Honor Your Father - Part 1 — Art Katz

So Lord, again, we ask for grace upon grace. We're so squeamish about such little things as if you can be affected by considerations of this kind. But we do want to, as much as in us lies, Lord, provide an environment conducive to your word and trust that this is acceptable, pleasing in your sight, and that there will be the free flow, my God, which we have been asking frequently in these days.

So now the hour has struck. We're here. We're commencing. And we've not been this way heretofore, Lord. I really don't even know how to begin. So grant us that gracious alpha ability, that alpha character, the god of the beginnings as that you yourself are.

And take us from there, my God, session by session as you will, till the whole of your so great heart appointed for this time has found its expression. We bless you. Thank you for the privilege. Welcoming, my God, of course, the remarkable phenomenon of your anointing, so much as it pleases you to bestow.

And again, thanking you for this privileged time and occasion that it might bless, my God, all the church and that the blessing might find its way to the house of Israel itself and to the nations as we thank and give you praise in Jesus' name.

Amen. So all I know is the text and a few little thoughts and suggestions to put before you. This is Genesis chapter 9, the post-alluvial event. Alluvial is the flood. Noah and his sons coming out of their ark and a single episode that takes place sometime after that somehow is a touchstone of very large things that have to do with the conclusion of the age and the fulfillment of the mystery of Israel and the nations that was spoken prophetically by Noah when he came out of his sleep, out of his stupor, out of his drunkenness.

And it's remarkable how terse the whole description is, T-E-R-S-E, how stingy God is in his description of this little episode, seeing that it is a microcosm of a macrocosm of unbelievable dimensions and that it seems clear that Noah himself is not aware of the import of the event or even of the thing that issued out of his own mouth as he brings either blessing or cursing upon each of the three sons who are the progenitors of all mankind in all of the races that will fill the earth.

So let's look at this text beginning in verse 18 of chapter 9. The sons of Noah that went forth of the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth. And Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah and of them was the whole earth overspread.

And Noah began to be a husbandman and he planted a vineyard and he drank of the wine and was drunken and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brethren without.

And Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father. And their faces were backward and they saw not their father's nakedness.

And Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, blessed be the Lord God of Shem and Canaan shall be his servant.

God shall enlarge Japheth, that's what the name Japheth actually means, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem and Canaan shall be his servant. And Noah lived after the flood 350 years and all the days of Noah were 950 years and he died.

Noah’s Fall and the Sons’ Revealed Hearts

So here's the preacher of righteousness falling into an embarrassing and humiliating departure from righteousness in drunkenness. It's hard to explain how such an occasion could take place. And it's unbecoming to the man and seems to be incompatible with his character for he was the one righteous man of his generation.

And yet somehow that episode provides an occasion which the sons can respond in one way or the other and reveal the truth and depths of their own hearts and evoke either blessing or curse on the basis of their response.

So this is deserving of the uttermost attention because it's something at the beginning. This is the new creation after the flood and this is the first episode of such magnitude and yet it touches the character of the nations, the whole issue of Shem and his blessedness out of whose stem comes Abraham and Israel, the redemptive line of God, and the relationship between Shem and Japheth is more than hinted at.

The fact that the two participate in covering their father is almost like a statement of the one new man already being foreshadowed. There's a lot of this symbolic foreshadowing. Maybe you can help me with a better word than foreshadow, the pre-something, a pre-feel free just to, I'm a high school dropout.

So a prefiguring of, that's good, of things that will later have much fuller expression have its inception here. So it's remarkable as much as the portent of the future lies in this one episode, it is described so discreetly and briefly, but it invites us to enter in.

And for example, it's not Shem himself who receives the blessing, but the God of Shem. And so it raises remarkable questions and deserves every examination. Well, maybe we're to begin with the sin of Noah first, because that is the occasion that gives to the sons an opportunity to show the truth of their hearts.

And maybe there's something for that in us that when something untoward takes place, particularly in the man who's in a place of leadership or prominence, our response to that is deeply revealing and indicative.

And maybe there's something of the human heart that delights in the opportunity of swelling with conceit at the expense of someone who is otherwise honored and has fallen and takes a lower place. And you can delight in his predicament.

But what does that say of the condition of your heart? Though the scripture does not tell us, you can almost imply when it says, and he went out and told his brothers who were outside, he did more than just relate a description of the event.

