Episode 263: Freed to Make Peace

- Good morning, everybody.

Welcome to Harbor West.

Great to see all of you guys and great to worship with you.

My name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here at our church

and we're gonna continue worshiping our God together

and we're gonna continue worshiping him

by opening the Bible, opening his word,

the way he spoke to us,

and we're gonna read it together, study it together,

seek to believe it together,

and then to live it out together.

And so if you have a Bible,

you can grab it now and turn to Exodus chapter 20.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

Exodus chapter 20, if you need a Bible,

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

there should be some Bibles under the chairs

in front of you.

And Exodus 20 is on page 64 in those Bibles.

We're studying through the 10 commandments

and we're marking kind of a shift today.

The first four commandments that we've already looked at,

they deal with our relationship with God himself,

your relationship with God.

Have no other gods but him.

Don't worship idols.

Don't take his name in vain.

Make sure that you rest in him

and his finished work for you.

But now, starting in this fifth commandment,

and for the next six,

it deals with our relationships with each other,

our relationships to each other.

And so that's why when Jesus was asked to summarize the law,

he said, "Love God, love your neighbor."

Right, it kind of summarizes all the 10 commandments.

And so the commandment we're looking at today, the fifth,

it sits at the top of that second list.

So the most important command

when it comes to our relationships with each other

is this fifth commandment.

If we're gonna love our neighbors well,

love each other well, it starts with this.

And so look what it says here in verse 12.

Honor your father and your mother

so that you may have a long life in the land

that the Lord your God is giving you.

And so let's join together in prayer

and then we'll unpack this verse.

And so Father, we pray that you would lead us

to see grace and truth and beauty

and how this command given from you to us

keeps us in the freedom you purchased for us.

God, we pray the words of Psalm 119,

open our eyes that we may behold

wondrous things out of your law.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

So this is a series called Freed

as we're looking at the 10 commandments

because we wanna see how these commandments

keep us in God's freedom.

God saved his people, he rescued them from slavery in Egypt,

he brought them out into freedom

and then, then he gave them these commands.

God didn't command his people and say,

if you keep the commands, then I'll rescue you.

No, he rescued them and then he said,

if you wanna stay in this freedom,

here's how you do it.

And these are the commands.

But for all of us who are adults in the room,

you remember back to when you were a kid,

you were thinking, man, freedom is all about

getting away from my parents.

Like I need to get away from these people,

I can't wait to be finally free.

That's why we're all so stoked

to get our driver's licenses.

You get that driver's license, you get some freedom,

you can be out on your own.

And so I remember when I got mine,

I sat in the car for the first time

and I was actually overwhelmed by the freedom.

Like I had one of those old, like flip through it,

CD cases and I was just overwhelmed by,

I can choose whatever I want right now.

I can choose anything.

And so I had to flip through it like three or four times

to figure out what to do.

And then finally I landed on it.

So I'm driving along, listening to my Google dolls

and then I realized I can go anywhere right now.

Like I'm supposed to be going to school,

but I could go anywhere.

Like the freedom was crazy overwhelming.

So you know what I did?

Went to McDonald's, got some fries.

What says freedom like fries whenever you want them, right?

And so I got my fries, I was eating them

on the way to school, driving with one hand,

just super cool in my 1988 Corsica.

And then I ran out of fries,

and you know how it is with McDonald's.

Like the best part of eating fries

is the surprise bag fries.

And so I got my containers out of fries,

but I was like, I'm sure there's some in the bag.

Reach over in the bag, four bag fries.

And so I'm reaching over, trying to get them,

got 'em, got all four in my hand,

came to take a bite and turned my head just in time

to have a split second to know

that I was about to rear end someone.

And I hit them hard, and it was terrible.

And it was such a bad wreck that I had to go

in front of a magistrate and see if I could even

keep my driver's license.

And none of that felt like freedom.

It didn't feel like freedom at all, right?

Most of us think freedom is getting away from our parents.

We finally have freedom to be on our own,

not bound by that whole, if you're under my roof,

you do things my way thing.

Because we tend to think that freedom

is getting away from all authority, right?

To be independent and not interdependent.

So when our community group or our church

or our marriage or our parents start to make life difficult,

we tend to run toward freedom.

And for us, freedom is independence.

Making my own decisions, being on my own,

not being connected to my community.

But when God freed his people from slavery in Egypt,

his plan wasn't for them to live independently.

His plan and design for them was to live in community.

To actually press further into relationship with others.

