Leaving Egypt: The Only Way To Become Righteous

Exodus 20: 12 - 14

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SPEAKER_00 0:18

Would you now stand for the reading of God's Word? Our passage is Exodus chapter 20, beginning at verse 1. That is page 67 in your Red Pew Bibles. If you want to hunt one of those up, if you didn't bring a Bible of your own, should be a Red Pew Bible. Looks like this. We'd like for everyone to be able to see the passage as it's being preached. Again, that is Exodus chapter 20, page 67 in your Red Pew Bibles.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Starting in verse 1. And God spoke all these words. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents, to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. But showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days shall you you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor, you shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything but that belongs to your neighbor. This is the word of the Lord.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Thanks be to God. May be seated. Would you pray with me once more as we come to God's word? Let's pray together. Father, we come this morning and we pause and still our hearts before your word. And Lord, we need you to come and work in us, to come and set us free. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. So we got started last week. We were talking about how so often there's kind of two different types of people among us. There are those that enjoy and appreciate and like rules, and there are those that very much do not. I even see some Snickers in here. You might you might even be very quickly identifying which one of those that you are. But for many of us, there is a great deal of comfort that comes when rules are very, very, very specific. Whenever you see a command from God or a rule anywhere out in society, there's this, you there's usually an urge in us to want it to be really specific. Like, can you tell me exactly what I can and can't do? As a young believer, I struggled with this greatly, uh, particularly with the concept of God's will. And I I wanted to do what God wanted me to do in every area of my life, and I kind of obsessed over this idea of trying to figure out, God, what is it you want me to do? It was some mysterious command that I couldn't figure out. And I was always filled with anxiety because I wanted God to tell me exactly what to do. It's a deep urge in the human heart because deep down we want to justify ourselves. The other night we were as a family, we were sitting around watching The Chosen. I don't know if you've seen this series about the life of Jesus. I commend it to you. Very well done. But we were watching this scene in The Chosen, and it was an interaction between Simon the Zealot and his brother, a cripple at the pool of Saloon. And they were two very, though they were brothers, they were two very different people. Simon the Zealot was one who was fiercely devoted to the meticulous obeying of every single aspect of God's commands. And his brother was one that had been so broken by life, uh, had just kind of given up on the whole project altogether, and was just trying to figure out how to get healed, even willing to take a path other than God in order to seek that healing. And they're interacting with each other and they're sharing their perspectives with one another and pleading with one another. And they were missing each other, and we were sitting there as a great scene, and Bo asked, Dad, which one is right? And it was a great question. And in it's, I felt like it just expressed what we so often feel in life. Like, what's right? Which one is right? We we want to know which one. And of course, my answer was like, neither, because they're about to meet Jesus, and everything is gonna change. But we find that instinct so often in life that we want to know how can I be right? How can I know that I'm right? Show me the way it's supposed to be, get really specific so I know I'm good. It's what drives all of the passion in our politics. Everybody knows you don't bring up politics at the dinner table, right? I have this even in my larger family. When we get together, I'm sitting there going, please, please avoid this landmine. Let's have a nice meal here, right? What drives all the passion we see in our politics right now? We want to be right. We want to know we're on the right side. We want to know which one is right and which one is wrong. And that instinct is so deep in our hearts because we are so deeply seeking to build our righteousness on something. Here's what we're gonna see as we come to our passage this morning. God's law, as we come to the law and we see God's command, God's law exposes our sin and it reveals our need of his grace and rescue, and it drives us to Jesus who fills and empowers us to obey. The law drives us to Jesus. Okay, so let's look at the passage together as we jump in here. We're looking at the Ten Commandments, and for many of us, I think an initial reaction would be to say, wait a minute, uh, don't these not even apply anymore? There can be a very common belief, especially in the Bible belt, that things like commands and God's laws, that those belong in the Old Testament, and then the New Testament is all about grace, and so those things don't really apply anymore. But we we've been talking about the teaching of Jesus is the opposite of that mindset. That Jesus very clearly said, Hey, don't think I've come to do away with God's law. I I didn't come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it. Right? And so one time uh uh someone comes to Jesus, a teacher of the