Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Amen. Maybe we get to sing that with St. Patrick in the eschaton. Before we turn to the sermon, boy, we’re getting a lot of feedback here, guys. Can we do anything about it? Maybe I—well, we’ll see. Before we get to the sermon scripture while we’re still working, I want to remind you—point out to you, I think these are on the foyer table. I’m going to be talking about reverencing parents today. And it’s a strange word to use, reverence, as we’ll talk about in just a couple of minutes.

But the fear of God, the reverence of God in other passages of Scripture are related to how we react to or respond to the needs of the neediest in our society, the poor and vulnerable. And so a proper reverence of God is reflected in what we do with our parents, but it’s also reflected in how we treat people who are impoverished and have needs. And so we do this every year. We’re a big—this, we’re one of the anchor churches for the Compassion Oregon City Free Medical Dental Clinic.

There’s a kickoff meeting. That means we’re all going to get together. People that are interested in volunteering at First Nazarene Church, not very far from here really, on March 31st, 7:00 p.m. Please, as many of you as can, please come to that event. And as a reminder, pick this up on the foyer on your way out. Well, if we can’t solve the echo, I will just proceed, which is what we’ll do.

All right. So today’s sermon text is Leviticus 19:1–3. And we’re going to—this is kind of an adjunct to what we talked about last week with the relationship of children and parents. And we’re going to be talking in this text. First, we’re going to try to again do a little restoration of Leviticus because I know it’s taken a lot of hits in evangelical culture the last few years. But this is a text from Leviticus and an important one right at the heart of it.

So we’ll talk about that a little bit and then we’ll talk about holiness, which is the very context for what we’ll get to—which is then the reverence of parents and also the reverence of sanctuaries, which we’ll turn to a few verses about that as well. And then we’ll talk about the keeping of the Lord’s day, which is in verse three of today’s text, and that will lead us to our conclusion on rest.

So please stand for the reading of God’s word. Leviticus 19:1–3: “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father and keep my Sabbaths. I am the Lord your God.’”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this header to this text right at the heart of Leviticus and for the very practical instructions about what it means to be holy. Bless us, Lord God. May your Holy Spirit, given to us on the basis of the death and resurrection of our Savior and payment for our sins, may that Holy Spirit take this word, write it upon our hearts, transform us by it. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

It’s kind of funny. Last night I was listening to Sound Opinions on NPR, which I want to do Saturday nights from 10:00 to 11:00. And they play the latest album—maybe the last studio album from Iggy Pop and the Stooges. So it’s an old reference, Iggy Pop, but it’s current because this is a brand new album, and his album is called Post Pop Depression.

And the little thing they played was the song called “Sunday.” And so I got to listen to it. So I listened to it and then I printed out the lyrics, and it’s all, you know, kind of depressing things—really going bad. I’m sinking. I’m a wreck, Iggy sings. And then he says, “Like a wreck, I’m sinking fast. The key to everything I crawl for Sunday when I don’t have to move. Caught up in dreams untangled one day where I don’t have to prove. The days roll on and finally Sunday. A Sunday afternoon. I’ve got it all. But what’s it for? But getting some more.”

So even Sunday provides a craving still in the song. Even there we can’t find rest in our particular culture. And today’s text includes, of course, what happens to the Christian Sabbath—Sunday. Iggy goes on to sing in the second verse. He talks about a pride, a child telling me to wipe my boots. I’m a wreck. Everything’s going bad, he says. And he references Sunday and the attempt to find rest there, but no rest. And he references the pride, a child telling him to wipe his boots.

And today’s text is about reverencing parents and keeping the Lord’s day as the key to rest.

Now I’m turning to Leviticus and many people these days. Leviticus has come under a lot of bad rap, particularly over the homosexual issue. And so I want to make sure you understand that there’s no distinction in what we read in Leviticus and the results of the gospel of Jesus. The text that is the header—okay, Leviticus 19—is the center, the beating heart of the Pentateuch, the heart of Leviticus, the middle book of the Pentateuch. And it’s the middle section. It’s 70 commands that are a reflection, a sermon you could say, on the Ten Commandments.

And these little verses we read at the beginning, they’re a header to the whole thing. Really, the whole thing’s kind of contained there. And we’ll see in a minute it kind of concludes in the same sort of way at the end of chapter 19. So it’s a very significant text, and you know that the book of Leviticus, this chapter 19, is sometimes been referred to as the Sermon on the Mount of the Old Testament, because so much there is familiar.

