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“Honor the ‘Rents”

Exodus 20:12

Rev. Dustin Largent

Sept. 21, 2025

 

I want you to know that our family feels really loved by you. I hope that you feel loved by us because we do love you. When we moved out here, we came as a group of four. It was my wife and me and my son and Connie. We all came together and I wouldn't have come here if it wasn't for Connie. If it wasn't for her basically praying us here because I didn't want to come here. God had spoke to her heart in a major way and we're reading now her prayers at the house. I'm learning stuff I didn't know. I didn't realize that she had been praying earnestly. She wrote her prayers down. I was like, man, I feel kind of betrayed. She was praying with Nellie really. I'm clueless. I'm a guy. I don't know. I thank you guys so much for the food that came over. You have to have a church family when you go through stuff like this. I have a great one. I have a great one. I love it. This is going to be tough because we come to the fifth commandment. Anybody know what the fifth commandment is? Honor your father and mother. I wrote this and kind of prepared this about three hours before she died. I was thinking of her and how we honor our parents. How do we honor those that we love?

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I'll just start with this. Back in my youth pastor days, that was a long time ago, there was a high school girl. The kids in the group, sometimes they'd say, hey, I got to go ask the rents. I was like, the rents? You're paying rent? Your parents are making you pay rent? They're like, no, the rents. I go, what's that? It's short for parents.

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You guys all knew that, but I'm an idiot. I didn't know the rents is like code for your parents. I got to go ask the rents. We're looking at this fifth commandment and let's dive into it. I'm going to do my best to help us understand how we honor our mother and our father. Even if you have a mother and a father that weren't good people, I say this all the time, there are no good people. There's just a good Jesus and a world full of bad people that are redeemed by a good Jesus. Even if you had extraordinarily not good parents, I'm going to talk to you today about how do we do this commandment. Here's what it says. It's in *Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.* (Exodus 20:12). It says, honor your father and mother, father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

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So that's interesting. This commandment was actually given to a bunch of Israelites that are wandering around in the desert that are about to get a land. And so the promise is specifically saying that if you do this commandment, you're going to live long in the land. Usually when we talk about this commandment, we're like, oh, this is the commandment for these guys, the younger folks. It wasn't written for young people.  It was written for adults. So, the children of Israel, when you hear the children of Israel, they're not children. When you hear the children of Israel, the children of Israel are all adults. Most of them are adults.

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And so, this honoring your mother and father is not, hey, take the garbage out when mom says, now that's part of it. We'll get to that. Don't get too excited yet. But it's more than that. So if you turn to *Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.* (Matthew 22:37) *Love your neighbor as yourself.* (Matthew 22:39), I'm going to get into this. Matthew 22 verse 34, I'll throw it on the screen for you. It says, hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together, one of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus replied, Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all of your mind, this is the first and greatest commandment.

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And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself. And the law and the prophets, all the law and the prophets, hang on these two commandments. So when you look at the 10 commandments, the commandments are divided. So there's four commandments. The first four that we've covered so far are dealing specifically with the greatest commandment, which is love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength. Now, those are the first four. Those are about loving God. The first commandment of those four that says, you shall have no other gods before you, that is the foundational commandment for the next three. So like, don't make any graven images. Well, that builds on the foundation of the first one. You have no other gods before you. Honoring the name of God, that builds on the first one of this God that you have no other gods before you. This is how you're going to worship that God.

So now we're starting the next set of six of them. And this is the first one in that category, okay, of how to love the Lord your God, or how to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the first commandment in that set. So, what does that mean? That means that this commandment here is the foundation for how you will love your neighbor as yourself. I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Think about the world around you. Think about the chaos. Think about all the problems that we have in our world. Think about kids killing each other in Chicago.

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Think of all of that. The lack of love for neighbor, the lack of care for neighbor, the answer to that, the foundation for that is honor your father and mother. Because if you can't honor your father and mother, you destroy the entire foundation of your society. When you don't have dads and moms together raising a child, you destroy the foundation of your society. And so here it says, what's the promise? It says, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. What does that mean? Does that mean that instead of living to 40, I'm going to live to 90? It's not what that means.

