All right, well, good evening, everybody. I have the privilege of bringing the sermon this evening and then again next week. And then Pastor Will gets to return to his studies. So he's graciously giving me these ones. 

We're gonna be in Exodus chapter 20. So you can take your copy of the word of God and go there with me. We're gonna be all over the Bible, if I'm being honest, but we're gonna start Exodus chapter 20. 

And we, as I've been able to be up here on Sunday nights, we've been going through the 10 commandments, and so we're on the fifth commandment. So we're on verse 12. And let me read all of these, and then we'll pray, and we'll consider what, the Lord is commanding us to do in his moral law. 

God spoke all these words saying, I am Yahweh, I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth, you shall not worship them or serve them. For I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and on the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. 

You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of Yahweh your God. In it you shall not do any work. You, or your son or your daughter, your male or your female slave, or your cattle, or your sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days, Yahweh made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, Yahweh blessed the seventh day, the Sabbath day, excuse me, and made it holy. 

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh your God gives you. You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male slave or his female slave or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor. 

And all the people perceive the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpets and the mountain smoking. and the people perceived it and they shook and stood at a distance. 

And I'll just stop there. I like to throw in that last verse because it, um, I think helps remind us how sober the delivery of this law actually is. This is not just, um, advice. This is the moral law of God. 

Please bow with me in prayer. And then we'll consider verse 12 together. 

Heavenly father, we, are here in reverence of your word and in reverence of you as you would speak to us this day, this Lord's day through your word. We delight in having been able to hear your word this morning. We delight in the worship that we were able to offer you and we seek your aid now in offering worship to you this hour. as we hear your word, as we would understand it, as we would be shaped by it and by the power of your spirit using it to make us Christ-like. I ask that you would so do and equip us in order to understand and perceive your word correctly. I ask that you would capture our attention and our affections and bring them up to yourself that we would Perceive you and so be shaped by that perception. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

All right, the first four commandments really fit under the heading of the greatest commandment, which is you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your might. And these deal with loving God. And so you see that that means there's to be no other God. So the Lord God is the one whom we are to worship.

Then in the second commandments, we're not to make any graven image, any idol, any picture of God, or not to have pictures as aids in our worship. The Lord is a God who reveals Himself in His Word and in His living Word and the Lord Jesus Christ. primarily through the written word to us, the word of Christ. And so we're to worship him through his appointed means.

The third commandment talks about how we're supposed to reverence the Lord God. And the fourth commandment tells us when we're supposed to worship him. So this is the moral law of God.

we get to these last six commandments and they're really fleshing out how we're supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves. And so this fifth commandment in verse 12, honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which Yahweh your God gives you, is the first of loving your neighbor.

Now, This commandment is not just for little children. It's obviously, most obviously for little children, but it is for all of us. And I wanna just emphasize here something and show you how sober this commandment really is.

In Ezekiel 22, verse seven, The Lord lists not honoring father and mother as a reason for why the people went into captivity. The death penalty is prescribed for somebody who does not honor his father or his parents, his father or his mother, either of his parents. In Exodus 21, it's just the next chapter, verse 15 to 17. That's spelled out. He who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death. He who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.

Scripture considers disobedience to parents as a mark of a society that's been given over to depravity three times in Romans 1. We'll just read that. If you remember in Romans 1, where he begins to talk about the wrath of God, starting in verse 18, and then all the way through the end of Romans 1, that there's these three times where he says the Lord has gave them over. In verse 24, he gave them over to lust of their hearts, to impurity. Verse 26, for this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. In verse 28, just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over, and notice this list, to an unfit mind, to do those things which are not proper. Having been filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, excuse me, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, violent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, and disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, et cetera.

Proverbs calls the instructions of mothers and fathers a graceful wreath to your head and ornaments about your neck. a son who follows a wise father will have knowledge wisdom discernment and safety from both evil men and the adulterous woman you see that just right out of the gate in Proverbs 1 verse 9 and chapter 2 verses 1 to 22 that the wisdom that comes from parents is is what is helpful and needful in order for you to live your life. And so rejecting that, Proverbs calls one who rejects his father's instruction or his mother's instruction a fool. And a fool can expect a whip for his back. He can expect to not have enough to satisfy him. He can expect to never have enough humility to actually live life rightly or rise in the esteem of other people. 