God knows that that's how we actually experience

true freedom, when we are interdependent with each other.

Why is that?

Well, let's look at this command kind of piece by piece.

First, God says honor, honor.

What is honor, what does that mean?

A lot of times we hear this command and we think

that honor just means obey.

Honor your parents just means obey them, do what they say.

But the Hebrew word means more than that.

The Hebrew word, it means to weigh heavily on,

to give weight to someone.

When this word is used in other places,

it's used to mean to show reverence, to be obedient,

or to just care for someone.

Reverence, obedience, care.

You know what a great way to summarize that would be?

To honor someone is to be a blessing to them.

To be a blessing to them.

To make the conscious decision that I'm gonna be

a blessing to this person.

In 1 Peter, Peter tells husbands,

he tells them honor your wives,

and then he goes on to explain that,

and he says one way you do that

is by being a blessing to them.

We are freed to be a blessing.

God has given you freedom to be a blessing.

To whom?

Well, it says here to our parents.

Says to your mother and your father.

And this seems obvious to us,

but this would have actually been pretty shocking

to the original audience.

God gave this command in a time and to a culture

that intensely suppressed women.

And so at this time, it would have only really mattered

what the father said and did,

but God here says honor father and mother.

He puts them on equal levels of parenting.

One team, one flesh.

And who's to honor them?

Kids, right?

There's no age limit here.

There's no point where the honor stops,

but it may look different at different stages.

We'll talk about it more later,

but when you're younger, when you're young,

honor pretty much just looks like obedience, right?

As you get older and become an adult,

honor may look like reverence and respect.

And then as your parents age and need some intense care,

physically, honor looks like caring for them,

taking care of them, making sure their needs are met.

But it never stops, right?

And then there's a promise here,

so that you may have long life in the land.

Here's what God's saying.

He says, if you honor your parents,

it will go well for you.

This is a promise made to a people, to Israel,

to this whole nation.

God's saying, you'll be a healthy nation

if you're a nation who honors your parents.

Why is that?

Well, again, remember where this command comes.

It's the fifth command on top of the list

where all of the other relationships

with each other flow down from it.

Our relationships flow downstream from this one.

God wants us to learn to honor,

have reverence for, to be obedient,

and care in our home first,

so that we can show those things well

in the rest of our relationships.

If we learn to honor in our homes first,

then we'll be able to honor our employers, our bosses,

our employees, government officials,

teacher-student relationships.

We will not be able to handle authority well

in our other relationships

if we don't learn how to honor within our family first.

And so God's saying, man,

our nation will be a healthy nation

when its families are healthy and honor is thriving.

Our islands will be healthy.

We will all live in God's freedom

when we are honoring our parents.

And it all hinges on this,

the role of the parents,

the role of the parents.

Parents exist to be a temporary stand-in for God

in their child's life.

Parents exist to be a temporary stand-in for God

in their child's life.

Parents are meant to give their kids

the first understanding of who God is,

how God loves, how God feels about sin,

how God provides, accepts, and approves.

There is no relationship that shapes

how we think and feel about God

as powerfully as our relationship with our parents.

There is no relationship that has shaped you

and what you think and feel about God

as powerfully as your relationship with your parents did.

God gave them to you so that you could know him.

Which means we've gotta stop here

and be honest about something.

Your parents have a God-given role in your life

even if they're not good at it.

Your parents have a God-given role in your life

even if they've failed at it.

It's likely that there are stories in this room

of people growing up in homes

where you experienced neglect,

abuse, cruelty.

Instead of growing up in an atmosphere of love and care

where you could get a beautiful picture of who God is,

because of the brokenness of sin,

you grew up in an atmosphere that made you question

or even hate God.

For some, the idea of honoring your parents seems absurd.

And it's really a hard command to think through.

How do you honor your parents?

And it's really a hard command to think through.

How do you honor someone who wasn't honorable in your life?

And man, I just wanna say that if that's you,

if your parents failed you, if they betrayed you,

their God-given role in your life,

I'm deeply sorry for that.

I'm sorry that that's what you endured.

You need to know that God hates that that happened to you.

God hates that.

All throughout the Bible, we read that God hates

when people in positions of authority

abuse the vulnerable who are under them.

God hates that that happened to you,

and your parents will be held accountable to God.

They will either shoulder the weight of that sin,

or Jesus will shoulder it for them.

But for you, a sermon like this might open some wounds.

It might be that you're struggling

in other relationships in your life,

your relationship with your boss, your spouse,

your own kids, even your relationship with God

as a result of your relationship

with your parents growing up.

