're born, that's that's relationship number one. But what we notice is that he's actually not here talking to kids. Now kids are implied in this, I was pretty excited.

I wanted to make sure I'm gonna send this video of this sermon off to my older kids. You know, wanna make sure that they hear it. It's supposed to obey your parents. But that's not really who he's not talking to kids. He's talking to adults, saying if we want our nation to flourish, if we want our people to flourish, our culture to flourish, we actually have to care for the generation before us.

And so what he's setting up is is how does how do you thrive as a culture? How do you thrive as as a people? And if you wanna do that well, you adults need to take care of your parents. He says this is what it looks like if you'll live this law out well, if you'll honor your parents. See, that's how you structure a thriving society.

That's how you structure a community. It's to honor. Now, I wanna take that word and look a little more closely at it. What you have to understand is we're gonna do a little Hebrew lesson today, alright? You guys are gonna come out of here and you're gonna be Hebrew scholars this morning, so get ready.

Here we go, alright? Hebrew is a really interesting language in that it's a little bit more rudimentary. English and Greek, those languages have words for just concepts, for general ideas. They have words for emotions. But Hebrew doesn't really have words like that.

It only has concrete words. Words of things that you can see and touch and feel. So in order to share about an emotion or a concept, they have to use a concrete word. So every word in Hebrew is doing double duty. So for example, when, the scripture tells us that Cain was angry at Abel, it doesn't say angry.

Hebrew doesn't have that word. It said Cain burned at Abel. Now that makes sense. Everybody knows what that means. You get it, but it was using a con...

A concrete concept. Cain burned at Abel. So that word does double duty, to burn, and anger, a double duty word in Hebrew. Well, same thing is going on in this passage. When it says honor your father and your mother, that word honor actually is this.

They're gonna put it up on the screen for us. It's the word kabed. And kabed has a really interesting double meaning. Here's what kabed means. It means, they'll put it up, to be heavy or to make weighty.

So you say it like this. The scripture tells you to consider your mother heavy. Now you may not wanna say it. I'm just saying. That's why you may not want to say it like that, but that's really what the cuts.

But do you get it? It's saying to consider them with the gravity that God has given them. Consider them with with with the with the importance, with the heaviness, with the weight. How important is this person? Well, they're a child of God, beloved of God.

And so you're to consider them with that kind of weight. And so Scripture says right here, right at the beginning of this, you know, here we are, we're getting ready to go, the children of Israel are getting ready to go into the land, and they're creating a community. And God says right here in your most important relationship, I've got a command for you. And if you'll live this well, it'll have implications for the rest of your culture. What I want you to catch though is that God jumps in to this most intimate relationship.

Sometimes I think my relationship with God is really about what I do on Sunday morning. It's it's about gathering for worship, and and it's about my, you know, devotional life. Am I reading the Scripture? Am I spending time in prayer? It might be about my small group, and I mean, that's a good God time.

But I don't often think about God being right in the middle of every relationship that I have. You see, it's a perspective change. God wanted them to get this. It's not a private relationship. The relationship between parents and children, between sons and mothers, that's not a private relationship.

No, God is in the middle of it. God mediates it. He's right there direction for you in this, and God says, if you live this well, if you live this well, you'll flourish. But you can't miss it. You know, I don't know if you've ever had to parent in front of other people.

You probably have, right? You've been out and about, and if you have a kid, those kids probably do something wrong and misbehave. It happens to me as a pastor all the time. In fact, I was thinking about this, you know, just not that long ago. I was telling my kids to do something.

We were around other church people, and one of them looked at me and said, No. I had to stop for a second and think, What am I gonna do? Because what does the pastor do when loudly one of your children says no right in front? Do you do? I went into my dad mode, you know, and I think, maybe I'll just take the belt off right here, and we'll just see.

Now, my dad had his own technique. It was like, it went like this. If you were speaking back to my dad, he, in an inappropriate way, or talking back, he would say, hold on, hold on to that thought just a second. Then he would slowly just take his belt off. And then he would just lay the belt down there like that, and then he would look at me and say, finish what you had to say.

Like that. I thought, well, maybe I'll go that mode, you know. Is that what you do? But... Or or is the pastor expected to be compassionate and gracious?

It's a... Maybe I'll I'll go just give him a hug and tell him I love him and don't ever say no to me in front of people again, sweetheart. You know, I I don't know. Panic. God right here says that relationship actually is not private because God is with you in it.

