Understanding Authority (Part 2) — Paul Lloyd

Just lift up your heart to the Lord and express your desire to love Him and hear His voice today. Lord, we do thank You for what You're speaking to us today. Thank You that we get to be here today, we get to hear the words of life again.

And Lord, we look to You as the author of life and the author of the Bible and the author and finisher of our faith. And God, we just pray this morning that You'll bless us, that You'll touch us, just speak to us, Lord, and that You'll meet each one of us right where we're at today.

You know exactly what we need to hear. And Lord, I thank You that You're able to take a subject that I'm speaking on, You could speak to somebody in a totally different area. It has nothing to do with it.

I've seen You do that, Lord. And we pray for that. Speak to us all what we need today. And just quicken Your Word, Lord. We say You are good, God, as we've already heard today. And Your Word is good. Your ways are good.

Your Lordship is good. Your leadership is good. And we give You all authority in this place. We acknowledge that You have that authority, Lord. And we come under Your authority and say, Lord, take Your place as King of kings and Lord of lords and King of our lives.

And Lord, give us all a spirit this morning of submission to You and surrender to You as servants of God. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Well, praise God. Are you glad to be here? Has God been good to you this week?

Do you love God's Word? Even when it's hard? Even when it doesn't feel good? It's still good, isn't it? Amen. Well, for those of you that weren't here last week, this is part two of a series on understanding authority.

And as sort of a subtitle, I've picked out the title Practical Humility for today's message. Practical Humility. And I just want to quickly review what we did last week, see how well you all learned it.

Authority is a huge topic. We kind of took a big picture last week of it. Through the Word of God we saw that all authority comes from God. We saw that there's basically two authority structures in the world.

In the spiritual world, let's put it that way. You have the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. Jesus is the head of the kingdom of God. Satan is the head of the kingdom of darkness. Now, who remembers, how did Jesus get to be the head?

How did He get to have all authority given to Him? How did He get to have every knee bow and every tongue confess? What did He do that we looked at there in Philippians chapter 2? He humbled Himself. Very good.

And He was obedient even unto death. Humility, it says. Because He humbled Himself even unto death. And the kingdom of God is a kingdom of humility. Now, on the other side, what was the motivation of Satan?

He's pride. We have it right there, and I think it's in Isaiah 14. Ezekiel, as well, says, I will be like the Most High. I will exalt Myself above the Most High. And because of that, He fell. And Jesus said, I beheld Satan fall like lightning.

I believe that it was like lightning He fell when He made that statement of pride. The power of God just cast Him out of the kingdom of God. And His pride manifested itself in what? Rebellion. Very good.

Jesus' humility manifested itself in what? Obedience. So, we're starting to see a vast difference between these two kingdoms. Satan, as we know, is a liar. Satan promises freedom, doesn't he? If you serve Me, you can do whatever you want.

I'm not like God. He demands all these things of you. He says, you can't do this and you can't do that. Satan says, I'm not that way. I give you freedom. You can do whatever pleases you. But with His freedom comes what?

Bondage. Because guess who's your Lord then? Guess who has authority over you? It's Satan. On the other hand, to the natural man, the kingdom of God and the Word of God looks like, in a sense, it looks like bondage because it says, You shall follow Me.

You must obey Me. And to the natural man, that doesn't feel good, does it? It didn't to me. But what comes with that is freedom. Freedom. We read about it just in our Sunday school lesson. You know, all the things that God does, they're not for our evil, they're for our good.

And so, we're all born into this kingdom. Everybody. I was thinking about it this morning. I was a very proud young man, rebellious young man, and a very bound young man. I even said, I'm ashamed to say it, to think that this is who I was, but I even said to my parents one time, I said to my mother, I said, I do what I want to do.

Nobody's going to tell me what to do. I'm the boss. I actually said that in my foolish pride. Well, I left, I moved to Colorado for a while and met the Lord out there. I got saved. And you know what God told me to do?

He said, Give your mother a call and go tell her you're sorry. So I did. I got on the phone and I called her. This was several months later. I said, Mom, do you remember the way I used to be? I said, I just want you to know something happened.