You have to imagine with Holy Ghost, imagining that he told them with a certain relish, a certain kind of delight. He was rubbing his hands in glee to have found an occasion to see his father was dishonored.

But instead of encouraging and engaging the other two sons to join him in that celebration of the father's fall, they ignored or refused to be taken in with that spirit and reacted in an altogether other way.

And they took the cloak, put it upon their shoulders and walked backward through the tent and covered their father and averted their gaze to look upon his nakedness. In little preliminary conversations that we have been having in these days, for those who are here early, someone commented, I think it was Reggie, it was exactly the thought of my heart.

Covering Israel’s Nakedness

What would the history of the church with Israel have been if we had averted our gaze and covered their nakedness and the shame that has been their condition for these two millennia and longer. But instead we have reacted the church more like Ham or Canaan than we have Japheth or Shem.

The church has taken a certain kind of perverse delight in the fallenness of Israel. You can even see that in the architecture of medieval churches where Israel is depicted as a fallen woman with a blindfold and a broken reed.

And the church on the other portal is the mighty and victorious overcoming figure. So one is the fallen, the one into disrespect and the other, the exalted church who exalts at the expense of the fallen one completely contrary to the spirit of what Shem exhibited and that Noah so honored when he came out of his drunkenness and recognized the quality and the character of this act.

And the quality and character of that act of Shem is the issue of Shem himself. What he exhibited intuitively and instinctively in covering his father gets at the very genius, the quintessence, the heart of what God calls Shem to be or else what is the virtue of Japheth dwelling in his tent?

What need? If Japheth is enlarged and he's a European in technology and culture, civilization, what need does he have to bow to enter the tent of a man who is only spiritual? But unless he dwells in that tent, there's an incompleteness about Japheth and those things that constitute his virtue in enlargement become also the prospect for evil.

World War II, World War I, the great massacres on the battlefields where entire generations were wiped out, where you can visit today in France, the Ossuary, where the bones have been kept, they are larger than a battlefield and how many potential Beethoven's and Brahms and great writers and philosophers and theologians and men that would have aided mankind and their descendants were wiped out in a little thing called no man's land where German and French youth battled each other for a piece of scarred territory that was no consequence.

That's also an aspect of Japheth. Japheth is enlargement not only for good, but also equally potentially for evil. So to allow Japheth to continue as Japheth is to bring not only the promise of increase in commerce and trade and the things that prosper mankind through his ingenuity and enlargement, but also equally a capacity for destruction and devastation.

40 million lives in World War II and I think a comparable number World War I, not to speak of the scars, the psychological, social consequences of war and what it leaves that becomes the fertile ground for yet future conflict, which is the character of our present generation.

All of that is Japheth without the benefit that would have come to him, that must come to him from one source only exclusively and that is Shem. What is this Shem that has God's provision for Japheth and the provision for us all?

What is the distinctive of the line that issues from him out of which God's redemption is to come through Abraham and his sons and the sons of Jacob and the sons of Israel and the Jesus, the Messiah that comes out of the Semitic line.

All of that has in its first expression, how should we say it? Something nuclear in this one act that is altogether spontaneous, that is unrehearsed, Shem exhibits something of the character that God has so blessed and will in time bless Shem, bless Japheth and bless the nations of the world.

So we need to investigate what is exhibited in that act that is of the essence of the people that God has appointed to bless all the nations of the earth, all the families of the earth because I believe that it is expressed in this one significant and symbolic act.

Spontaneous Actions Reveal the Heart

What a man does when he's taken by surprise, when he has had no preparation or forethought is what he in fact is. What we exhibit in the moment that strikes us from the blind side is telling in every way of what we in fact are in God.

And that's what was revealed in that moment. Ham, Canaan, the father, son, somehow are labeled together in the indictment and curse that comes from Noah's lips. And Shem is given an extravagant blessing.

Blessed is the God of Shem. Well, why would he say that? Why didn't Noah, who is speaking now prophetically as the preacher of righteousness, say blessed be Shem. If cursed be Canaan and you'll be a servant throughout all generations and a servant of servants or a servant to servants, why didn't he equally bless Shem?

Why does he bless the God of Shem rather than Shem himself? These are the kinds of things that we need to draw out exegete because I think of course it has to be utterly significant. Anyone have a thought?

Reggie, you had a thought on that the other day of why he blessed the God of Shem rather than Shem himself.

Because from that time forward, God would be distinguished, defined and known by his identification with Shem, with this one people who are the elect line, the people through whom God had chosen to mediate the revelation of himself.