law, and they say, Teacher, what is the greatest commandment? And Jesus didn't respond by saying, Commandment, don't worry about those things anymore. It's just grace now. Don't worry about obedience and laws and all that stuff, it's just getting in the way of love, right? Because we imagine love's got nothing to do with law. And Jesus said, The first commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself. And then he says this all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. You know, Jesus was saying all of God's law, all of his commands, they're summed up in this. Now we might hear, you know, love God and love neighbor, that's all the law's about. And we might say, no problemo, right? Just love, right? But when you think about it, love is an infinitely higher standard than do not do this, right? So Jesus was raising God's law, and and he shows that those two go together. And so so often we want to separate those, love for God and love for neighbor. We want to separate one and say, yeah, this is the one that it's really all about. And you see, love for God without love for neighbor is just self-righteousness. We all know what that looks like. And love for neighbor without love for God is just human humanitarianism, it's just emptiness. We see it in our secular culture everywhere, this lifting up of love of neighbor without a love and honor of God. So the way, when we come to the Ten Commandments, it's incredibly important to see that the Ten Commandments are spelling out what does it mean to love God and to love your neighbor? It's like putting flesh on it. It's getting specific. Okay, if you're gonna love God, here's what it looks like. You put him before everything else. The first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. And the first four commandments really have to do with what does it mean to love God with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength. But then the second, the the remaining six are all about spelling out what does it look like to love my neighbor? Sometimes we think of God's law as just about personal piety, just like you know, having a little personally holy life. But it's vital to see that all of God's commands are relational. It's how do we treat people? Sometimes people are so religious they're incredibly mean to people. That is a colossal missing of the point. So we're looking at the fifth, sixth, and seventh commandment today. Next week we're gonna look at the final three. So we are transitioning here into this. We're gonna begin in verse 12, and what we're gonna focus on here. So we're transitioning into this, okay, what does it look like specifically to love my neighbor? And he begins in verse 12 with our love and our honor of our parents. Just look again at what he says here, verse 12. This is the fifth commandment. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. Honor your father and mother. Now it's interesting here that right when it begins to turn our focus towards our neighbor, it begins with the family. Now that that is by no accident that the very first one pertaining specifically to our love of neighbor directs us to the relationships within the larger family structure. There's a reason for that. At the heart of God's people is to be the family, how we treat one another, that our love for neighbor should be prioritized in the ways that we love one another in our immediate family. Honor your father and mother. Now, we might hear this initially and think, oh, this is for children here. All right. And it certainly is for children, not merely children. And in the New Testament, Paul uses this commandment to summarize it to say, children obey your parents. This is this is a part of your calling as a child, that you're called to obey and honor your parents. What does that mean? It means one, I obey them, full stop. But it also means I honor them. The Hebrew word here translated for honor means give weight to, give value to. So it's not just, okay, I'm just gonna comply and do what they say, but but I have an attitude of honor towards my parents. But it also applies to us as adults, to all of those relationships within the family structure that we honor our parents. Now, that of course changes as you go over time. As you're a young child, it's simple, it's obey, but as you get older, it it's not obey anymore, but it's it's an attitude of heart in the way that I see them, the way that I treat them. And then later in life, it has more to do with taking care of them, providing for them, which is what Paul says in 1 Timothy 5. So it's an attitude of heart by which we honor and give weight and value to our parents. Now, here's one of the hard things. As children, and especially as you get older in life, you see the flaws of your parents. You see the fact that your parents had a lot of failures in raising you. And one of the most challenging things, whenever you see that, is to say, I'm not gonna honor them. But you see, there's no qualifier in here. Honor your father and mother if they are a fantastic mother and father. Honor them if they get everything right. But the reality is, every mother and father are sinners. They're gonna fail you. And and as I've become a parent, I've seen that in a whole different way. It was a whole lot easier to look at my parents and see all of their falls and all of their faults. But you know, as you become a parent, you become aware, I don't know what I'm doing. And I I've made incredible mistakes in the raising of my children. There's things I want to go back and change. There's there's there's struggles and sin in me that impacts them, right? And you see that whenever you're a parent, but so often when you're a