For instance, we read there, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” You know, that’s right at the very heart of chapter 19, which is the heart of Leviticus, which is the heart of the Torah. So the law of God has as its very center the law to love your neighbor as yourself. Not so dissimilar, of course, to what we’re told to do.

Now, this verse—”Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy”—is of course cited in First Peter, and we know that. We know that this is cited. Most people that read their Bibles know it’s there. But let me read a little bit of the context of that verse. I’m going to read verses 14 to 19 of 1 Peter 1. It says:

“As obedient children, don’t conform yourselves to the former lusts in your ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Because it is written, ‘Be holy, for I am holy.’ And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear. Be holy. Conduct your stay here, your sojourn on this world in fear.”

Now, that sounds like law, not gospel. But what does it go on to say? Why? Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but you’ve been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. It’s gospel. The gospel is Jesus has paid the price for your sins. And therefore, be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. Don’t be holy to earn your salvation. That’s accomplished. But because of the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ shed for us, God tells us then be holy. Don’t ignore chapter 19 of Leviticus. It’ll tell you some things about the significance of holiness.

Now, I mentioned the concluding verse of chapter 19. It says the same thing here. So Leviticus 19 beginning—right, the verses we just read—and here’s the ending verses: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. Therefore, you shall observe my statutes and all my judgments and perform them. I am the Lord.”

So what’s the motivation for being holy? The conclusion of the chapter tells us the motivation is the salvation of God. “I brought you out of Egypt.” And Peter has no problem telling us, “Go back to Leviticus 19 and recognize the demands on your life to be holy.” There’s no problem doing that in light of the gospel. In fact, that’s the very purpose for which God has brought us out of Egypt. It’s the very purpose for which God has called us out of our sin, saved us from our sin, through the work of the substitutionary atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s the purpose: holiness.

What does holiness mean? Well, we’re going to talk a little bit about that. Another thing before we get into that, however, is that what happens in Leviticus 19 is a bunch of stuff about how to live together in community—in community. In fact, the very first verse, the particular wording, “Speak this to all the children of the congregation of Israel”—that’s only used a couple of times in the Bible.

So this is like a very inclusive statement at the beginning to a covenanted community, in covenant with God. And he’s telling them, “Here’s how you live in community. This is what community looks like.” If you want to know how holiness works itself out, it works itself out in community. And it works itself out in these particular ways of community. The foundation of community, then, as it develops in chapter 19, is what? It’s holiness. Holiness is the foundation of community. And when holiness disappears, any sense of Christian community disappears as well.

So this is a community text. “Be ye holy.” Community life begins with communion with God. Then, “Be holy because I’m holy.” You have this relationship with me. And community life begins with that relationship. This is from, I think, R.J. Rushdoony:

“All the modern political efforts to establish the great community world on humanistic and political foundations are thus doomed to fail. The foundation of all true community requires community with God and it begins with our holiness. The foundations of social order are theological. Attempts at social peace and unity apart from the triune God are merely repetitions of the fallacy of the Tower of Babel and like it are doomed to confusion.”

That’s what’s happening to our world. An attempt to build community on something other than relationship with God through Christ and other than with holiness. And we see it playing out letters writ large in our election cycle. What’s happening to our country? That’s happening to our country, folks. That’s what’s happening to communities. This is what’s happening to churches. This is what’s happening to families. It’s falling apart. Why? Because Leviticus 19 says community has to be formed. The only true and lasting and blessed community has to be formed on the basis of relationship with God through Christ and then in terms of holiness as it’s played out.

So this is a very important text and it tells us that community is essentially a matter of relationship with God and with holiness.

Notice from the text, what does it say? “Every one of you shall revere his mother.” That’s odd, too. This text has some odd things going on in it. We’ll talk in a minute about revering your mother, but mother is put first. So, you know, that’s significant. Why is that? Well, I don’t know. We don’t know why, but we do know it is very important for children. Actually, this is not a text for children in the growing-up sense of the term. What we dealt with in Colossians was—this is not for children. This is for all of us. We all have parents unless, of course, they’ve died and this, you know, doesn’t work out.

But this is for everybody. We’re all supposed to reverence our parents. I mean, yeah, but our mothers and our dads. This would have been a good Mother’s Day message, right? Mothers is frontloaded. And so it’s very significant. And it’s a correction—just like our text from Colossians was a correction to Greek and Roman culture. This text was a correction to the pagan cultures round about that had low esteem for women.