So you begin from the beginning with what theologians have chosen to call the scandal of particularity. And it's always been, and I believe a divinely calculated offense to a humanistic chafing at God's prerogative to choose as he will choose.

Okay.

Let me bring in the cats again. What? To what degree was Shem's act itself a revelation of his God? To what degree was Shem's act divinely inspired or grew out of the kind of communion that Shem already had with God that is not ever anywhere spoken in scripture, but is revealed in the given moment.

That is to say what Shem did is what God himself would do. How did he know to cover his father? Why is that important? Why didn't he just let the man sleep it off and wake up naked and realize the humiliation of it?

By the way, nakedness doesn't bother us, does it? I've got a sack full of articles from the New York Times that after the school is finished, I'm going to proliferate for as many as remain. And we're going to comment from these articles.

And one day before coming here, I clipped from the New York Times on art, culture, economy, world politics, the editorial columns, the response to the editor. It's a remarkable window on the world. And in that particular issue was an article on nudity on the stage in Broadway that the theater, what do they call them?

Editors or critics are noticing now the prevalence of nudity on the platform, on the stage, on Broadway productions. It hardly matters what it is, whether it's a musical or drama. Nudity is becoming pronounced.

And they showed pictures that looked like they're right out of Sodom and Gomorrah. So we are a nation that exalts in nudity, whereas evidently from the beginning to be revealed as naked was considered a statement of uttermost shame.

And for children to see their own father naked somehow was something of an uttermost kind. So the question is, why didn't Shem just wait for his father to recover? Why go in backwards with that thing to drape him so that when he wakes, he finds himself covered?

When he could have recovered and realized that just pulled up his thing about him and come out. No, not a moment was to be lost that somehow for this father, the preacher of righteousness, you can almost say as the savior of mankind, the one who begins again the human race on the new earth cannot for a moment be left in that condition uncovered.

We, it means if we are not sensitive to what is involved in this, that we have been more touched by the world than we know. My son had to give me an enema two or three days ago before I went to the hospital thinking that it would relieve whatever was my problem.

But I needed much more than that. But you know what it means to submit to your son for an enema? But he's a nurse as well as a son. So I'm grateful. And of course we went through it like without any hitch because we're not living in the biblical mentality.

We're not living in a mindset that has completely dissipated in time. We're living in modernity. We're living in an age where nakedness and the revelation of flesh is so commonplace that we hardly turn aside to see.

So we need to go back because we are part of Shem as the church. And we need to recover what other is the issue of honoring and covering. Although I suspect and God will one day confirm this and that it was Shem's initiative.

Japheth went along. Praise God for that. And in fact, in going along with Shem, isn't that very suggestive of what it means to dwell in the tent of Shem? It's more than just coming in from the rain. It's coming into an attitude, a mentality, a disposition of an authentically spiritual kind.

So I suspect that it was Shem who had the concept, had the thought, because I think that there's a significant point in the text that they averted their gaze. They purposely walked backwards and averted their gaze.

They would not allow themselves for a moment to dwell on the exposed condition of the father lest it would excite in them the kind of superiority and disdain and contempt that already had its expression in Canaan and Ham.

The Meaning of Noah’s Humiliation

So are we that careful ourselves today? Are we covering? Or are we delighting in the exposure, particularly of men of prominence who have been found out or have come to a moment of failing? And by the way, how do you explain the moment of failing?

Why did Noah get drunk? Is that the possibility of his humanity? Or was God himself setting a stage for which he allowed his servant to experience a humiliation that was needful in order to bring out and bring into view and to submit either to blessing or to cursing, that which would characterize all of the nations of the men in all of the history that was to follow?

You understand what I'm saying? That Noah himself was a servant of the Most High God. And what if that servanthood should require a moment of humiliation in which your whole character seems to be contradicted in that moment by an act that could never have been imagined issuing from you, that people would never have expected seeing that you're the man of God and the man of prominence.

And God does not tell you in advance, look, here's what I'm going to do. You need to come into a drunken condition in order to expose the hearts of your sons, for in that exposure, something will take place in blessing and curse that will affect all the disposition of nations and the mystery of Shem to the nations to the ends of the age.

So be prepared to bear this. But to be a servant, as we said in yesterday's early morning prayer time, the word servant and son are interchangeable, they're synonyms. You cannot be a servant without being a son.