child, even if you're an adult child, you don't see it. It's kind of become fashionable in our day as we grow up and we become adults to become aware of all the ways that our parents have hurt us, right? And there are many. And that is a, it is a good thing to acknowledge, hey, this was done to me, here's how I experienced this, and to work through that. But a part of what we are urged into in our culture is to sit in that. You see, in our culture, to be a victim means you are automatically the righteous party without without fault in any way. And you are perfectly justified in how you treat the one who has wronged you. And so it's so fashionable in our culture, in our day, for parents to uh for children to hold, adult children to hold their parents in contempt. You know, we've I've I've known a handful of really good friends whose adult children have just out of the blue like disowned them. Like who've gotten caught up on something that they did in their raising of them, some way that they felt short, and so they just cut them off. They just don't talk to them anymore. And I mean, it is it's devastating, right? And I I just need to be really honest, I've struggled with this. I've struggled with this personally myself. Sitting in the failures of my parents and yet withholding honor because of that. You see, that's what the commandment is, and God calls us to that because it becomes a fabric of the whole society of his people, that the family unit be intact. And how is it intact as we honor one another in the family relationships? So that's the fifth commandment. Next, the sixth commandment, verse 13, you shall not murder. Now, the Hebrew word translated murder here is different than the Hebrew word for kill. So our English translations are pretty accurate here. What is being referred to here is not just any taking of life, but rather the unlawful taking of life. There are places in Scripture where the taking of human life is sanctioned. One would be in war. And a different word, a different Hebrew word is used for that. Whenever someone takes another life in war, in battle, it's a whole different concept. That's not what it's referring to here. Another example would be capital punishment. Within Israelite society, capital punishment was sanctioned. And that's a whole different concept. What it is talking about here is in murder is the unlawful taking of another life. And of course, the reason that this is so vital and a and a commandment of God is because life is sacred, and every human being, every man or woman, is created in the image of God and therefore has inestimable value. And God alone has the right to give and to take life. And so when we take life unlawfully before God, we've broken this commandment. Now the seventh, verse 14. You shall not commit adultery. So adultery is sex with anyone other than your spouse. Most narrowly, it is sex outside the marriage relationship. As we saw, we talked about this in the marriage series that we went through, is that God created sex for marriage, for the enhancing of the marriage relationship, for the enjoyment of husband and wife to be enjoyed in the protection of covenant relationship. And so, adultery, when someone goes outside of that marriage or someone enters into and invades a marriage, when you do that, it is a breaking of the covenant. And not only does it break the covenant, it shatters families. So why it's so vitally important for God's people that we honor this, that we honor marriage, that our sexual ethics reflect what God has created sex for. So that's the fifth, sixth, and seventh commandment. So here's a question how we doing? As we look at those, how are we doing? Do you look at those and say, this is what we often do whenever we're looking at laws and commandments. We say, All right, how have I done that one? Yeah, yeah, pretty good. Yeah, check, got that one. You know, I'm I'm, you know, I haven't disowned my parents, like you're talking about there. Check, I'm good there. Uh, how about murder? Well, thankfully, never committed murder. Okay, check, we're good. How about adultery? Nope, never gone outside my marriage. I'm good, right? It would be tempting to look at God's law and say, okay, it's kind of simple. We got the surface laws here, the surface sins here, and I'm doing a pretty good job, right? And then we encounter the teaching of Jesus. Now that was actually the teaching of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, that they taught that these commandments we just read were merely about the outward actions in one's life. And so if you've never murdered anybody, you're good. If you've never put your parents, your needy parents out without providing help for them, you're good. If you've never actually committed the act of adultery, you're all good to go. You are righteous. Here's your stamp, here's your badge, go in peace, drop some money in the offering plate, right? And then Jesus comes along and he says, No. You've heard it said, do not murder, right? You've heard the teaching of this commandment, but the teaching was that it only pertained to the surface action. But I tell you, this is Matthew chapter 5, you can look it up. But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother and sister has committed adultery uh murder in his heart. He is subject to judgment. I mean, what? I mean, what is Jesus doing here? He's saying, No, the law is not down here, just the outward actions in your life so that it's something. That you can measure your life by and make sure I'm on the right side of this. I got it. I'm good. Haven't messed that one up. No, no, that's not the standard of the law. The standard, and it was never meant to be