So this one frontloads it again. And this is a law, then, of holiness, and it starts with reverence toward our mother. Holiness means that the conduct of our parents—so this reverencing of our parents, you know, is not governed by personal considerations but by God’s law.

R.J. Rushdoony, quoting a commentator called Scott, said of this holiness: “Holiness consists in separation from sin.” So the word holiness we used to cut, to separate from something. And you’ll notice he says you should be holy, which is an ongoing thing. We mature in holiness. Why? Because I am fully holy. So we move into holiness. God is holy. He is unlike us in that sense. But holiness for us means separation from sin but also separation to God. Okay.

So going back to Scott: “Holiness consists in separation from sin, devotedness to God and conformity to his moral excellencies, which are also transcribed in his holy law.” Again, I said this last week, the character of God is what the law reflects. And so to be holy like God is holy means to be in conformity to the application of that truth to our particular time and culture, right? God’s law. “Without holiness, we cannot walk with God or have fellowship with him. And though an external or ceremonial purity was called being holy to the Lord, yet it was only an emblem of that purity of heart which was especially intended.”

So, you know, holiness is not a matter of ritual holiness. You could come here today, confess your sins. If you don’t reverence your parents—we’ll get into what that means—no holiness. So the emblem is supposed to stand for the whole of our lives, cut off from sin, devoted to God and his purposes in terms of his law.

Quoting the Word Bible Commentary, we read this: “Holiness is the quintessential quality of Yahweh in the entire universe. He alone is intrinsically holy. The nominal sentence, ‘Yahweh is holy,’ points in this direction. That God is holy means that he is exalted, awesome in power, glorious in appearance, pure in character. God’s holiness is contagious. Wherever his presence is, that place becomes holy or set apart. Since Israel’s holiness is learned and is derived from Yahweh, the command for Israel to become holy is expressed in a verbal sentence. The use of the verb ‘be’ or ‘become’ captures the maturing dimensions of holiness on the human plane.

“Being Yahweh’s representatives on earth, Israel is to evidence in her community characteristics that are similar to God’s. Whereas God’s holiness is dynamic, outgoing, Israel makes herself holy by separating herself from sin and all that defiles in order to experience the sanctifying presence of God.”

Again, set apart from—set apart to. Not saved from, we’re saved to as well as being saved from. And so God has this intrinsic holiness. And this command begins by telling us, “Everybody listen—everybody. Really important stuff going on here.” And then the command is the very opening command: “Be holy, for I am holy.” You become more and more holy. Each of us are supposed to be maturing in holiness before God. And the first means of attaining this holiness—which is to make the Israelite reflect the holiness of God—is uniformly to reverence one’s parents.

Thus, the group of precepts commanded in this chapter opens with this command to reverence one’s parents. Now, I said this is a weird thing. It’s weird because it frontloads mom. It’s different because it commands everybody to listen. It’s got a very emphatic thing at the beginning. And then the third strangeness about this is this reverence word. This is the word that’s translated “fear.” So, “fear God, fear this, fear that.” But of course, it has this implication of reverence at the awesomeness of God, his gloriousness, right? And so you could call it like “worship” or to “reverence” something, right?

And it’s so strange that God gives this command to reverence our parents. Now, so there’s kind of three things we do with our parents. When we’re little children, we obey our parents. When we grow up, we honor, and in addition—well, children obey their parents, but they also honor and reverence. When we grow up, we honor our parents. That means to give them weight. And we reverence mother and father. And that means to be properly fearful in the same way as we’re fearful of God. Fearful—not in a, you know, slavish sort of slinking-off way, but in a way that is filled with the awesomeness of God and his holiness. So we’re also to have that kind of reverence at our parents.

Now, I didn’t write it. God did. You young men and women, you teenagers particularly, this makes it really easy for you on the one hand and really hard for you on the other hand. It’s really easy. You don’t got to sit there scratching your head, “How am I supposed to be holy? Is it just a bunch of don’ts?” No, it’s not. There’s a do. So it’s really easy to see what God wants from you in terms of holiness. But it’s really hard, isn’t it?

I had a conversation with a teenager this morning. I’m like, “Hey, reverence your mom, okay?” It’s hard. And it’s hard primarily because you don’t even hear it anywhere, right? There’s no cultural, you know, building up of a sense of reverence for one’s parents. In fact, it’s completely the reverse. Everything is about how stupid they are, right? So it’s really hard. It’s hard because of your sin and it’s hard because of the culture and it’s hard because the Christian church doesn’t really teach it very much—that you’re supposed to reverence your parents.