And a son without being a servant. Noah was a servant. And I'm just suspecting that a servant does not require explanation. A son does not require explanation. And if the purposes of God are served that will set in motion an unfolding of something that ends in his eternal destiny and glory, you accept it.

So that in Noah's drunkenness is a man suffering the humiliation for which he had no pre, what's the pre awareness? No, it came upon him. How did it come upon him? He grew a vine. He planted a vine. He was a husbandman, built a great ship.

And then he was a farmer and he planted evidently a plant that had never had an existence in the earlier creation. And no one knew of it. And he took its fruit and made of it wine. And in the drinking of it, he became drunk.

So what would you say of his sin? Is it, it's almost like, if you accept the expression, a sin of innocence. It's not a sin of, forethought, premonition, calculation. It's something that came inadvertently.

Who would know that the drink wine means to get drunk? Well, this was the first instance. And of course it left him in that helpless condition and stupor in which the whole episode has its origin. So we need to say something about Noah who needs to be honored.

He's actually the father of humanity, the father of mankind. Yeah. There's a haunting verse in Malachi. I think it's one chapter one verse six. It's a indictment of Israel. If I am your father, where is my honor?

Honor, Shame, and Moral Collapse

We need to contemplate the word honor because it's totally fallen out of use. This is an age without honor. And if you read the New York Times, 10 or 12 of the leading Wall Street firms were indicted for malpractices of an actual criminal kind.

But instead of taking these CEOs to jail, which they fully deserved, they only gave them a minor flick on the wrist. They paid a $1 .4 billion fine. And one of the Jewish CEOs of the leading Wall Street community even publicly made a statement that what's causing all the furor?

What's all the big deal? It's only a minor indiscretion and we're paying for it financially so that the head of the stock market had to publicly rebuke him for failing to understand the magnitude of that with which they were caught in the act.

Corporate crime today is one of the scandals of our generation at the highest levels of corporate life. And those agencies that monitor corporations, what do they call them? That do the bookkeeping, Anderson, the CPAs, they themselves are implicit in the crimes and know how to arrange the books in such a way and how to give these men very generous allowances and even corporations that are going bankrupt.

And they know they're going bankrupt by their own malpractice and their own egotism, their own greed. Before they get out, in their board meetings, they grant to each other lifetime, what do you call it?

Golden parachutes, golden parachutes.

I've never heard that phrase, a bonus, a going away bonus. Pensions. A pension that runs to the many millions of dollars while the stockholders are left with a whole collapsed value, these men are coming out smelling like a rose.

And it's a collusion between the agency that does their books and the men who profit from it. It has never before happened in American finance to this extent. Why? Because the whole moral climate of the nation has fallen.

And men who formerly would never have condescended to allow themselves to be part of such practice, even if it meant millions for their personal aggrandizement are now doing so because they have no sense of honor and therefore no sense of shame.

So if shame is to be what God intends it to be for Japheth, to be a redemptive presence in all the earth, honor needs to be restored. The sense of honor, the sense of covering, the sense of shame. And the question is, how did Shem know these things?

How did Joseph know that to lie with Potiphar's wife would be to violate one of the commandments, thou shalt not commit adultery. How did he know that before the commandments were given? How did Shem know that before the advent of law?

It's a remarkable question because it means that one can have a proximity to God's heart and the sense of that, the moral heart of God that does not require law. As I think Paul says somewhere, law is for the law breaker.

And if that's true, then one of the issues between us and the Orthodox Jewish community now is the issue of law keeping. And my rabbi with whom I see weekly never fails to put his finger in my chest and say, well, since I've seen you less, have you been keeping the law?

And for whatever your profession of having been found of God, and you know God by the spirit and you even speak a heavenly language and he's used you here and there, are you keeping the law? That's the question.

But if the law can be kept without the law in the way that it was understood and kept by Joseph and exhibited by Shem, we have something in which to boast, not in a boastful way, but to say we don't need the requirement of an overt legalism.

What we need is the same union with the God of Shem that Shem himself enjoyed. Of which the scripture says nothing, but it is implied. For how else could Shem have known to do what he had done except by a proximity to the heart of God that was evidently in the very character of the man.

Acting out of a nature instead of a code. Oh, great.

Put that in your notebook. And the statement that what a man does is what he in fact is. All the more when it's what he does comes without preparation, comes surprisingly, takes him from the blind side.