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I mean, you might live longer, right? Here's how I know that. If you were to go down to *Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother—this 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.* (Ephesians 6:1-3), I'm skipping around. The guys in the back are going to have to watch me for the changes and try and keep up a little Marty McFly going on here. *Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother—this 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.* (Ephesians 6:1-3)-1 says, children, obey your parents in the Lord. This is Paul. For this is right, honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, and then watch what he says the promises. So that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. So when it's talking about I'm going to live a long life, it's not necessarily saying that that's time. It might be time, but when you're going to live a long life, long is big and full and good.

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That’s the way they think of long and good. And so here's what's being said to these Jews that are wanted. They've just been freed from Egyptian slavery. And now they get the commandments for how they can live full lives. They've talked about how to love the Lord their God with all their heart and all their soul and they're like, yes, we'll do that. This is the covenant. If we do this, if we live these commandments, if we follow these, God is going to bless us as a nation. Then he gets to the love your neighbor as yourself and he starts with this one and says, listen, you got to watch your family. The family is going to be the foundation and parents being honored by their children, whether they're young kids or whether they're older kids, whether they're grownups, whatever, they're honoring their parents because it all boils down to that. This is foundational for all the other commandments that you're going to do. Now, some people get this a little bit wrong, I think. When you picture Moses coming down with the commandments, he's got the tablets, right?

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And I don't know how heavy they were. He was an old cat, right? I mean, he's pretty old and he's mountain climbing. I mean, I couldn't probably climb that mountain. Now, certainly ain't coming down with a couple of huge rocks, with a bunch of writing on them and they're like, how did it died on the way down just fall in? But most of the time we picture that, we say, okay, so there were two commandments. So, some people will say, here's what was going on. The first four were on one tablet, right? Is that how you might picture? And then the next six were on, I hate to break this to you, I don't think that's how it was. I think it was written on both sides and the fullness of the commandments were all written on front and back of one. And then there was a second copy of those commandments that was on the front and the back. Here's why I believe that, is because the way covenants worked in that time, and this was a covenant God was making with his people, is just like you have a contract today.

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If I was to buy a house, the seller gets a copy of the contract, I get a copy of the contract, right? So there are two copies of that saying, this is a covenant that we have. And so Moses came down, when he has the commandments, what are they going to do with those commandments? They put them in the ark of the covenant and God keeps, that's kind of where God is keeping the things of God and that's where the people are keeping the things of the people. So here's the first thing we'll say, the foundation of how we love our neighbor is to honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. Say, well, okay, well that's good, but it's just really important to God. I'll tell you how important this was to them in that time.

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I'll tell you how important it was to them that you honored your father and mother, how the society thought this was important that people were honoring. Like now you get away with crap, right? Now you get away with crap. I didn't get away with crap. How many of you got away with all kinds of, like, alright, there, Rob did, and now you look how he turned out, right?

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I didn't get away with a lot, a lot of parents didn't, right? I mean, you were going to honor your mother and father or else you were going to get your mouth washed out with soap or you were going to get a whooping or something was going to happen and you didn't even necessarily have to really honor them. You just had to salute the uniform, right?

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Because you're going to honor your father and mother. This is how they dealt with it in, when they were in the desert. This is how the law, *If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother... all the men of his town are to stone him to death.* (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) says, if someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline them, alright? You know that kid, right? And you're like, dude, get a hold of your kid, man. The whole neighborhood is in chaos, because you don't have any control over your kid, right?

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We're freaking out over this thing. It says if that's the case and your kid isn't going to listen to you, they're not even blaming the parent. They're saying, you know, the kid isn't listening to discipline. The parents are trying to discipline him and this kid's going sideways. His father and mother shall take hold of him, bring him to the elders at the gate of the town. They shall say to the elders, this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious.

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So, I'm going to acknowledge the fact that my kid will skip it. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of this town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear it and be afraid. The idea is it is so important that we have control of the family and that people, it's so important that people are able to love their neighbors themselves.

We need six commandments or about loving your neighbor as yourself. And if you mess this one up, you're in trouble. Now, this is not for you to do this today. All right? Do not bring your kid out to the thing. We're not going to stone her to death. That's called assault. That's called murder. We're not going to get into that. My insurance doesn't cover that and we got to be very careful.

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But we need to understand the importance and how serious it is when a child is not listening to their parents and honoring their parents because it affects the whole society. Look in Chicago. Look at the rest of the country. We've got kids that don't even know who they are. They have no idea who they are. They don't listen to their parents when their parents tell them who they are. They just... And the state and the government wants to take that ability for you to parent these kids away from you. You can't discipline your child the way you need to because if you do, then we're going to come in and do something. Forget that. You discipline your kid. You raise your kid in the Lord and the consequences are what they are. You raise your child the way you need to raise your child.