Because again, all other relationships

flow downstream from this one,

even our relationship with God.

One theologian, A.W. Tozer, said that the most important

thing about each of us is what comes into our minds

when we think about God.

And for many of us, what comes into our minds

when we think about God was most powerfully shaped

by parents that didn't represent him well.

And so listen, it may be that one of the healthiest things

that God is calling you to do is take some steps today

towards seeing those wounds healed.

Ultimately, it's my prayer that God bring you to a place

where you can extend true, real forgiveness to your parents,

even if they were terrible to you.

Proverbs 19 says, "It is a person's glory

"to overlook an offense."

You experience glory when you come to a place

where you can extend forgiveness,

but that is often a slow journey of many small steps.

And so let me just give you a few steps

that you might be able to take here at our church.

I'd encourage you to join one of our community groups.

Our community groups are just smaller groups

of people in our church that have committed

to joining together, have committed to each other

and to each other's lives, to each other's good

and well-being.

They get together, we have eight of these groups

all throughout the island.

They get together, they pray with each other,

for each other, study God's word a little bit,

but they kind of journey together in a way

where you can be known in that group,

you can know others and be known by others.

And it's a place where other people can help carry you

to Jesus in the ways that you need carried to Jesus.

That may be a good place to open up about some of this

and be walked through what some steps

toward healing would look like.

I'd encourage you to join our church in covenant membership.

We have membership at our church for several reasons,

but one of the main reasons is so that Mike, Brandon and I

can know who the people are that we're charged

with praying for regularly and praying for specifically.

Each one of our covenant members has a pastor,

one of our pastors assigned to them

who regularly checks in with them to see

how they can be praying with them

and for just ongoing pastoral care.

By becoming a covenant member, you're saying, I want that.

I want that, I want someone praying for me, with me.

I want that ongoing pastoral care.

And man, we'd love to have you join our Harbor family

and see how God uses our church

to bring some healing into your life.

If you're a covenant member,

one of the things that might be helpful too

in this healing journey is our biblical counseling center.

We have a biblical counseling center

where 12, 14 people from our four Harbor churches

went through a training program

where they got certified as lay biblical counselors.

And now that they provide a service

to the members of our church

to just do some one-on-one counseling.

And so if you're a member of our church,

we help subsidize the cost of that

and we can pair you up with a biblical counselor

who can meet with you and maybe help you see

some of those steps toward healing and help you take them.

Your parents may have hurt you deeply, but listen.

The God that they poorly represented has not.

As you journey closer to him,

as you experience more and more of the love and care

that God has for you, you'll experience the God-given power

to extend real forgiveness to them.

And when you do that, what would it actually look like then

for us to obey this command?

What does it look like to obey the fifth commandment?

Well, I wanna talk to two groups of people, all right?

I wanna talk to kids and I wanna talk to parents.

So raise your hand if you're a kid in here today.

Should be all of us, right?

Like unless you were dropped off

like by an alien spaceship or something,

like you're a kid, right?

You were born to some parents.

And so we're all kids, this is all of us.

How do we all obey this command to honor our parents?

Well, here's the point, guys.

It seems very simple, but hang with me.

Kids, you are free to honor your parents.

God has set us free to honor our parents.

And so what are some of the ways we do that?

Well, first, through obedience.

That's how that word is used all throughout the Bible.

And so let me make this clear.

If you're an elementary, middle, or high school student,

God wants you to obey your parents, all right?

If you're in here today and that's where you're at in life,

God wants you to obey them, all right?

Jesus obeyed his parents.

And you know what?

His parents weren't great sometimes.

They once lost him and left that place without him,

maybe for a day or two, all right?

They left him at the temple or at the synagogue.

And he was just left alone at like 11, 12 years old.

Have you ever lost your kid?

We lost our kid once for like 30 seconds in Walmart.

It was the scariest thing that's ever happened to me

in my life until I saw a cane spider.

But terrifying, right?

And so they get back, they find Jesus,

and they're like, "Oh, there you are.

"Okay, come with us now."

You know?

Like they just made this horrible parenting mistake

and now they're like, "But come with us now.

"We'll do better."

And Jesus said, "Yeah, okay."

And you know what it says in Luke 2, 51?

It says Jesus went with them and he obeyed them.

Jesus obeyed his parents.

If you're a kid in here today and you're wondering

the questions that kids start to wonder,

especially as you get older,

if you're in middle school or high school,

you start to wonder the questions,

"What does God want for my life?