What he does in that moment is what he in fact is. And we're going to have such a moment or many such moments in the last days when something will come upon us in an untoward way and an unexpected way.

And our response or our reaction in that moment will be absolutely telling. We'll either make or break a situation. We'll either convey the reality of God as Shem conveyed it, or it will reveal that we don't, that we ourselves are not in the relationship in which we boast.

So we need to give the attention to the fact that what Shem does, he does in the moment that takes him by surprise and which he could easily have been drawn in to the same response as Ham Canaan. That is to say, enjoy seeing the father humiliated.

And that raises the question, why would a son enjoy that? Why would an inferior or weaker member delight in seeing the stronger, the more powerful, the more prominent brought down and brought to a place lower than what they have known?

The man who is the preacher of righteousness, where is your righteousness now? Hot shot. Seems to be the spirit that took hold of Canaan and Ham. So we need to examine the anatomy of this phenomenon of delighting in the fall of a saint.

Because I can remember from my earlier days in Yugoslavia, how a woman had a dream that 20 years before the vice president of this Pentecostal organization had had an adulterous affair. And on the basis of that dream, totally unsupported as an allegation, the man was drummed out of office and removed scandalously.

And I watched these Serbian saints delighting in his discomfort. So, and I've seen it in my own life and with my own sons, that there's something that gives a son, how shall I say? There's something in the heart of the weaker and the younger that has opportunity to be gratified at the expense of the fall of the one who enjoys the place of prominence in God.

And we need to examine that because that potentiality is with all of us. But what does it mean to be a son of Shem? What is the distinctive that Noah is so honored in addressing Shem by blessing the God of Shem?

Because Shem is the fruit of that God. Let me read a comment from the commentary on Genesis. But it is the conduct of Ham and Canaan on this set occasion that is emphatically stigmatized. It would seem that Canaan had some share in the offense committed, as he certainly had a principal share in the doom pronounced.

By the way, Noah says when he wakes from his drunkenness, he saw what his son had done to him. It gives a kind of an impression that he was taken advantage of in his drunkenness and in his nakedness in more than being left uncovered.

And even the hint of Talmudic literature and Midrashic commentary through the ages is that some kind of sexual violation took place and some suggestion even to a castration. Because what could be more humiliating to a father than to be castrated?

You've gotten at the very nexus of his power in his fatherhood by seeing to it that his fatherhood will be henceforth and forever annulled by the act that you have performed in his helplessness. It's an interesting thought to consider.

But the text does say, when he saw what his son had done to him, that something was performed upon him in his nakedness of some kind of either a sexual act or as some of the Jewish commentators suggest might actually be a castration, which is the ultimate humiliation that can be brought upon a man.

Because to be a eunuch, remember those servants who are in the courts of noblemen and kings, but were castrated so that would not have ever an occasion to take advantage of the accessibility of the harem that belonged to this potentate.

And Christ even speaks of those eunuchs who are eunuchs for Christ's sake, were cut off so that they could never aggrandize or take for themselves any of the benefit that comes from their service to the king.

So to be a eunuch is the lowest state into which a servant can be brought. And by the way, it's a son of Ham or Canaan who saved Jeremiah out of the pit, who was a servant in the household of the king and was a eunuch.

And I can't get away from that, being a prophetic man, that when my time comes to be cast into a pit and into the mire, which is not just a little dispatching of the man for a moment, is being consigned to death of starvation and with the word of want of water, that this black eunuch was the only one who had a sensitivity to the plight of the prophet being cast into the pit and had the bravery to consult the king and say, ought we to allow God's prophet to expire in that condition?

And the king said, you're right. You go and take men with you and bring him out. And so they knotted a rope out of rags, which is not incidental for what it is that provides the saving provision for God's prophetic man and drew him out from his armpits.

But it took a servant of servants. You know, so even at the curse of Noah on Ham, to be a servant of servants, maybe in the last analysis, the ultimate honor that can befall a person because servanthood is what Jesus himself was and exemplified and Shem exemplified servanthood in covering his father.

So praise God for those who will bring us out of pits when others are quite content to leave us there, to expire and even to throw us into that. But this black man who was castrated was willing to bring the suggestion to the king, which might've meant his head.

In order to save Jeremiah, he had to risk his own life. And maybe that's a definition of what servanthood is. Okay, so let me continue reading this. What precisely the offense was can scarcely be gathered from the narrative.