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You grow them up and that's the way it is. You can't allow the government to tell you how you're going to raise your kids because they suck at that. They do not know how to raise children to be humans. They do not know how to raise them to be godly. They do not know how to raise them to honor even their own teachers. It is your responsibility as a parent to do that, to teach them to honor you. And you have to do that in a careful way, but to honor them. We're going to talk about that in a little bit here. Because you see disrespect of parents is an assault on the family and an assault on the family is an assault on the community or the society.

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So not honoring father and mother leads to a jacked up community where it doesn't go well for you. Right? That was the promise. It'll go well for you. It doesn't go well for you if your community is all jacked up because now they're shooting everywhere and there's all kinds of crazy things going on because we didn't worry about having people love our neighbors ourselves because we didn't teach our kids. Okay? And if this is upsetting you, tough. So, this commandment affects society. But why does it affect society?

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Why is this affect... Because the first way that we learn about God, the first way we learn about morals the first way that we learn about God's law, the first way we learn about love the first way we learn about honoring people is we learn that through our parents. And so there's a pastor, his name is JD Greer and I was reading something to his. He's from the summit church and I love the way he put this. He says this. He says that parents, and this is in your notes, parents are a temporary stand-in for God.

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They're a temporary stand-in. So, your job as a parent is to take your kid and their first reaction, their first idea of authority, their first idea of being loved, their first idea of all that, of what God is going to give them. They get that from you first. Okay? They get that from you first. And so the first time they feel love from God is through mom and dad.

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The first time that they learn how to submit and submission and honoring someone or honoring God, that happens through them submitting and honoring to you. Right? You're a temporary stand-in for God. You know how through all the other commandments so far, we were talking about how these things are all pictures of Jesus. They're all pointing to Jesus. Well, this is parents are pointing to God, our life and the way we discipline points to God. And the purpose and the hope is that at some point, because they've learned this and they honor you, this will get transferred to God. Your job is to teach them how to love an authority, how to be the leader of your... how to have them submit, how to learn them how to be loved, teach them what it means to be valued by a loving parent so that they will in turn learn that that's how God feels about me.

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That's your job as a parent. And so they first learn to obey God by obeying you. And they first learn about discipline and correction from God by being disciplined and corrected by you. You're supposed to teach them what is right and wrong according to God. And you're transferring that, but they're learning what's right and wrong from God initially from you. We want them to eventually get into the Word and to study that. But you're the first taste of God in their life. So parents, listen really closely. Because it's very important that you understand your role.  This is in your notes. As parents, you are laying the foundation for your child's understanding of God. You are laying the foundation of your child's understanding of God. So, God created you to need him and to need love from him and need security from him. God created you with that longing.

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But if you're a little girl and your dad is always distant and your dad doesn't give you that love and your dad isn't ever around or your dad's abusive and he didn't tell you how much he loved you and what a treasure you are to him. Then what happens? It doesn't get transferred. You don't see that from God. You're looking for that in your life. And so you start hunting for that in man. Or you up hunting for that somewhere else. When in reality he was supposed to provide all that for you. And then you were supposed to see that I can get all this from God even more. So, if you're a guy and your dad never told you he was proud of you. That stuff messes you up. Because man God loves you and God is excited about what you do. You know that's all transferred. And so, we as parents we have to be very careful how we raise our kids. Because we are stands in for God. And we're laying a foundation for our children's understanding of God.

So let me ask you this. Who placed your parents in the position of being your parents? parent. So not your mom and dad, because your dad wasn't like going through like trillions of sperm saying I'm picking this one, he didn't pick nothing.

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Right? He didn't do that. God picked who your parents were. So I don't like what dad does. God didn't do a good job with that. No, God is smarter than you are. God is all wise. God knows what he's doing. And we don't always understand his perspective on that. But what that means is that when you dishonor your parents, you are dishonoring God. Because God is the one who gave parents their authority. And he's the one who gave you your parents. Now you say, well, but my dad's nasty. My dad's a jerk. Right? What if my parents are telling me to do something that's clearly against God? What if they're doing something that's clearly against God? Great question. Right?