And he says it's not a mistake. It's not something to take lightly. No. No. This is of utmost importance.

How we do the family, how we do this relationship. See, it sets up thriving and flourishing, living long in the land or or not. Now I want you to catch something here. The command is a command to honor. It's not a it's not a if kind of a command.

It it doesn't say give honor to whom honor is due. That that does come later in Scripture talking not about the family, but about, governments and saying they have authority and and so give honor where honor is due. But that's not this. This is honor to hold someone weighty, to consider their weight as a gift, as a grace. And that's what we're called to do.

It's to give this grace to the people in our family. It's a gift. And if you think about this, this is an incredible gift that you can give. Every one of us has this longing to be seen and considered and noticed, to be known for our full kind of what we're worth, what we weigh, you know, we long to be honored. Every one of us has this.

And Scripture gives us in a command, and this way knowing that we needed that thrust, we needed that push to actually give that gift, don't withhold it, don't hold it back, don't say you're gonna wait. No. Give this gift of recognizing, in this case, your mother and your father, as gifts of God, that they are God's beloved. Now, it starts with that relationship, mother and father, but it actually begins to expand. In fact, by the time we get to Romans, Apostle Paul is telling the church at Rome, this is Romans twelve ten, he says, What you need to do is outdo one another in showing honor.

You need to honor one another above yourselves. So it starts with this relationship in the family. It says you start there and you show each other honor. You consider each other worthy of honor. You give that great gift, but then you begin to expand it.

You begin to look at one another, the people around you. The New Testament church started to see the whole church as a family, that you would have spiritual mothers and fathers, spiritual children and grandchildren in the church, and I've seen so many of you do this in incredible ways, that you see those kids running down the hall as your kids, that you're loving them and caring for them, that we have, for us, we have these mothers and fathers in the faith that come around us, and we can honor them. This is an incredible thing, a gift that we get to give together as a church to begin to be the family. And as you get to the New Testament, he starts say, honor everyone because they're God's beloved. Now that changes the way we see things, the way we go forward.

But it's important that it starts with mother and father in a family because for communities to thrive, families need to thrive. If you want a community to thrive and to flourish, families need to thrive and to flourish. It matters. And it's at the heart of scripture, and God gives us this word, and he gives it as a commandment, and it's not an accident. And we have to pay attention to it.

It does not happen just from momentum. I can tell you from my own case for our family, it's hard enough just to get by with an average day. We have so many things going on. We have schedules and sports and, you know, orchestra and all kinds of things happening in the life of our family. My wife has her schedule, I have mine.

I feel like we're running one direction after the other. You know, we get up in the morning and we just try to get everybody to school with both shoes on. That's the goal that we have. Okay? Some of you want your kids to have had your homework done, others of you wanna make sure their hairs come.

We're not at that level. We're just two shoes. Did you have two shoes? You know, did you get there? We've had lots of kids show up at church with only one shoe.

I don't know how that happens. Like, how did you get here today? You didn't think? Maybe I needed it. Anyhow, we, you know, that's the goal that we have.

Because we're just trying to make it. And we're just surviving, and so we get through the day, and we're running, and maybe we grab a bite together, and maybe we have a few minutes to talk, and maybe not, and we're trying to get the checklist of things done, and then we crash into bed at night, and we get up the next morning and just go after it the next day. And I'm here to tell you that the work of honoring is actual work. And if you don't carve it out, if you don't step back, if you're not intentional about it, it doesn't happen. Now, I get it, you know, we're like, well, it's children that should honor, you know, the parents.

Right? So this message is really to my kids. I'm going, hey, you guys better honor me, you know. But that doesn't work that well, right? I don't know if you've ever tried that.

In the heat of the moment, when one of your kids isn't obeying, just look at them and go, hey, honor me. You know, it's not good. Doesn't happen, doesn't work. How do we do this? How do we actually live this out?

Well, in order to live out this commandment, we actually have to, as parents and as a church community, we actually have to teach, disciple, and model the honoring of people. We have to teach, disciple, model the honoring of people. If we don't do that, it won't happen. My kids aren't just gonna hear a command and go, Yeah, I'm gonna honor you. That's not how it works.

They have to see me honoring their mother. They have to notice that I honor my parents. I have incredible parents. They're both still alive. They live in Texas, and I do a phone call with my dad.

He calls me every week. He's a great encourager, and I like being encouraged. So I go ahead and call him, you know. Works out really, really well. So once a week we get on the phone and talk, and my kids need to see me honoring who they are.