there. The standard of the law of here, it's always pertained to the thoughts and intentions of the heart. It is always applied to the depths of your relationship with your neighbor. So Jesus said it's not just the outward action. No. No, it's the heart. It's anger in the heart. It's bitterness towards another person. It's the withholding of forgiveness. It's the looking down in judgment on another person. It is the resentments that we nurse and hold on to in our hearts. It is the coldness of our hearts towards other people. It is the resistance to seek reconciliation. That is what the commandment is about. If you were doing that, you're subject to judgment, says Jesus. He even says, and in a little application of it, right after he says this, you know what? If you're if you find yourself in worship and you've brought an offering and you have it before the altar, and there you you realize, oh, my brother's got something against me. I got a relationship in my life that's not right. And it's interesting he says your brother has something against you. Not even that you have it against them. He says, tell you what, do. If it hits you in that moment, I'm not right. Here's very clearly what you do. Leave your gift. Don't give it. Go be reconciled to your brother. Then come back and worship. I mean, Jesus is saying, don't come worship God if you're not right with your neighbor. That's what the six commandments are about. Oh. All right, it gets worse. Right after that, here's what Jesus says. I'm just gonna read it because it's it's a shocker. You have heard that it said, this is uh Matthew chapter 5, verse 27. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. You've heard the commandment, you've heard the teaching. It's about the action of sex outside your marriage. But here's what I tell you anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Jesus says, adultery, sexual sin, it's not just a matter of an outward action. It is the thoughts and intentions of the heart. The seventh commandment is calling us to a purity in our relationships in life, that we look at a brother or sister as a brother or sister and not as an object to be consumed. That's what the commandment's about. Jesus is like not the action, it's the heart. You know, as we look into God's law and we examine our hearts and we let it do its proper work on our hearts and our lives, it is devastating. It's devastating because we recognize that's me. I've broken that. That is the purpose of the law. It's easy to think that the purpose of the law is to justify ourselves, to find a way to say, let me get it right, let me make sure I'm on the right side of this, let me make sure I'm good. And there's so many different ways that we we justify ourselves and try to build our righteousness in ourselves. One is is that we compare ourselves to other people. And it's one of the best ways. You know, we come to God's law and say, oh, really? Thoughts? Um, anger in the heart? Ah, but wait, you know what? I'm I'm I'm not as bad as they are. Yeah, there's certainly people that are more righteous than me, yes, of course. But I'm I'm not that bad. We do that just so naturally. Or we say, you know, that wasn't really me. I didn't really mean that. That just happened. Or we make resolutions. You ever had this in your life? When you see your sin when you've sinned in some way against another person or God, and and just very quickly in your heart, you you begin to make a resolution. God, I'm gonna get serious this time. I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna put together a plan of of righteousness, and here's what I'm gonna do, and thinking in some way that we can make amends for our sin. But let me tell you something. None of that has any value whatsoever. As we come to God's law, we see we cannot justify ourselves. Rather, the sin uh the law exposes the full reality of our hearts. When we come to the law, it shows us relax. You are far worse than you know, far more in need of rescue. You know, we like to compare ourselves to other people. The law says you are far worse and more broken than you can even see. You see, the purpose of the law is not just to expose the reality of our hearts, but to drive us to Jesus. It's what the Apostle Paul clearly says in Galatians 4 that the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ in order that we might be justified by faith. That is not justified by our goodness or our record or our effort or our willpower or our religiousness. None of that will make you righteous before God. Paul clearly says, by works of the law, no one will be declared righteous. It's an impossibility because the law can only condemn, it has no power to make you righteous. But that the law was put in charge to drive us to Jesus, to reveal our sin, to break us, to show us I need to be rescued, I need a savior, I need I need someone who can do it in my place because I cannot. And that's why it's so vitally important in our lives. Its ongoing work is to continually reveal our need of Jesus and the freshness of his grace. It leads us to the gospel. You know, one of the clearest descriptions of the gospel, one of my favorites, is 2 Corinthians 5 21, where Paul summarizes the gospel in this way, and just think of it in terms of what we've seen in the law. God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us in order that in him we might become the righteousness of God. It's just a beautiful summary of the gospel. You see, Paul says in Galatians 3 that he redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. It's this exchange, it's this coming into our place. Jesus was without sin, he was righteous. He perfectly kept the law. He always