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Because most of you have been in that position where your parents may be trying to tell you or have told you, hey, you do this or they're trying to abuse in some way or they're you obey the authority in that position that the parents are supposed to point to. Here's what I mean by that. We'll just take Rob.  We'll give an example with Rob. Okay, because I'm in a mood today. All right. So Rob brings Mason and brings Roman over to the house because he's got to have a hot date with Alicia. Hallelujah. He's like, when are we doing this?

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Come on. But anyway, he brings him over to the house. And so Rob says to the kids and says to me, hey, kids, do whatever Pastor Dustin says, obey Pastor Dustin, do whatever he says. He's given temporary authority for me to be kind of the parent for what was only supposed to be like an hour. And all of a sudden, it's like seven hours have gone by and you haven't come back. I don't know what's going on. But we finally get back there. And he says, all right, kids get in the car. I go, no, no, no, kids don't get in the car. Don't get in the car. No, you stay here. And he says, no, kids get in the car. And I go, no, no, listen to me. Who are the kids supposed to listen to? They're supposed to listen to the first authority. They're supposed to listen to dad.

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Right. So, God gives temporary authority to you as a parent. Okay, he's given you temporary authority for you to be kind of the stand in for God in their life. But when they say something that's contrary to your real father, don't listen, don't listen to the temporary one, right? You honor the best you can, right? When you can.

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And so, this listen to this, I think this will help you with this. Since the role of a parent, this is in your notes, since the role of a parent is to lead you to love and obey God, the best way to honor your parents is to love and obey God, even if they don't want you to. Even if they don't want you to. If your parents are telling you to do something that doesn't honor God or that disobeys God, they're telling you to do that. Then the way you truly honor them is to do is to go over their head and obey God, because that's what they were supposed to be doing in the first place is to be leading you to God.

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Okay, so since the role of a parent is to lead you to love and obey God, the best way to honor your parents is to love and obey God, even if they don't want you to. So how long does it, how long does this last? You're like, man, I'm 52. Some of you are like, man, my mom's still around, my dad's still around, like, how long I got to keep this up?

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Because, man, I've been honoring them a long, long time, right? Well, I tell you, there's not any kind of expiration date on this. They didn't say like, there's no drop dead date, like on the on the commandment. But there is a whole section about marriage. And that means that the relationship changes. And so for some of you moms and dads in particular, depending on whether you got a boy or a girl, sometimes people find this one hard. This one's hard, because they think that they're still the parent in the same way they was a parent, when you was like five. And now your daughter's married, she's got four kids, and you're still in there like, like, hey, you better honor me and obey me. Because I'm telling you what to do. And, and then there's strife. And, and you've got, you've got a little girl, sometimes you have a girl, a young girl where she gets married, but instead of clinging to her husband and, and reaching to her husband, she keeps going to her dad for all of that. So wait a second, wait a second.

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There's a whole concept here called leaving and cleaving. So if you turn to *For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.* (Matthew 19:5)

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*What God has joined together, let no one separate.* (Matthew 19:6), verses four to six, it says, have you read, he replied, that at the beginning of the crater, at the beginning, the crater made them, I know this is going to be a shock for some people. He made them male and female. Like he made them that way.

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It's stupid we have to talk about this. Made them male and female. And said, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother to be united with his wife. Let me say that. So they can have sex and have kids, right?

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Let's just be blunt about it. So they have sex and have kids. Now, I didn't graduate like with a biology degree or anything. But you need a boy and a girl to do that. Okay. You need a boy and a girl to do that. This is for this reason, the man will leave his father. It says the man doesn't say the person. It says the man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. And the two will become one flesh.

So, they are not longer two, but one, therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate. Yes, I'm going to still honor my parents. When I'm married, I'm going to still care for them. I'm going to still listen to my parents. And I still listen to Connie, I still listen to my mom. When I listened intently to Connie, she was smarter than me in so many ways. She had a deeper faith than me in so many ways. I mean, I had a lot of intellectual stuff.

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But as far as the man, she just had, she just had like a rock solid kind of a kind of a devotion to God and that I had to that I would go and lean on when I when I didn't have it, I would lean on hers, you know. And but when you leave and you get married, you're a new family. You're a new family. And so you're still going to honor your parents. But now dad is no longer for you girls, dad's no longer the primary man in your life.