"What's God's will for my life?

"Where does he want me to go to school?

"What does he want me to do for a job?

"Who does he want me to marry?"

Here, I can guarantee you this right now.

God's will for your life right now

is that you obey your parents.

You are not in slavery.

You are right where God wants you to be.

The second way we honor our parents as we get older,

most of us in this room are adults,

the way we honor our parents as adults,

it shifts from obeying them to revering or respecting them.

To look to them for wisdom and direction,

to still hear them out respectfully

even when we disagree with them,

and we will disagree, right?

And so what does that look like?

To look to them for counsel,

to look to them for insight,

to listen and say, "Okay, I hear you,"

and to be respectful,

but even how we disagree with them,

how we move forward in disagreement

shows if we're honoring them or not.

As your parents get older,

honoring them looks like making sure they're taken care of.

In Jesus's last hours,

as he was busy saving the world on the cross,

he was concerned of taking care of his mom.

He looked at his mother from the cross and he said,

"Mom, look at your new son."

He pointed her to John,

and then Jesus told John, "Look at your new mother."

Here's what Jesus was saying,

he's saying, "I'm about to die.

"My mother's getting old.

"I wanna make sure she's taken care of."

That's what honor looks like as our parents age.

We've gotta make sure that our parents are cared for,

so how do we do that?

We start planning for it now.

What's it gonna look like

to make sure your parents are cared for

as they start needing more and more care?

That's how you honor them.

Obedience, reverence, care.

This is what honor looks like from kids to parents.

And so how exactly do we do it all?

What are all the implications?

What are the specifics of it?

Well, let me encourage you with this important step today.

We gotta trust the Holy Spirit in this.

We gotta trust the Holy Spirit in this, God's guidance.

The way you obey, revere, and care for your parents

may look different from how others do it.

Some people may have to set boundaries

in that relationship that others don't.

Some people might have to consider cultural realities

that others don't.

Some might have to figure out how to obey and respect

when the desire isn't there while others don't.

I would encourage you this, you can pray.

You can ask God for guidance.

You can trust his leading.

That there is a spirit-led way for you to honor your parents

that is beautiful and is in with keeping this command.

Because ultimately, the best way

that we can honor our parents,

the absolute best way we can all honor our parents

is to honor God.

'Cause remember this, guys,

your parents are in your life as stand-ins for God

to point you to him.

Because the ultimate goal of this command

is that kids learn how to honor God through their parents.

And so the absolute best way for you as a kid

to honor your parents is to honor God.

Even if your parents weren't Christians.

Even if your parents failed to show you who God really is.

The best way you can honor them

is to wholeheartedly honor the God who gave them that role.

They're filling in for God.

They are not God.

And so if they ever ask you to do something that God forbids,

the best way that you can honor them

is to obey God rather than them.

I heard it explained this way this week

and it kinda helped me think through it.

So I'll just share the scenario with you.

Let's say that my son this week, I told my son Asher,

I told him like, "Hey man, you can go over

"to your friend Kaimana's house.

"You can go over there and as you go over there,

"when you go over to Kaimana's house,

"you obey Uncle Keoni, all right?

"You treat Uncle Keoni like dada.

"You obey him while you're over there at that house."

All right, so Asher goes, "Yes sir, I got it."

He's never said that before, but let's just assume.

This is my hypothetical, all right?

"Yes sir, I got it, sir."

And so he goes over there and as he's over there,

I call a couple hours later and I say,

"Hey Asher, man, it's time to come home."

And so then he goes to Uncle Keoni, he says,

"Uncle Keoni, my daddy called me.

"It's time to go home."

And let's say that Uncle Keoni looked at him and said,

"Uh, no, no, you need to stay."

Now, I would hope that my son attempted

some form of tone of respect in his reply,

but I also hope his reply was something like,

"Ah, forget you, man, I gotta obey my dad.

"'Cause you're just a stand-in for my dad right now.

"You're not my dad.

"You're not the one who I'm ultimately supposed to honor."

That's why Jesus said this in Luke 14.

"Now great crowds are traveling with Jesus

"and he turned to them and said,

"'If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father

"'and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters,

"'yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.'"

And we've kind of struggled with what this means

because this isn't consistent with what Jesus says elsewhere.

Jesus doesn't teach us to hate.

Jesus teaches us to care for these people.

So what's he doing here?

What's he saying?

Jesus is saying that our commitment to honoring

and obeying God should be so real

and saying God should be so radical,

so complete, so unwavering,

that in comparison, it looks like we hate everyone else.