And yet, here it is, the center of the Old Testament, the law rather, the Pentateuch—”How do we build community?” Really simple. It begins by being holy. What does it mean? You got to reverence your mom and your dad. That means what? By the way, the other side of that is that means reverencing your parents, having a proper attitude, proper speech, proper demeanor toward them, is really significant. It creates community. It’s part of the foundations of social order. How you treat your parents and how I treat my mom and how each of us interacts with our parents.

All right? So the Bible normally kind of connects up parental authority and God’s authority, right? As we saw from Colossians, for instance. And here’s a verse that kind of relates these two things going together again—reverencing God and reverencing our parents. Isaiah 45:9–10:

“Woe unto him that striveth with his maker. Let the potshard strive with the potshard of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioned it, ‘What makest thou?’ or ‘Thy work? He hath no hands.’ Or thy work, he hath no hands. Woe unto him that saith…”

Okay, so the point of that is you’re going to answer back to the clay, the guy that makes you—that takes you as clay and makes you into something. You’re not going to be grateful for what he’s made you into—your giftings, your abilities, and your shortcomings. Are you going to answer back to the potter? Of course not. But look, he goes right onto parents. “Woe unto him that saith unto his father, ‘What begetteth thou?’ Or to the woman, ‘What hast thou brought forth?’” So you see, he connects up parents and God.

And maybe this is why mother’s put first, because she actually is the one you come from, right? She gives birth the way God created the world. The idea of anyone—this is quoting from Rushdoony again—”The idea of anyone being ungrateful to God or to one’s parents is presented as the epitome of what is revolting and disgusting. Parents may or may not be lovable. In any case, the duty of gratitude remains. Nowadays, the lack of gratitude by children who receive not only life but very generous and even wealthy provisions from their parents and yet manifest ingratitude to either one or both of parents is especially repulsive. Such children may be free of other moral blemishes, but if the passage from Isaiah 45:9 has any meaning, they are moral monsters.”

Wow. Strong language, but I don’t see how you can avoid the implications of it. In fact, Jesus said this very thing. Our Savior—he said it to the Pharisees. Remember, “Oh, you’re not reverencing your parents? Oh, well, it’s for God”? You said you don’t take care of your parents.” He was doing the same thing. He was calling them essentially moral monsters because they weren’t reverencing their parents, which was the beginning of holiness, right?

The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. The beginning of holiness is the proper fear or reverence of your parents. Okay? And it’s given to us right here. Very important.

So fearing one’s parents is the foundation of social morality. And then attached to it is the Lord’s day—so that’s the second part of this, right? The keeping of the Lord’s day. And as I said, this word reverence can mean various things. Let me read another quote here. It includes “inward reverence and esteem, outward expressions of respect, obedience to the lawful commands of parents, care and endeavor to please them and make them easy, and to avoid everything that may offend and grieve them.”

Children are supposed to try to make their parents happy. Now, not in a sinful way, of course, but that’s part of what this word reverence or fear means. The Jewish rabbis asked this question: “What is the fear that is owing to a father?” And they answered, “It is not to stand in his way, nor to sit in his place.” So they’re saying father—we would say mother, too, right? In fact, we would say mother primarily. So that’s how the Jews were sort of messed up on this. They put the father. But the text says mother. So mom has a chair. Don’t sit in her place and give way to her. Don’t stand in her way.

“Not to contradict what he says nor to carp at it.” What does it say in the text in Philippians? “Not answering back,” right? We want to be flaming lights in the world with glory and impact for Jesus and God. Don’t harp at your parents. Don’t answer back to them. Don’t treat them disrespectfully. If you’ve got a question, ask it respectfully, right? Respectfully.

“Not to call him by his name, either living or dead, but ‘my father’ or ‘sir.’” Now, I don’t know about that, but it is certainly true that in our day and age, the familiarity of children and parents has sort of broken down this idea of respect and worship.

Now, so I don’t know how it works in your family. But your children should understand how to reverence you properly in obedience to this verse based upon your standards and how you see things—that is, treat—you know, you know, you got kids. You got to ask your parents, right? And we have to ask our older parents. So this is important to us—to treat our parents with reverence. That’s the beginning of holiness according to Leviticus 19, all right?

I wanted to go on from this. In addition to this word reverence being used of parents, it’s used of reverencing God, but it’s also used of reverencing God’s sanctuary. And so the parent thing moves to the Sabbath thing. And this is in the context of reverence and holiness. And there are several verses that talk about reverencing the sanctuary of God as well. For instance, Leviticus 19:30: “You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord.”