So this command. It's not just the command which every parent has used and should use when they need to take their child aside and explain to the child that they didn't listen to the instruction that was given to them, and they should have, and so they're going to be disciplined. And then they need to then do what? Obey your mother and father. It's not just for that. It is for that. But this command is really the, I don't think I'm overstating the case when I say that there's a sense in which this is the foundation of all human authority, right here. 

Let me just walk through this here. I think this is the foundation of all human authority because From the very beginning, humanity was created in a family, with a family unit. And from that family unit, as it expanded, you eventually get clans or tribes, and then nations. But it all comes back to the patriarch at some point, the father, and obviously the mother, with whom he began the family. Abraham would be an example of this. Noah would be an example of this. And even Joseph, when he's raised up as, you know, the prime minister over Egypt, he gives great deference to his father because he's a member of his father's household. And then his father, whose name is Israel, becomes this great nation called by his name. 

I mean, it's pretty clear that, you know, It's from this family comes this people group, comes this nation. So this is not a political theory talk or anything, but you'll notice that the family unit is the basis of, I think it's the basis of all human society. Therefore, it's the first of all human authority. 

So let's walk through this command. We're going to see three things. What does it mean to honor? Who are my parents? And why is this command related to long life? So I just want to touch on each one of those, and then we're going to apply it. So there's going to be applications woven throughout. But I think we're going to see this. Fifth commandment teaches us to show reverence to, give obedience to, and love those in authority over us. That's what we're going to see. 

So what does it mean to honor? To honor, honor, it's the Hebrew word kavod, and it's the word glorify or give reverence to, show honor to, and it's an imperative here, it's a command, but it's really the idea of consider more significant. more in Old Testament times, the word kavod literally means heavy, and it's because you measured something's value in its weight in gold. And so you would, you ascribe God, glory, kavod, because he is, Am I saying the right word? Now I think kavod is holy, right? That's right, okay. I had all these notes and now I'm thinking, did I say the right one? God is considered the most heavy because he's the most valuable. There's nothing that is of more value than he is. And so that is the same here where you're supposed to give to those in authority over you, and primarily your father and your mother, you're supposed to consider them as of particular value, of greater value, of greater reverence.

And this is obvious in the way a little child You know, you say obey me when I tell you to do something, obey me. And the child is supposed to, if you just kind of break it down into just kind of theoretically what's going on here, the child is supposed to take his own word and desire and subject it to the word of his parents, right? He's supposed to consider the word that came from his father or his mother as overriding his own.

That's what we do with the word of the Lord. Same thing. That's what Eve should have done with the fruit. It looks desirable. It looks delicious. It also looks like it could really help me. But the Lord said, don't do it. So I should subject myself to the word of the Lord. That's what we're training children to do.

So what does it mean to honor? It means to consider these ones as more as worth more reverence, if I could say it that way. Let me put it in the words of Calvin and then the words of Francis Turrington.

Here's what Calvin said. This is a direct quote. There are three parts of the honor here spoken of, reverence, obedience, and gratefulness. The Lord confirms the first, reverence, when he enjoins that one who curses his father or mother be killed. We just saw that in Exodus 21, verse 17. It's also in Leviticus 20, verse nine, and Proverbs 20, 20. If you're taking notes and want to know those.

He goes on. There he punishes contempt and abuse. He confirms the second, obedience, when he decrees the penalty of death for disobedient and rebellious children. That's Deuteronomy 21, 18 to 21. What Christ says in Matthew chapter 15 refers to the third kind of honor, gratefulness. It is God's commandment that we do good to our parents.

You say, what's Matthew 15? Well, let me read that for you. It's a classic words of Christ. You probably, if you're not guessing what it is, the minute I start, you'll go, oh, that's right, I remember this.