Like it looks like Asher is hating Uncle Keone,

but he's not.

He just really wants to honor his dad.

"If my kids love me more than they love God,

"then I have failed them as God's stand-in."

"I want them to love God with such a white-hot intensity

"that their love for me looks small in comparison."

Which is why I say this,

you are free to honor your parents.

Kids, all of us here, you are free to honor them,

not enslaved to them.

If you love your parents more than you love God,

then you've turned them into idols in your life.

If you're looking to get from them, from your parents,

what you can only get from God,

then they're actually idols that you are enslaved to,

idols that will fail you.

And so if they've become idols in your life,

then that means when you didn't get,

when they failed you and you didn't get the love

you so craved for,

then you probably turned to others to get it.

Boyfriend after boyfriend, girlfriend after girlfriend,

trying to fill that hole.

When you didn't get the acceptance

that you craved from them,

you probably turned into a workaholic

trying to prove yourself so that you got validation.

What I'm saying is this,

you're freed from viewing them as idols.

They are not God, they're just a stand-in for God.

When you recognize that your parents

are stand-ins for God, not God himself,

it can free you to forgive them

in the ways they fall short,

and it frees you to look to God

for the love that you crave,

the acceptance you long for,

for the faithfulness and relationship that's unwavering.

Because in the God our parents represent,

we find all that we're looking for.

First John 3, one says this,

"See what great love the Father has given us,

"that we should be called God's children, and we are."

You have all the love, acceptance, faithfulness, nearness

that you are looking for offered to you right now,

all from God himself.

When we give our lives to God,

when we honor him,

we are honoring our parents who are his stand-ins.

The best way you can honor your parents

and fulfill this command is to honor the God they represent.

And so now parents, not all of us are parents,

but if this is your church

and you're a part of our community,

you're all aunties and uncles to the kids in our church,

and so we're all representing God in some ways

to the kids that we're around.

And so parents, adults,

we are free to represent God to our kids.

We are not enslaved to control their behavior.

We are free to represent God to our kids.

We are not enslaved to control their behavior.

You are not God.

You're his stand-in,

which means that you've been freed

to act in the ways that he acts,

to teach your kids what God is like.

And so that means this,

we cannot, as parents,

we cannot make light of sin.

Our God does not make light of sin in our life.

He doesn't sweep it under the rug.

He doesn't let our sin go unpunished.

There are consequences fall out to our sin against God,

and we as parents don't represent God well to our kids

when we choose to not discipline them when they sin.

But it also means this,

we're freed to show grace and mercy

in the midst of their sin.

God isn't merely a God of wrath and anger at sin.

He's a God who meets us in our sin

and gives us his grace and mercy.

He's still loving and tender

to the point that he lays down his own life in our place

to show us how much he loves us.

And so when we, as parents or aunties or uncles,

when we as parents get angry at our kids

because of their sin,

because it inconveniences us,

or because it annoys us,

or because it embarrasses us in public,

that is ungodly anger.

Our kids' sin is not against us.

We are just stand-ins.

When they sin against us,

they are learning to sin against the God we represent,

the God behind us.

And so their sin should break our hearts.

Their sin should produce in us a godly,

righteous, loving anger that's devastated

because they're actually sinning against God.

And so our temptation is to do this.

Our temptation is to say,

okay, so I gotta choose,

I gotta either show discipline and consequences,

or I've gotta show grace,

and it's like we treat it like a pendulum.

Like sometimes I go all in with the consequences,

and sometimes with grace,

sometimes I'm kinda half here, half here,

but we think we gotta learn how to balance it.

How do I show some grace,

but how do I also make sure there's some consequences?

And so we balance it.

We let the pendulum fall in the middle.

You know what happens when you balance something?

You're compromising.

You're taking away from both.

You're weakening the consequences of sin,

and you're weakening the expression of grace and mercy.

We don't balance in our parenting.

We go all in with both.

We go all in with both.

We don't dominate our kids

through angry discipline and shame.

We also don't ignore their sin

and never enact consequences.

We patiently parent our kids

through feeling the weight of their sin,

and we lovingly parent them

to feel the unmatched joy of mercy and grace.

And so how do we do this?

How do we actually do it well as parents?

Man, I don't know.

(audience laughing)

Like that's the hardest thing in the world.

I have no idea.

At 11 o'clock last night,

I was trying to finalize this point.

I called my wife into the room,

like, "Hey, baby, how do we do this?