obeyed his mother and his father. He never put anything ahead of God in his life. Ever. He never murdered in his heart another human being. He always was motivated by love. And by the way, Jesus was angry. There is a righteous anger, but it is an anger that is motivated by love. Right? He was perfect, he never committed adultery. I mean, and Jesus was, Hebrew says, tempted in every way, just as we are. He was tempted as a full human being. I mean, all of us know the power of sexual temptation, especially in our culture. But I mean, just think about that. He resisted, he never gave in. He was never willing to look on a woman as anything other than a sister. He never objectified another woman. He was perfect, he was righteous. But, as Paul says, God made him to be sin. What does he mean by that? It means that on the cross, he was treated as a sinner. That our guilt, our shame, our sin was put on him. He was treated as an adulterer, he was treated as a murderer, he was treated as an idolater, though he had never done it. And he was treated in our place for us. Our sin, our adultery, our murder, our idolatry, everything that we've done. It was put on him. He bore it. He bore our curse, he bore our guilt, he bore our shame in order that through union with him we might be righteous. See, when you are united to Jesus, it's this double exchange, as it's been called. You see, when you are united to Jesus by faith, all of my sin, past, present, future, is laid upon Christ on the cross. And his righteousness, this is the part that we often neglect to see, the absolute wonder of the gospel. His righteousness is credited to me. It's given to me. His record. I get his record. Not just forgiveness. Forgiveness is glorious, but it's so much more wonderful. The righteous record of Jesus is given to me. It's credited to me. Credited to my account. I'm clothed in Christ. I'm hidden in Christ. So that when the Father looks upon me, though I am a sinner, as the law clearly makes clear. When the Father looks upon me, he sees the righteousness of his son. That's the gospel. Now, if if you're hearing that and you're like, yeah, got it. All right, I know this. You know, maybe there's an unbeliever in here that needs to hear this. We get to something else. If if if you hear the gospel and it fails, to grab your heart with an electric joy, if that's true, I would just say, you ain't looking at the law. Use the law up on your heart. Look into the law. Examine, let it shine a light. Let it get up in your heart. Let it let it expose you. Because when we encounter the law, it it just in our heart, we're like, I need rescue. And it drives us fresh to the grace of the gospel. And the miracle of the righteousness of Christ credited to us. The Bible calls that justification. It's glorious. So here's a question to ponder here. Are you feeling conviction in this moment? You know, last week we looked at the first four commandments, and I it just so many good conversations after the sermon. But over and over and over, you know what I heard people saying? As you were talking about the first commandment, as you were talking about the first four commandments, I was feeling such conviction. Right? Do you know what conviction is? Conviction is that sense in the heart wrought by the Holy Spirit that I'm broken, that I have sinned, that I have disobeyed God. It's not a justifying yourself, it's not an excusing it away, it's just the sense of being caught, which is kind of freeing in a lot of ways, right? It's a sense of giving up the ruse. It's a sense of saying, this is talking about me. You see, conviction in the Christian life is a wonderful thing. It is a work of God's grace in our hearts. Because conviction drives us into the grace of the gospel. It's the amazing thing about the Christian life. It's what it just sets it apart from every other religion in the world. In the Christian life, what draws God closest to us is a broken and contrite heart. You know, in conviction, you're saying, I can't do it. I'm not good enough. This is true of me, right? And that is weakness, and that is brokenness. You know, our sense of like I'm righteous is broken. But you see, because of the gospel, that is the nearest we are to God. That God is drawn to us like a moth to a flame when we are broken in that way in repentance. It's so easy to think in the Christian life, the way I get God's favor, the way I get close to God, is to getting better and better and better and better and better. So I don't have to repent, right? You ever thought that? And the reality is, is that closeness and intimacy with God comes through our weakness, our brokenness, our deep sense in the heart that God, I need your grace. That is at the depths of God's heart. And at the depths of encountering the gospel. The gospel tells us two fundamental realities. First, relax, you are far worse than you know. If you don't get that, just look at God's law. But secondly, rejoice you're more loved and accepted in Christ than you could ever dare to dream at the same time. And the more that those two realities hit home in our heart, the more that it changes us at the deepest places of our soul. So let's stop there for a moment, give ourselves a few moments to interact and discuss what's happening in you as we look into the law, as we think about the work that the law does upon our hearts, its role in driving us to Jesus. It's maybe it's it's your own experience with the law and the gospel in your own heart. Let's let's hear from each other and interact. If you're new here, this is kind of a way for us to not just be hearers of the word, but doers and to bring application into our hearts and lives through the gospel.