They need to see me honoring Cammy and the way that we interact together. If they're gonna live out honoring parents, they've gotta they've gotta catch it. They have to be discipled in it. They have to be taught it, but it has to be modeled. One of the things I remember the most from growing up was my own mom's discipline.

Now my brother and I, we have all kinds of jokes because my mom was tough. Like, you weren't getting past her. She was gonna get you, you know? Didn't wanna mess up around mom. But that's not the stuff that I remember.

I remember my mom when she was wrong. When she had, for whatever reason, handled something in inappropriate way, my mom would come to me and sit down and say, Caz, I have to tell you, I did this wrong and I'm sorry. You know how profound that is for a parent to do that with a child? You know what it shows? It showed that she honored me.

She saw me as weighty. She she didn't just blow past it. She wasn't just trying to survive the day. No. She was willing to stop and come and sit down and say, hey, I'm sorry.

Man, if I can do that in my parenting, if I can do that in the community I live in as a church and this sort of spiritual community that we are a part of, if I can live in that way where I honor each person, I'm willing to sit down and say to them, hey, I'm sorry. You matter. I wanna do this a different way. Now Paul, the Apostle Paul, talks to the church in Ephesus a little bit about this, and he goes back to this commandment. If you have your Bible, can turn with me.

It'll come up on the screens as well to Ephesians chapter six. In Ephesians chapter six, we see him bringing this, going back to this commandment. Now he's talking to a household, and he's going through, these are the ways to live as a Roman family, and so he's kind of walking his way through the Roman family. As he does it, he hits some specifics about this commandment. So this is Ephesians chapter six, and we'll start in verse one.

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. And then in verse four, Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. He's gonna continue going through that Roman household.

I wanna notice a couple of things about this. Paul started with that commandment. That's the central relationship, honor your father and mother, but then he begins to expand it. He says we honor one another. It's interesting now, he tells the children to obey parents, and then he tells fathers, You need to honor your children.

Some of you grew up in difficult households and homes. The question in the back of your mind this morning is, well, what does that look like? Do I obey my parents? And I wanna talk to us specifically about the obedience part, there's more to it than that. This idea of honoring comes with boundaries.

You actually see it in the text. He says, obey your parents in the Lord. You're reminded that God's in the middle of and in charge of these relationships and that there are boundaries there. And the word to honor, you can honor that this is a child of God while still holding on to boundaries. And I want you to catch that and get it.

That's important to understand. But I also want you to see that when he says, children, obey your parents. Now Paul, at this point, is actually talking to little kids. What we saw in the Exodus passage, he's talking to adults. He's talking to the whole community.

He's saying honor the generation above you. But but here, he's talking specifically to kids. And for kids, he changes the word. He doesn't just say honor. He actually here says obey.

As a child, that's what you're gonna do. You obey your parents. But you understand that at each phase of life, honoring your parents actually looks different. So for a kid, it's obedience. As you get to adolescence, it's sort of a negotiated obedience, if you know what I mean.

You're working that out. But adolescence, children are starting to become independent and begin to think for and do for themselves. And then as you get older and you move off and you start sort of adult life, Scripture tells us, you know, we're to leave one family as then we go and make a new family. That's the way the Bible puts that model. That at that point, then honoring begins to look different.

For me, in my stage of life, honoring my parents means caring for them as they, as as they get into later years. That's my duty. It's It looks different in each phase of life, and Paul actually brings that out for us. At each stage, though, what we're to do is to view each other through this lens that's given to us in Exodus. To honor, to hold waiting, That the people that you interact with, that you are family, you see it matters.

And the people that you interact with, they're not just throwaways, They're not just in your way. They're not just your project. See, these are God's children, the beloved. And He's given them weight, and you're to view them with this weight. Now as a church, we're a church that cares about the generations, and we're called to care for the generations above us, and we're called to care for the whole family, to bring honor into the middle of every relationship.

Would you pray with me? God, help us to give this gift of honor to our mothers and our fathers. This gift of considering each other with the weight. Would you help us to give that as a gift to the people around us? God, would you help us to live that way as a church?

Would you help us to include everybody in our family? God, would you fill us, fill this church with spiritual mothers and fathers, with spiritual grandparents and children? God, breathe your Holy Spirit into us that we may honor one another and live a life of flourishing. We pray this in your name. Amen.

Would you stand with me? We're gonna sing one more song together.