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Right. And so, he doesn't have the same say in your life that he did before. Hopefully what he has done is raised you right and bid the example of a man and a father that's going to point you to the father. Hopefully mom, you have been the first, the first picture of God to your kids. And you have now transferred that on because you were only a temporary stand in for God. And now as a result, hopefully now they're grabbing on to the father for that. And so the relationship changes a little bit. I mean, still honor your parents when you get married. So, I'm running out of time.

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Let's just give you some fast facts on how you live out this fifth commandment. And I was reading another guy's name is Kevin DeYoung. I love reading his stuff. And he had done something on this and he had talked about doing this from the perspective of things to say. And I liked that.

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I like that. So, these are things that you say to honor your parents, to honor your mom, to honor your dad, whether you're old, whether you're young, these are practical things to help you honor them. So the first one I'm going to say is you can say to your mom or your dad, Yes, mom, yes, dad. Yes, mom, yes, dad. Can you empty the dishwasher? Yes, mom. Can you take the garbage out? Yes, mom. Hey, can you, hey, buddy, can you go grab a grab a ladder from the side of the house and bring it over here? Yes, dad. Say yes.

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Connie would call me sometimes. Hey, would my tires are low? Would you mind fixing my tires? Would you mind? Yes, mom.  I'll be right over. And she'd say, Oh, I know you're really busy. Yes, mom. I'm right over. Drive by the house and lawn's not mowed.  She had a service. They're supposed to have it mowed. It's not mowed. Hey, Cooper, we're going over to mow the grass. You want to help me? Yes, dad. That's how you honor a parent, right? That's how you honor them. Yes, mom. And we say that to God. How do you honor God as a father? You say yes, Lord. Second one. This will go a long way. This will help you to honor your parents. Thank you. Thank you, mom. Thank you, dad. Those of us that have been parents, we know you give and you give and you give and you give and you give.

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And then after you give a little bit more, now the blood's like pouring out and they're like, you don't do anything for me. Right? Like, all right. Well, appreciate that. Maybe we just won't let you eat for a year and we'll see how you feel about that. I don't have this or I don't have that. I've been blessed. I don't really have that for my son, but you've seen it a lot. I mean, I probably did that when I was a kid, right? No, say thank you. Parents give and they give. Say thank you. We say to God, thank you. How do we honor God the Father? Thank you, God. God gives to us. Thank you. God, man, I can't tell you how thankful I am for what you did. Mom, you know what? I needed that. You didn't have to do that. But boy, I'm really thankful that you're my mom. I'm really thankful that you're my dad.

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Thank you. Put that in your life. Tell your parents, yes. Tell your parents, thank you. You know what else you need to tell them? Say I'm sorry. That's a third one. Say I'm sorry. Right? Not I'm sorry that you weren't pleased with what I did, but I'm sorry because I was wrong. I was sorry because I was wrong.  I'll do better next time. To God, I say I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what I did. I'm going to do better next time. I need your help to not do that again. Do that with your parents. Just be honest.  When you make a mistake, come to them and say, listen, I let you down and I represent you and I love you and I made a mistake. Some of you maybe said some stuff to and you never dealt with it. Right? You just said it and you hoped it would go away. Right? Well, maybe everybody will just forget about it. No, no, no, no, no. You call them on the phone and you say, you know what? This is what I did and I'm really, really sorry. I hurt you. I'm so sorry. Here's another one. I'll take care of that. I'll take care of that.

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Right? If you look at *Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.* (1 Timothy 5:8) it says, anyone who does not provide for their relatives and especially for their own household has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. If you, if you see something that's going on, I'll tell you, I saw those with Connie all the time. She was about as independent as you could possibly be and there were ways I'd try to help with this or that.  But then I got to be careful. Right? Because I don't want to make her think that she's not doing a good job, but sometimes she wasn't, but I don't want to tell her that. Right? Because then, then she'll, and so I got to be kind of careful about what we're doing. But I, but there were things as you get older, you're trying to maintain your independence, but you can't do everything.

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And so, so, you know, she might not ask you or your, or your mom might not ask you to do something. We say, I'll take care of that. Man, I'll tell you what, the, there's a whole bunch of stuff in my garage and I can't get all that stuff out of there. It's just like packed up there and like, well, you know what, you can, I'll, I'll, I'll take care of that. You know, no, I'll get to it eventually. No, I'll take care of that.  Right? Boy, my water, my water softener, the water, I need some, I need some salt in there. There's no salt in the water softener and I got to take it downstairs and it's kind, I'll take care of that.  I'll take care of that. Man, my, my car, I think the oil, I think it needs new oil in the car. It's got, it's got all these lights that are flashing all over the place.