SPEAKER_02 37:26

Um I get I get annoyed at people a lot. Um, but so if you have like a friend or a family member or something who has done something to wrong you, is it is it still wrong to be upset or angry at that?

SPEAKER_00 37:42

No. No. No, that's that's and that that's where understanding and clarifying what is the anger that he's talking about there. Like in in another place uh in the New Testament it says, in your anger do not sin, which would clearly indicate, okay, there's an anger that is not sin. And that is anger over wrong, anger over someone being oppressed, anger over being mistreated. Those are very natural things. The anger there is I would describe as a selfish anger that is about us at the expense of others. Yeah. It can be hard to parse out, especially in the moment. Because usually there's a mix. I find rarely is my anger totally pure and justified. I mean, sometimes there's righteousness in it. But oftentimes I don't have to look too deeply to realize there's a lot of my sin in here, too. And that's what makes it so tough when we're wronged, right? Because in our culture right now, it's saying if you're wrong, if you're wrong, you're righteous. If you've been wronged, you are righteous. Y'all see that in our culture? And it's just like if you were a victim, you're untouchable. And um, you know, it's the the Bible would lead us to a more textured wisdom that would say, wait, if you've been victimized, that matters. We need to deal with that. But it doesn't somehow mean I'm not also a sinner. Now, maybe in that situation I had none. I find in a lot of cases there's two sides to it, right? But it it's it's um usually it's a mixture. Usually it's a mixture. Somebody else helping.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

Right here, sorry. Um so when you're talking about like honoring your parents, this isn't necessarily my parents, but it's part of my parents' story with my grandfather. Um as we get older, you just become like you just have things that are different in your brain and the way that you remember them, in the way that things happen. Um and it can just be really difficult to maintain honor of someone who is recounting stories differently, someone who is just experiencing life in a way that just maybe just isn't true. Like, and so how do you maintain honor when this is gonna sound really like crude, but like they just don't, they're not in their right mind anymore.

SPEAKER_00 40:47

Yes, yeah. It's a great question. It's a real like work it out question. So one of the ways that I think the Bible kind of does this, and and I'm I'm taking it from uh Paul's comments on this commandment in First Timothy, where he's calling on people to take care of your parents. And likely in the uh the church in Ephesus, you had situations where people were not doing that, and and so the church was having to take care of people in uh uh family members of people in the church, and they were kind of neglecting them. And so he says, put your religion into practice by taking care of your parents, which is like, whoa, okay, this is kind of a big deal to you. And um, and it says, he says something interesting, he says, repay them there. So what he's doing is he's connecting your care for your parents to their care for you. Now, this is the thing that you never get about children when you're a child. You, and if you're a parent here, you know what I'm talking about. When you're a child, all of the care that is provided for you, you're totally oblivious to, right? You you don't you can't even have a concept for the sleepless nights for your parents, for the countless prayers, for the the just constant work to try to provide for you and all of your desires and all of those things. And you you just can't have a concept. And and and it's more exponential as it gets younger, you know, when when we are first born, like you can do nothing. Like this person's whole life is poured into keeping you alive, you know, and showing you love. And so it's almost like they have invested so much for me when I couldn't do anything. And as you're a child, you you don't see any of that stuff. But then you become an adult and you still don't see any of that stuff, and you think, you wronged me. It's true. Many cases, yeah, they let you down. Parents, we're we're gonna let our children down. We're gonna sin against our parents. We're gonna mess them up in ways that we never wanted to. And sometimes whenever we wanted to do just the opposite. But oftentimes when we have that perspective as children to parents, we're we're discounting all of that, which is quite massive. And I think what Paul would, and this I'm getting to your question here, when we come to honor our parents, I think it has to do with this is really hard. And and really, as they get older and older, they become just like what you were when you were a child. You know, some of us have taken care of parents, and you literally had to feed them or change them one day like they did for you. Right? And so I think that's a great way to do that because we see them decline and become more and more childlike. The instinct is either to be really disturbed by it or to dismiss them. Them. And I think what scripture would call us to is like, wait a minute. When I was like this, they took care of me. And I had nothing. And they've put a lot more into me than I've put into them. And so I think it that provides some heart change and some perspective on that. But I think as naturally as children, we dismiss, and that's, you know, it's natural to do that. But as you get older, you need to say, wait a minute, they poured a lot into me. And I need to honor them for that.