Remember how I used to say to you, nobody tells me what to do. I'm my own boss. And on and on. She said, Yeah, I remember that. I said, Mom, first of all, I said, I'm sorry, Mom. That was really wrong.

And I said, Would you forgive me for that? And I said, I'd give my life to Jesus. And now He's my Lord. And that means I do whatever He says. And I follow Him. And I felt like He told me to come to give you a call and say I'm sorry.

Praise God. That's what happens when God takes a soul out of the kingdom of darkness and translates them into His kingdom. And do you remember last week it said, See, there's a spirit in both these kingdoms.

What's the spirit in this kingdom? The spirit of darkness. That's right. And it says it's the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience. That's Ephesians chapter 2. Now this is the Holy Spirit which is given to them that what?

Obey Him. Acts chapter 5. That doesn't sound theologically correct in our world today, does it? The Holy Spirit is given to them that obey Him. Acts 5 .32. If you want to check that one out. See, it's a coming under the authority of God.

Salvation is basically leaving the authority of self. I'm my own boss. I'm my own Lord. And it's coming under God's authority and saying from now on, God is my authority. I follow Him. His Word. I am going to obey the Lord with my life.

I've left that life of disobedience. You could say that salvation is in a nutshell, that's what happens in salvation. It's one way of describing it. It's leaving that disobedient spirit, that rebellious spirit, that proud spirit and saying, God, I'm coming under Your authority now.

I'm not going to be my own authority and I'm leaving behind Satan's authority. He's a terrible authority to have over our life, isn't He? And so today, who's your authority? Who is the head of your life?

Who do you get your orders from? And it says that He has translated us out of the authority of darkness. That's Colossians chapter 1. And brought us, translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son. And so, and He also says He gave us, as many as received Him, to them gave He the authority to become the sons of God.

So authority is a powerful thing. We looked at the differences in the words there. I'm not going to get into that today. I want to just go briefly through this. But the world says question authority. Be your own authority.

Or this one, they may not say this, or we may not have said this, but authority is in my way. Authority is something that's standing in my way of me doing what I want to do. On the other hand, God says authority, that we should obey authority.

That we should submit ourselves to authority. And that authority is my friend. And it's a gift from God. Do you believe that? How do you view authority as you sit here today? Just ask yourself. Is authority a good word to you?

Is authority a word that makes you cringe a little bit? Or that makes you struggle? Or when you think of authority, does that put in your heart good thoughts, good feelings? It should. It should put within you good thoughts and feelings.

Now I know some of us here have had unjust authority in our lives. And so there may be some of those thoughts too. So I understand that. But one of the great dangers that we can have is that when we are hurt by unjust authority, is that we can then withdraw and hold ourselves back from authority because of our pain.

Because of our hurt. And not come under the authority of God like He wants us to. And so we want to speak about that today. We talked also and let me say this. In the Godhead Himself is very clear authority.

Who is on top you might say? The Father. And then the Son and the Holy Spirit. There is a sense of authority. Even though God is God, He's one God and He's all equal in essence. But in place God Himself has chosen in the three parts, Father, Son and Holy Spirit to have a submission to authority.

Jesus said, I don't do anything except what I see my Father do. The words that I speak to you, they are not my own, but they are what the Father gives to me. Jesus was totally a man under authority. Absolutely.

From the time He was a boy and it's said that He went back to His parents to Nazareth and He subjected Himself to them. He lived subject to His parents up until His death. He was a man that was completely under God's authority in His life.

And because of that, He the Father gave Him a place higher than any other place. See, that's how authority works. Whatever we have is given to us from above. The Father gave Jesus the highest place of honor that every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

And now it says that the Holy Spirit, Jesus left Earth and He said, I'm sending you the Holy Spirit. He said He shall not speak of Himself, but He shall speak of Me. The Holy Spirit didn't come here to show how great the Spirit is.

He came here to magnify the Son. So do you see how beautiful that is? Even in God's own nature, there's this submission. There's this humbling coming under and everybody has their place. Everybody has their spot.

There's the Father. There's the Son. There's the Holy Spirit. We're not in competition with each other. We're not needing to be better. We all just function in our places. Jesus said the most amazing man of faith that He saw, He said it was in a Roman soldier censuring Him.