"Do we do this?

"How do we do this?"

She's like, "We don't do this."

And I'm like, "Well, we gotta,

"I mean, we kinda got to, right?

"Like maybe we didn't get it right

"with our parents, but we got to."

And she's like, "Yeah, we got to."

And I'm like, "Maybe we didn't get it right

"with our first, and maybe we kinda got it right,

"but we got it right with Bella, right?"

She's like, "No, no, no, no, no.

"We didn't get this right with Bella either.

"We don't do this."

And I'm like, "Oh no!"

So what do we do?

This is the hardest thing.

As we stumble forward in our parenting,

trying to be honorable and point our kids to Jesus,

how do we do it?

Man, all I can tell you is this,

we need to grow together.

We need to confess that none of us do this perfectly.

None of us have figured it out.

None of us have the right system and method.

And so we grow together, we stumble forward together.

And if you wanna grow, March 29th,

we've got a gospel parenting seminar.

All right, Brandon and Lindsay Cole are gonna lead this,

and they've come as close as humanly possible

to figuring it out, all right?

They're this close, and so if you wanna grow,

no, they've figured it out because they've seen

a lot of their own failure and a lot of God's grace.

But man, they're just gonna lead us

through growing together, through all of us

just trying to take some steps,

and how do we go all in in these ways?

How do we go all in in making sure our kids

feel the weight of their sin,

but also feel the unmatched joy of grace and mercy?

So this is a free event that we're doing here at our church.

Lunch is provided, childcare is provided,

so please come 'cause we wanna grow together in this.

We need to grow in how we do it,

and then we need to let them go.

As parents, we're stand-ins.

We're training them to go out and honor God.

God loves your kids infinitely more than you do.

Isn't that great news?

Like, you love your kids a lot,

but God loves them infinitely more than you do.

He's given them to you for a short time, but they are his,

and we need to be ready to release them,

not continue to control them.

And so listen, we're having a baby dedication

here on March 2nd.

We haven't done one in a while,

but we have got several families who just had some babies

who would love to just do this baby dedication,

but I would encourage you with this.

Your kid could be 17 years old,

and if you've never dedicated yourself

and let your church know that, like,

man, I'm committed to gospel parenting

and going all in on both these things,

bring your 17-year-old up here.

Be like, yeah, I'm dedicated to doing this.

And so during all three services,

we're just gonna have a child dedication

and dedicate ourselves as parents to,

man, we wanna do this God's way,

and we wanna fight to live beautifully

as parents and as kids.

There was an atmosphere of loving parenting

that was perfectly beautiful.

It existed back in the beginning in a garden called Eden.

God created the first people and he parented them.

They honored him, and in that garden,

God created an atmosphere of blessing.

He blessed his kids with everything,

everything in creation.

There was blessing first.

He blessed them and gave them everything

before he commanded them and set a boundary,

but he did set a boundary.

There was a boundary for these kids.

He said, "Don't eat of this one tree."

And the kids honored him and obeyed him and revered him,

but eventually they did rebel against him.

And there were consequences.

That rebellion led to consequences.

Adam and Eve felt the weight of their sin

against the holy God, and they lived in the fallout of that

the rest of their lives.

But there was grace and mercy right there.

As his kids hid in shame, God the Father pursued them.

He found them, he talked with them.

Their father clothed their nakedness,

their shame with animal skins.

Their father told them that even though now

there would be consequences,

that he would make it right one day,

that one day someone would come

who would bring us back to the garden,

back to that loving, nurturing atmosphere

where we could thrive, and God gave them a picture

of how he was gonna do it.

It was through those animal skins.

You see, a death had to happen.

Blood had to be shed to cover the shame of that sin.

And when the offspring of Eve came,

God himself born to another woman named Mary,

Jesus himself, God himself, went to death for us,

shed his blood for us to cover the shame of our sin.

Where Adam and Eve failed as kids, Jesus succeeded.

Jesus honored his biological mother, Mary,

his entire life up to his last breath.

Jesus honored his adoptive father, Joseph,

all of his life, even as he worked for him.

Jesus honored his heavenly father

who they were stand-ins for.

We may fail time and time again to honor our own parents.

We may fail time and time again to be honorable parents.

Jesus never failed.

Jesus freed us.

He freed us from our own failures.

He freed us to live more beautifully

than we could ever imagine.

And so may we be a church, a people who trust in him,

rest in him, lean on him as we look to live in the freedom

he purchased for us as kids and as parents.

Let's pray together.

(whistling)