unknown 44:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 44:36

So I'm a teacher at a Christian school. And so something I've really been struggling with, well, I'm very passionate about the gospel, right? And so I've been trying to teach them about they're in fifth grade. I've been trying to teach them about the wrath of God being satisfied in what Jesus did and how um we let that drive us to Jesus rather than um be like buried under like the weight of our sin. And a lot of them are either raised in Christian homes or they're not. And so I have like a really big spectrum.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:05

And I'm just struggling with um, I know it's not me doing this. This is like the work of Christ, but I care deeply about not becoming numb to the message of the gospel, especially like working camp and stuff. Like I pray so often, like, Lord, let me never hear what you did on the cross and just go in one ear and out the other. Because I think it's just um it's a message that we're gonna hear over our whole life. And so we can't become numb to it. But I've just been struggling, like, how do I present this to people in a way to where it's not just oh Jesus died on a cross for me again? How do I uh properly like convey the weight? And I know they're children, and so that's just a lot of prayer too. Like, Lord, let this not fall on hard ground. Yeah, but it's just like this is such a deep message that like I really want them to understand. Um, and that like I have been blessed and I mean, still not even fully understand, but I don't know what I'm asking. But it's just like how we present.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

I I think you're you're sharing something that you know you want to teach your students, but also we as parents, we want to teach this to our children. We want them to fall in love with Jesus. They're never gonna fall in love with Jesus unless they see their brokenness. So that means the hard thing, we gotta let them fail. We gotta let them fall on their face. Which the instinct for you as a parent is like, no, I gotta wrap them in spiritual bubble wrap where they never fail, where they never sin, right? And that's not gonna help them. I mean, that you you you will not love Jesus unless you're a sinner or see yourself to be a sinner. Because you're just not gonna need him. I mean, he doesn't become beautiful and wonderful and everything until you're in touch with your need. And I think it's through the law. Um and uh, you know, Martin Luther said, hunger makes the best cook. You know, that the the law makes you hungry for grace. It gives what gives taste to the gospel. So in a highly structured Christian environment, this would be true for our covenant students here as well, to be always exposed, to be near the gospel, um, it can inoculate you to the riches of the wonder of the gospel and for it to become new and fresh. And so it's something you, it's something I was warned about when I went to seminary, how you can become so familiar that it loses its wonder. And I think the the way to battle this is just regular practice of repentance, where we examine our hearts and our lives with the God, a daily, a daily practice where we examine our life with the law of God, and then we let its exposure of our sins drive us to Jesus and receiving his grace for those. You know, repentance and faith kind of is like it's it's like the two aspects of what drives the Christian life. So, you know, if they're seeming like unmoved by the gospel, then just hit them with the law, full force, and see what happens. And wait till they're like, oh, and then boom, gospel right here. And then it's like, ah, you know? And that's that's that's what we need, you know. I mean, the the Puritans were very strong on like, don't you dare give them some gospel till you've blasted them clean out of the building with the law. Right? But they understood how this works, and we have so watered down and dismissed the law, we don't even think we need grace or rescue. When when we come to the law, we're like, I needed your rescue the first 10 minutes into my day. And and it's law and gospel go together like that. Let me close this in prayer, Lord Jesus. Our righteousness, you're everything. Would you help us to see that in you, through union with you, we're clothed with you, that we've been seated with you in the heavenly realms, that we've been we've been robed with your perfect, spotless righteousness, that the father looks upon us with delight in spite of the brokenness of our hearts, that the father looks upon us with the affection that he looks upon you, all because of our union with you, that we're hidden in you. I pray that these truths, that Lord, they would come alive, that you would renew us through the power of your spirit, that we would be awakened in the deepest parts of our soul as we rediscover the riches of the gospel. Lord Jesus, would you center us on you? In Christ's name we pray. Amen.