He said, I have not seen faith as great as this in Israel. In other words, I have never seen in God's people, all the people of God, the people who grew up knowing about God, the people who, you know, had the law and the testimonies and all these things.

He said, I have never seen such faith as this man has. And why was that? If you look in Luke chapter 7, He said, I am myself... I have not thought myself worthy to come to you, but say in a word and my servant shall be healed.

And then He says this amazing statement. He says, for I also am a man set under authority. This guy saw something. First of all, he saw that Jesus was a man under authority. He said, I see that. And he said, I'm like you.

I'm also a man under authority. He somehow saw in the spiritual realm that Jesus was under the Father and did whatever the Father said for Him and that whatever, therefore, He got from the Father, it had to be done in the earth when He spoke it.

And this centurion said, I'm just like you. He said, I'm also a man under authority. The Roman government is my authority. Caesar, ultimately. And if He says, we're going to do this and thus in Palestine or wherever, and I get that order and I tell my soldiers to do it, they have to do it.

Not because I say so, I'm just one man, but because I have Rome. The entire Roman Empire behind me. Do you see how authority works? And that's what God wants in every one of our lives. He wants us to be so under His authority that when we speak words, they will come to pass.

When we speak up for Him, He's going to do something about it. He's going to make our words. He's going to honor those words because they're not our words. They're words we got from God. So authority is our friend.

We want to look at humility. We want to kind of turn the corner here. I call this practical humility. Humility is something that sometimes people have a hard time defining. And it sort of seems like something way out there.

What does it mean to be humble or how do you humble yourself or whatever? Well, this is practical humility we're going to look at. But I'd like to just mention one thing. I had an unexpected visitors this week.

They didn't know I was teaching about authority, but it was very interesting. I think it was Monday night. Monday afternoon, I got the word these folks are coming to visit with us tonight. They're from Colorado.

And it's interesting. This boy, well he's 38 now, but I knew him when he was eight. And he was the pastor's son in the church. In fact, his dad married us 26 years ago. So now he's grown up and he's the pastor.

Not of that church, but of a different one in the same area. Jason is his name and his wife Carmen. So they came over and they were they didn't come to see us, they came to see Grandma. That's one of the blessings of living with such a well-loved and famous individual.

We get a lot of visitors now that we didn't get before. But they came and he was on a sabbatical. A little mini sabbatical, six weeks. Just to be with his family. Just to get away from it all kind of thing.

And we got to talking about the old days and different things. His wife was a missionary's child. Grew up in Africa. And so one of the questions I think it was that I asked her, I said how did you find it when you came back to America?

She said, yeah, we came back when I was 10. And she said it was really hard for me to adjust to the culture. So I was curious. I said, well, what was so hard? I said, what was the hard part? And she said, well, my parents said they wanted us to get used to the American culture somewhat because they knew probably we'd live here sometime in our life.

So our parents said look, we're going to send you to public school. You don't have to stay there. But I want you to just go there for as long as you can. And just learn a little bit about American culture.

And so here's this young girl. She goes to the school and she said none of us could stand it for more than like a week. We said, please homeschool us. Get us out of there. I said, well, why? What was it?

You know what it was that she said bothered her? She said, what bothered me? What made it so I couldn't stand it was I had been raised in a culture where if you fooled around in school, they would cane you.

They'd get the cane out. And she said, when I came to school here, there was such a disobedient spirit. So much so that this young girl, she couldn't stand it. She actually said, please, teach me at home, Mom.

Teach me at home. I don't think we realize how disobedient the spirit around us is in our age. I don't think we have any idea because, see, we just grew up in it. If you told a fish about water, what would he say?

What's that? What's water? I just, that's what I live. Right? There's nothing. There's no specialness about that. And so we all have grown up in that culture, all of us. Some maybe more so than others.

It's a disobedient generation. And the Bible says in the last days, that would be one of the great marks of the last days was people would be disobedient, disobedient on every hand. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about some of the things they shared with me because it was very interesting.

Very interesting. But God has purposed that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God would be made known to the authorities, the principalities and powers. That's Ephesians chapter 3 if you want to turn there.