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I think it's probably just the oil. I'll take care of that. That's how you honor your father and your mother. Here's one for you. This will be the last one. Hello? Hey, who's this? It's Dusty. It's Dusty.  Yeah, Dusty. Oh, well, stop calling me. You call me every day.  No, I'm just kidding. No, some of you don't call. Your parents are around and they're like, well, I don't want to bother you. I know you're busy. No, you clear that up with your parents.

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Clear that up. Listen, I am never too busy to answer the phone for you. I am never too busy. If there's all kinds of calls going on and the church is burning down and, and people are leaving right and left and there's all this struggle, well, I know you're busy. I'm not too busy for you.

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I am never too busy for you. And she needs to hear hello. Hey, how are you doing? Why are you calling to tell you hello?  Tell you I love you. Is this really that hard? Is this really that hard? And you know, if you do this as people, if we as a society did this as a people, you realize we wouldn't have a lot of them because people would love their neighbors, their self. And I know some of you didn't have good parents and I'm sorry about that. You maybe see behind you this wake of decisions and heartache that resulted from that.

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And you hurt me. Then you need to run to the one that they were supposed to be an example to, the one they were supposed to be filling in for. That's who you were supposed to eventually get to anyway. Was the father, God the father, you were supposed to get there eventually. They could never have fulfilled your needs. They could never have done it.

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Even if they were good, loving people and they loved you, even if they did all that, they still were going to be deficient. And so the purpose has always been to take and lead you to the father. That has always been, so skip the middle man. Jump right to the father and say, God, I need you. I need you. And I'm going to honor you. And in honoring you, I'm going to do the best I can to honor these people that weren't great parents. But I'm going to do it because I know it's what I'm supposed to do.

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Here's a truth bomb for you. You will and have broken this commandment. You're a lawbreaker. You broke this commandment. You say, well, I've already broke it.

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Here's the good news. Jesus fully kept this commandment. Jesus never, never didn't honor his parents. He never didn't. He never disrespected his parents ever once. He fully and perfectly always honored his parents. And the reason that's important is because you fulfilling this commandment is not based on you being able to do it perfectly. It's based on the fact that Jesus did it perfectly. Jesus perfectly honored his mother and father. And so when Jesus died on the cross for me and he imputes his righteousness to me, God sees a person who perfectly honored his father and his mother. That's what this substitution and imputation of righteousness is about.

I'll prove it to you. John, our Luke chapter two, five, 51, it says, when he went to Nazareth with them, talking about Jesus, and was obedient to them, but his mother treasured all these things in her heart. He was obedient to them. *When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, 'Woman, here is your son,' and to the disciple, 'Here is your mother.'* (John 19:26-27), 26 to 27, Jesus is about to die. He's hanging on the cross. While he's hanging on the cross, he's going to honor his mother because he's got a mom who, what's going to happen with mom? I'm the one who needs to take care of mom and now I am dying for the sins of humanity.

 

What am I going to do? And so, watch what he does in Luke 19. When Jesus saw his mother there and the disciple whom he loved, John standing nearby, he said to her, woman, here is your son and to the disciple, here is your mother.

 

From that time on, the disciple took her into his house. That's honoring your father and mother. The only way you can be fully obedient to this commandment is because Jesus obeyed it perfectly. We're going to do the best we can to follow this. We can love our neighbors ourselves if we start here and we become people that honor our mother and our father. God, I thank you. I thank you that I got through this sermon. And God, I want to honor Connie. I want to honor my mom and I want to honor my dad.  Ron, I want to honor David, Julie's dad.

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Closing Prayer:

God, I want to live these things out. And none of them have been perfect. God, but none of us are. And there is grace because you fulfill these commandments by doing them perfectly. So, we're making a commitment this morning as people in this church. We're going to start to say, yes, mom, yes, dad. We're going to start saying, thank you, mom and dad. When we need to, we're going to say, I'm sorry. We're going to jump in without being asked and say, I'll take care of that.  We're going to hop on the phone or we're going to stop and we're going to say hello. God, we're making that commitment to you so that we can truly love our neighbors ourselves when we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you.