So you’ve got two things hooked together: reverence and Sabbath. But this time it’s “reverence my sanctuary.” Before, it’s “reverence your mother and your father.” And I guess there’s a sense in which your mother and father are representation of God the same way the sanctuary is. Okay. So we can kind of relate it that way. Leviticus 26:2: “You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord.” It’s repeated again.

So double emphasis that this is related to it as well. Now, what is the sanctuary of God? Well, there was a physical structure, of course, with the temple, and this is the place where God abides. And so we—it’s a different application for us today, but there’s an application nonetheless. I think the sanctuary is the place of God’s presence where his people come around him and reenact the covenant and he renews covenant with them and he points to the coming of Christ that would create this unity of community around his presence in the temple then and prior to that in the tabernacle—but the presence of God in a particular time and place. And that was to be reverenced as well.

So in a way I can say the mother, particularly, and the father along with her represent the presence of God in the family, and the sanctuary represents the presence of God when community is convened together.

Now, you know, is this church a sanctuary? Well, what’s the church? The Bible makes it quite clear that the church is the temple of God corporately when we come together. This is a convening of the temple of God, and this is a sanctuary, then, where God’s presence is—or where his people are combined together as the temple is—and you’re to reverence this meeting together of God’s people in this place.

And I think by way of kind of impact outward, physical structures—while they’re not the sanctuary of God without the people being there—but throughout the history of Christianity, physical structures, particularly here in America, are seen as a representation of God to the community. That the place, you know, that there’s a sense of respect for churches. There always was in the past, right? And so the church building itself sort of gets a little bit of emanation, we could say, from the fact that people of God convene together in the special presence of God during manifests himself here in corporate worship as he does in other places around the city, etc.

And so I think that when we think of churches and church buildings, we shouldn’t disregard some of these reverencing passages as well. The Lord’s day. And so these all kind of go together.

One other aspect of this—let’s see—a little bit of context from the Leviticus 19:30 text I just read. “You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord. Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits. Do not seek after them to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God. You shall rise before the gray-headed and honor the presence of an old man and fear your God. I am the Lord.”

So attached to this is a reverence or a proper honoring of old people as well. I don’t know if you ever noticed this or not, but when Paul writes to Philemon, he says, “Yet for love’s sake, I rather beseech thee, being such a one as Paul the aged, and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.” So love for them, age, and his imprisonment for Christ all gave Paul moral authority. Okay, we have moral authority because of this required respect for age.

“It is all the more important,” writes—this is Rushdoony again—”that with age we grow in wisdom.” So, okay, kids, you got to reverence your parents and you got to honor your parents. And parents, that means we should be honorable and it means that we should make it easy for our children to reverence us. Okay? Right. The implication here of agedness or being parents is particularly emphasized in terms of honor and reverence.

The implication is that we who are parents are to act honorably and in a way that could be reverenced properly. And this is what we find in the New Testament. This is where, for instance, Paul says this. Paul said, “Let the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine.”

Now, a lot of times we hear that sort of stuff, we see these lists, we think, “Well, this is talking about elders and their wives.” No, it’s talking about old people—talking about me. And so I have particular verses here that if I want, you know, reverence from my kids and, you know, or if my mom wants reverence from me, I owe it anyway because of their position. They represent God. But that means that I as well have these things that I’m supposed to do.

I’m supposed to be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity rather, in patience. And older women, they’re supposed to be—their behavior is supposed to be as becomes holiness. There it is again, holiness. Not false accusers, not given to much wine. So this commandment relates to—as well, the commandment relates not just to children, their need to respect and reverence parents, but it also means the parents have an obligation. As we talked about last week, right? “Children obey your parents. Dads, don’t exasperate your children.” So act in a way that enhances that.

So this text is significant. It’s important for understanding relationships in the family, but it’s also important in understanding relationships in the context of building a culture and building a community.

So the text tells us this. And then finally, the last thing to notice here: “Keep my Sabbath. I am the Lord your God.” Between these two things, what do we have? We have the establishment of the family—reverence your parents—and we’ve got the establishment of the church as a worshiping community. Keep my Sabbath. And this side of the cross, the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day. Those are the fundamental building blocks of a culture. Marriage and family on one hand and the Lord’s day on the other hand, which means the convening of God’s people in worship. Those are the fundamental issues.