Here's where we're going to turn a little corner. Ephesians chapter 3. We'll start in verse 9. And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world has been hid in God who created all things by Jesus Christ to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So hear what he's saying there. God has purposed that we those who are under this authority, the humility, the obedience, the freedom through Jesus Christ. We are going to demonstrate to all these fallen powers the manifold wisdom of God.

He wants to show through us what God will do and can do for people who trust him. People say, Lord, you're Lord, you're the boss. So that's our calling, at least part of it. He would like to make known the manifold wisdom of God.

The principalities and powers fell because they disobeyed God. OK. He wants to show we're to be the platform that God demonstrates what he will do through those who obey him. He's going to put all them to shame through our lives.

You should have obeyed me. These souls, these people who chose to come under my authority. Look at how they are blessed. Look at how they prosper. Look at all the things that are good and right that I have given them because of that.

That's what God wants to show. And so that obedience is demonstrated. First of all, as we obey his word, right? That's the bottom line, the word of God. But then also as we honor and obey the human authority that he has placed over our lives.

OK, here's where we're going to turn the corner a little bit because we all we all I believe in this room understand that when God says something it's final, right? It is to be obeyed. Remember what he said in the lesson today?

You shall obey how many of my commandments? All the commandments which I command you this day, not 95%. All of them. We all understand that God's word is the final authority. I hope for everybody in this room today that the word of God is your final authority that if God says it, that settles it.

I'm going to do it by his help, with his grace. That's what it means to be a Christian. That's the attitude of a Christian. Where it gets sticky is when human authority comes into our life. We don't like that near as well because they're not God.

They're not like God. He's perfect. He's on the throne. He's high and lifted up. He's everything that I would want to be and he's a perfect leader. But people, they're not like that. In fact, they're just like me.

And it doesn't feel good that I need to obey people because why should I? And so here we go. But who tells us to obey the human authorities in our life? God says it. We're going to look at those verses today.

It's God himself. We cannot be under the authority of the word of God and not be under the authority of the human authority structures that God has put on this earth. It's impossible because God's the one who told us to bring ourselves underneath those things.

And so I want to look at five areas today. There's probably more we could look at but I just want to look at five of them and see what the Bible says about it. See, how should we live our life? The truth is this is our kingdom.

Jesus is our king. We have chosen the road of humility to submit to him and to be under him. That truth has to be lived out. And that's why I call this practical humility. Bringing ourselves under the earthly authorities in our life as God has said is just practical humility.

It's just saying, God, I choose to submit myself to the government, to my parents, to my husband, to my boss, to my church. That's practical humility. I mean, how else does humility show itself? Is it not how we act towards the people in our life?

And so this is a very real thing that hits home with us here. Let's first of all look at the government. Christians should be the most honoring people toward the government in all the world. True or false?

True. Christians should be the most obedient people towards their government in all the world. True or false? In other words, we, who are not of this kingdom, but of this kingdom, we should be the most obedient and honoring towards our government.

Now, we can read some scriptures. Let's look at a couple. There's many we could read, but let's just look at Romans chapter 13. It says here, verse one, Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God.

The powers that be are ordained of God. Whoever therefore resists the power resists the ordinance of God, and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. I'm going to read that in a newer translation.

It says, Everyone must submit to governing authorities for all authority comes from God. And those positions of authority have been placed there by God. So anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished.

You see, if we rebel against our government, we are really rebelling against God. Our nation, okay, we come from a nation that lifts up the War of Independence. Do you know what they call that war in England?

Anybody? They call it the War of the Rebellion. Isn't it interesting how different countries call things different names? It's known as the War of Rebellion. Taxation without representation is tyranny.

You know, let's throw all that tea in the Boston Harbor. We've got to stand up for our rights. We've got to push off the king. How dare he do that? That's our American blood that's deep within our culture and our thinking.

That's not biblical. Now, they may have had unrighteous authority there, and that's another subject for another day. I'd like to actually do another message on what to do with unrighteous authority. How do you deal with that?

Because I'm sure many of you will think of questions today as I share this, but we can't get into all that today. So maybe another time we'll do that one. But see, it's in our very culture the idea that it's right to throw all that tea in the harbor that somebody harvested, that somebody worked for, that somebody else owned because they're doing me wrong.