That's why I'm complaining to God, why are you so stingy in your text? Why haven't you given us greater amplitude of what in fact took place? Why are you so sparse? Because you've given my Jewish kinsmen great opportunity for rabbinical commentary of every kind.

And maybe that was your intention. And it was obviously an instance of flagrant filial irreverence. Irreverence is disrespect, it is dishonoring. And I have no way to assess to what degree that characterizes the present church of Jesus Christ even at its best.

Irreverence, disrespect. Well, and I've suffered very small measure of it, but sufficient to know that it's there. Hey, I even have received it at Ben Israel from Ben Israel. So evidently it's deeper than we know.

And we need to be made aware of its existence and our disposition for it. What would you say would safeguard us from a disposition toward irreverence and disrespect that would allow a man of God, not only to be dishonored, but to enjoy his predicament, to take the light in his being uncovered?

How can we guard ourselves? How can we move toward a Shem-like reverence and respectful authority? Because the attitude of Shem toward his father is the attitude of Shem toward God. Because our earthly fathers are the statement of the heavenly father.

Honoring Earthly Fathers and the Heavenly Father

Whether it's a natural father or a spiritual father, how we respond to the fathers that God has given us is the statement of our truest heart to the father who is in heaven. And that's why God is so jealous over that.

And that's why Shem could not wait for a moment to cover his father. Because the issue of his father was the issue of the heavenly father. That if his earthly father was dishonored, the heavenly father is dishonored.

And a son of Shem cannot tolerate that for a moment. That's reverence. You could almost say that the erring son, Ham, Cain, and I put them together as one, had opportunity by observing what Shem and Japheth did in honoring the father to recognize how unbecoming his own attitude was and to repent of it on the spot.

And maybe if that repentance had come, it might have saved him the curse that was spoken. But evidently he was so hard in his own heart that even their act could not affect that change. So how long had he had that heart?

And how many days were they in the ark together? And the years that preceded it? How long was this attitude of disrespect being generated and nurtured, waiting its opportunity for expression? So we have to keep our hearts with all diligence.

And when the occasion comes, we do not exhibit that. And we need to express repentantly our failure to cover Israel for her nakedness in these past millennia. And to whatever degree we have gloated over her predicament and rubbed our hands in glee and elevated ourself at her expense.

Or else we cannot become the sons of Shem in truth. So although precisely the offense can scarcely be gathered from the narrative, we may partly guess its motive. It was obviously an instance of flagrant filial irreverence for not even the last degree of unworthiness in a parent will justify the levity or cruelty of a son.

I'll read that again. I love this comment. It's got to be a flagrant filial irreverence for not even the last degree of unworthiness in a parent will justify the levity, the lightness or cruelty of a son.

Which is to say, no matter what the cause, no matter what the occasion, whether it's drunkenness or anything else, nothing can ever justify the irreverent attitude of the son Cain and Ham toward that father's nakedness.

That a father has got to be honored. No matter what failing, that there's no failing sufficient to justify our irreverence and our disrespect. Because the commandment that Shem already knew before it was ever pronounced is, thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.

And you know that we say yes, but look at the father I've had. Well, look at my mother that I've had. Now, if they had been different, if they had in any way treated me as I ought to have been, I'm still suffering from their neglect.

I'm suffering from their mistreatment. I'm suffering from their abuse. They don't deserve my honor. God says, you're failing to keep the law. You're a lawbreaker because there's no condition that will justify the loss of your honoring.

I have commanded you to honor, irrespective of what is the condition of your father or your mother. Thou shalt honor. And there's a promise that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

There's a promise for honoring father and mother. Somehow he'll extend your days upon the earth. I mean, you gotta get that. Yeah, that's. It's the only obedience that brings such a promise. That's just the only obedience.

That your days might be long upon the earth.

The same with the spiritual death of a believer. That's if they dishonor a spiritual father. Do you hear that? And they disrespect or irreparably despise him for anything. They spiritually died from that point of contact.

We're not gonna get out of here alive today.

We're gonna be on our faces in repentance before this session is over. Did you catch what Dan just shared? Ask him to. Why don't you repeat that yet again? You're saying that not just the issue of physical death, a termination of your length of days, but a spiritual death commences from the moment that you break that commandment and fail to honor your father or your mother.

You get that road that you're at a crossroads right there.

Yeah, I understand that the phrase that has been current in the Jewish speech over the ages with regard to the church labeling us the arrogant kingdom. That's almost to say the people who are without reverence.