If we want to know what holiness is, there’s the beginning of it. There’s how it all starts. That’s why, you know, I made this reference to what I’ll be preaching on with Jesse and Janelle and their children. That’s why we’re here—is to come together as a community to affirm the need to build up and strengthen families and to build up and strengthen a sense of the Lord’s Day in our culture.

You know, both those things have been regularly attacked throughout human history. There was a branch of Zoroastrianism, Mazdakites. And this guy was a particular branch out of Zoroastrianism, the sixth century or so. And the Mazdakites tried to abolish marriage. They were a communal culture. They tried to say that the upper 1% of people, they should give their wealth to the rest of the people down below. We want a leveling out of incomes and property. And by the way, we also want free love. And if you’ve got a wife, we want you to share her. Okay? In fact, we want to get rid of marriage altogether. That’s what they wanted.

The Anabaptist radicals of the Reformation—similar sorts of things going on. Marriage has always been attacked by pagan cultures and by false apostate Christian cultures. It always has. As has been the Lord’s Day. The French Revolution, they tried to make a 10-day work week, right? They tried to get rid of the Lord’s Day. And the Russians did the same thing. The Soviet Union—make it decimal. What is this lousy 7-day thing? And they tried to change the count. Couldn’t do it. Okay.

What do we have today? What the communists and the French revolutionaries couldn’t do, capitalism has accomplished. Consumerism has accomplished it—at least for a short period of time here—because the Lord’s day is shot. Okay, if we give people the church, we think we’re doing good. But today—shot. The Russians tried it. Couldn’t do it. The French couldn’t do it. But we American capitalist consumers, we can do this stuff. We can conquer all things. And what’s so under attack for a long time and it’s almost disappeared.

And in fact, the presence of churches—you don’t even see churches anymore. You have little one-word descriptions of people. And what the church, the sanctuary of God is to be reverenced with a presence in the community—it’s going away, folks. It’s just going away. And marriage—is that a problem? Is marriage under attack? Oh, yeah. Free love, which is what the Mazdakites talked about in the sixth century. Exactly what the people that I lived in the context of in the Bay Area of California in the late ’60s, early ’70s, free love. And that was the beginning of, well, it was probably the beginning, but it was the rising forth of the destruction, the attack on marriage. And now it’s gone full throttle, of course, with so-called homosexual marriage. Marriage is being attacked and demolished. The family is being attacked and attempt to demolish it.

The Lord’s Day is being attacked and trying to be demolished. Why? Because they’re important. The satanic opposition understands the significance of these things even if we don’t. The Lord’s day is rest. You know, in Ruth 3:1, Naomi talking to Ruth says she wants to give her rest. By which she’s referring to marriage. Marriage is rest. It’s entering into the place that you’re to occupy in life. And there’s a rest to marriage. And the Lord’s day is rest—not in the sense of complete cessation of activity, but in the sense of being in the place where God wants you to be, worshiping him, delighting in your creative labors over the last six days, delighting in those things. Rest.

This world is trying to destroy the very means of rest in a culture. And Iggy can’t get rest in any direction. And the Rolling Stones playing Cuba here in a few days will no doubt sing about how they can’t get satisfaction in any direction.

Now we live in this. And times seem very troubled to us. And we’re all flippy-floppy, too. We’re all, you know, we don’t—we’re not immune from this. But brothers and sisters, what I’m trying to say today is: The beginning of holiness, which is the foundation of social order, is the family and the church, the worshiping community. Here it is. Reverence our parents—not because they’re such great people, but because they represent the presence of God. And your family represents the presence of God. And that’s why it’s under attack as it is.

We can fight back—not by, you know, getting mortars and this and that and yelling and screaming. We can fight back by doing something really simple. And we can do it today. Sometime today, reverence your mother. Say some nice, respectful thing to her. Don’t smart off. Don’t carp. Don’t answer back. Go out of your way to tell your mom how much you love her and you reverence her. And that’s what changes the future. That rebuilds the foundations of social order.

Augustine says that the soul is restless until it finds its rest in God. And he knew about that. He lived the same kind of life as some of the things that I used to do in San Francisco. We find our rest in God. And we find our rest, our delight, our rejuvenating rest from God in proper relationship to parents and in proper relationship to God in his worshiping community.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your love for us. We thank you for the simplicity of the Christian faith and yet its profundity. And we thank you, Lord God, for the incredible ways you have us fight and you have us roll back the attacks of the ungodly through simple things such as building godly families where reverence for parents and respect to children occur and in worshiping communities that rest and delight in you. Thank you, Father, in Jesus’ name. Amen.