And they're not... Their authority is not authority that I recognize as being righteous authority in my life. So England, they call it the War of Rebellion. We call it the War of Independence. It's very interesting to me that when this Scripture was written by Paul...

Does anybody know who the emperor of Rome was at the time? Nero. If you know anything about Emperor Nero, you know, he makes Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, whoever you want to put in there today, look like the greatest people that ever walked the earth.

Emperor Nero hated Christians. Emperor Nero, in fact, he lit them up on fire at his parties. He poured tar on them and lit them up to kill them at his parties. It's believed that he burned down the city of Rome to build his palace and he blamed it on the Christians.

Nero was not a good guy. But the inspired writer, at the time when Nero was in charge, said everyone must submit to governing authorities for all authority comes from God. And those positions of authority have been placed there by God.

Do you know, if I'm not mistaken, Nero was the one who commanded Paul's execution. There was going to come a day when that man that he said we should obey was going to say his head comes off. He's a Christian.

We've had enough of him. You see, when you understand authority, you don't see people so much, but you see the Lord behind it all. When the government comes into your life to hinder something, I think about this.

Somebody just said they went to the Creation Museum. He told the testimony, the starter of the Creation Museum. I read it just this month. They had a piece of property all picked out that they were going to do this thing on.

And some atheists stirred up the government entities and so forth and the government refused to allow them to do it on that property. Now, the man of God doesn't say, OK, we're cooked now. It's over. We had this great property and the government has ruined it.

The man of God says, OK, God, you've got something better. He said because they denied that property, he said we were able to get a much bigger, better, closer to the highway property that could accommodate way more people.

Do you see that authority is not our enemy? Yes, God allowed that authority to be moved and to say no Creation Museum here. You may not build it. But no authority could stop when the Lord said they're going to build one here and it's an even better spot.

So that earthly authority only served to move them along to the fulfillment of a greater vision. And that's what faith says. You know what? There's no human authority that's going to ruin my life. Even if he chops my head off, I'm going to go be with the Lord.

And the Lord must be saying it's my time. I believe Paul lived that way. So faith is this is really an exercise of our faith, brothers and sisters, to believe that the authorities that God has put in my life, He is over them and He can release me from their authority in a moment or He can keep me under that thing for weeks and months if He has a greater purpose to accomplish through that.

Peter got really playing in 1 Peter chapter 2 13. He says, submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of them that do well.

God said, submit yourself to every ordinance. How many of you like the ordinances in your around your township? I don't see one hand. There's one. All right. We got one. It's just a little one, but it was every ordinance.

See, what is our testimony? Do we have the testimony that I'm a child of God? I'm serving Him. And if this thing that I want to do on my property is of God, He can open the door. And if it isn't, and if my township says no, then I'm not going to do it because I don't want to be.

I don't want my testimony to be. Yeah, those Christians, you know what? They just do whatever they want. They don't care about the rules. They don't get permits. They don't get building permits or this or that.

They just they just do whatever they think that, you know, because they serve God, they can just do anything they want. You know, they're not subject. No, that's not a good testimony. I believe the testimony is that we are submitting ourselves to every ordinance of God.

That's what it said. And believe me, I know there's a lot of them that I don't like. And there's more and more every day. God says we're supposed to demonstrate our faith by doing it. By doing it. I will submit myself to these people, even if it's Nero.

Okay, so I'll say it one more time. Faith does not see the person. It doesn't see that building inspector, that township supervisor, that zoning officer, that governor, that Supreme Court. Faith sees the position that that man is filling under God.

That's why I'm obeying. That's why I'm honoring. And by the way, the Bible, there's times when we do not have to obey, aren't there? Yes or no? Yes. Is there ever a time when we do not have to honor authority?

Never. You see that? There are extreme times where we must disobey because God said this is forbidden. Okay, in Russia this week, they passed a new law that said it is illegal to be a Jehovah Witness.

They seized all their properties. They just took it away. They said, you can't be Jehovah Witnesses anymore in our country. Now, let's just say that was us. You know, we're Christians, so we might think, well, praise God, you know, they're not allowed.

But hey, we could be the next ones. Right? Okay, you cannot witness for Jesus anymore. You can't meet together with other Christians. Can we obey that? We can't obey that. The Bible says don't forsake the gathering of the saints.

Now, we may not meet in a big building like this someday, but we must get together. No, we have to do it because God, well, that's not one He forbids, but, you know, we could say the government says you need to steal something.

Okay? No, God says you may not steal. That's something forbidden. Then there's these other things over here. These are things God commands. Okay, what are some commands of God? Honor your parents. Do good as much as lie within you.

Do good to all men. You know, there's hundreds of them. It's funny we can't think of any when we're on the spot. But these are the things that God commands. And then in between here, there's a whole lot of stuff that God neither commands nor forbids.

Now, I was reading from John Wesley's journal just a week ago. I got this from him and it really struck me as the truth. What is God when He tells us to obey? Government? Parents? Church? Husband? Boss?

Which category is He referring to? Is He saying that we should obey them in the things that He forbids? Obviously not, right? We can't do that. Is He saying that we should obey them in the things that God commands?

That's a little trickier. That wouldn't make sense, would it? Would it make sense for God to say, children, don't steal, don't kill, don't swear because your parents tell you not to. Would God say something like that?

In other words, God would be actually, in a way, putting Himself under this human being. No, the things that God has already commanded, they stand on their own. Those are commands of God. He doesn't need any human authority to tell us that.

Now, our parents should tell us to do what God says. But as John Wesley brought out, the thing that God is telling us to obey our human authorities in is this whole class of things that God neither says are forbidden or that are commanded.

That's what He's telling us to obey. And that doesn't feel very good in 2017 in America, does it? I mean, I don't mind obeying God. If God told something to do, He's God. You know, I can handle that. But you mean I've got to do all these things that some other human being says?

That doesn't sit real well with us. But that's exactly what God is talking about. The ordinances that you can't have your... like, you know, my property, you can't be within six feet of the property line if you want to have a shed, or ten feet, I forget.

Okay, God doesn't say anything about that. I mean, that's neither here nor there to Him. That doesn't matter. But the township says we think that's important. In fact, we think it's so important that you're not allowed to put a shed within ten feet.

And if you do, you're in trouble. So that's an example. We could think of a hundred of them if we wanted to here today. Many, many examples. The government does many things like that. Many things that God doesn't say a thing about.

He doesn't talk about lead paint, does He? You know, I'm a remodeling contractor, so the government talks to me a lot about lead paint. It tells me I have to do these certain things and get all these forms filled out, and I can't do...

I have to do it just right. Well, God doesn't have a thing to say about lead paint, but He has something to say about obeying your authority. And so that all those things, that whole category of things fits underneath the command to obey our human authorities.

It's this way in the home. God doesn't say you need to brush your teeth three times a day, right? I don't know of any verse that says that. Is it okay if your parents say that? Yeah, that's something that God's indifferent about.

And some families say you've got to brush them three times a day, and other families say I don't care about that. And you're in whatever family you're in. And guess who put you in there? God did. Don't forget that faith.

So it's those things indifferent. Somehow today there's this lie that I don't appreciate that says nobody has a right to give me any rules except it's either something forbidden or commanded by God. And if they do, they're out of their place.

They have stepped across a line that nobody has a right to step over. And essentially what that's saying is the only thing that I'm bound to do is that what God says. That I don't need to obey human authority.

And this is in the church too. We're going to look at that one later. That whole idea. Nobody has a right to do that. But that's not what God says. He says, yes, they do. Your parents have a right to give you rules that are not in the Bible.

They have no right to tell you to go steal so that we can eat supper tonight. Right? They don't need to tell you don't kill people because it's wrong. God already says that. But there's a whole bunch of these rules that earthly authorities have to make to make their places function.

To make that home function. Okay? Our home has rules. And they're not... That's not unusual. Every home does. They're the rules that Laura and I decided that we wanted to have in our home. Because guess what?

We got that given to us from above. God said, you are the parents. You're the authorities. You seek me and you run your home as you feel like I would have you to. Okay? So I'm getting a little ahead of myself here.

But why don't we go right into parental authority. I thought about starting with that one because really that's where it all starts, isn't it? The first command with a promise is what? Honor your father and your mother.