In Matthew 15, right from the start. Then some Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread. And he answered and said to them, why do you yourselves transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father or mother is to be put to death. But you say, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever you might benefit from me is given to God, he need not honor his father. And by this you invalidate the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites, rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commands of men.

This is connected to what's in First Timothy five, verse four. I think the principle is the same principle that Paul commands the families of the widows who are going to be put on a list. It's the same principle that the Lord is critiquing here where he says, Paul says here, "'If any widow has children or grandchildren, "'they,' that's the children or grandchildren, "'must first learn to practice piety "'in regard to their own family, "'and to make some return to their parents, "'for this is acceptable in the sight of God.'" In other words, the widow should first be taken care of by her family, her children, before being taken care of financially by the church, right? If she doesn't have any family who can take care of her, then the church needs to take care of her. But if she has family, they have an obligation before God to take care of her.

And that's the principle that the Lord's critiquing here where the children don't have a right, no matter what the Jewish law said, to say, well, actually, I can't give you any financial aid when you're elderly, mom and dad. I can't give you any, I can't take care of you. You're just gonna have to figure it out because I'm giving everything to the Lord. The Lord doesn't, the Lord's not pleased with that, because you have an obligation to love your neighbor, and one of the first, the first neighbor you ever had in life was your mother and your father. Was your mother, really, because you were in her womb for nine months. And then your father immediately after.

So Calvin sees those three things, and I mean, he's right. Here's Francis Turreton, says much the same thing. I don't know if he got this from Calvin. He came 100 or so years later. But he's in the same tradition. He has four things. First, love. And he notices that in Romans 131, There's those without natural affection, and natural affection is, ah, storgace, natural affection is storgace, it's familial affection, it's what children have for their parents or brothers and sisters have for each other. And so the first thing you're owed, that you owe in this command is love, and then he lists the same three as Calvin, reverence, obedience, and gratitude, and lo and behold, he quotes the exact same passages. as evidence for that.

So this is what it means to honor. It means to revere, obey, and to be grateful. And obedience is very clear that this is what is commanded because in Ephesians 6, 1, the Apostle Paul applies this command, quotes it, but he says to the children in the church, obey your parents and the Lord. For this is right. And he says, this is the first commandment with a promise, that it may go well with you in the land. So he's quoting this verse, but he's not saying honor. He's saying obey. So obedience is part of this honoring.

So the question then comes, and maybe this is kind of like the man who sought to justify himself, but I didn't mean it in that light. Who are my parents? Who then is my neighbor? I'm not saying that exactly, but who are my parents? And we can consider this narrowly and broadly. Obviously, it's your parents. It's your mom and dad. It's the ones who raised you. Broadly considered though, it would be any who are in authority over you.

Okay, let's talk about this first one, your parents from childhood. These are the ones who raised you. This is the mother who gave birth to you. This is the father who trained you. In Proverbs 23, this is such a fantastic group of verses here, verse 22 to 24. The Lord says this, listen to your father who begot you. Do not despise your mother when she is old. Buy truth and do not sell it. Get wisdom and discipline and understanding. Now, this is not just, sometimes the Proverbs, you know, it totally changes verse to verse. As, because the Proverbs are short, pithy statements that contain huge truth and contain huge wisdom. But this is, where do you get truth, wisdom, discipline and understanding? Primarily in your life, it's from your parents. I mean, we're speaking in ideals, right? There might be, there's obviously those situations where somebody has terrible parents or doesn't have parents, is raised with, in an orphanage setting or something like that, or bounces around with the foster care system, that happens. But what is most normal and is obviously the ideal is the family unit. So where do you, in that family unit, learn wisdom and discipline and understanding? You learn it from mom and dad.

So listen to your father who begot you. Do not despise your mother when she is old. In verse 24 here, the father of the righteous will greatly rejoice and he who begets a wise son will be glad in him. Let your father and mother be glad. Let her rejoice who gave birth to you. This is the application of this command. Listen to your parents and apply their wisdom.

Now, my children are six and down. And so for them, this really comes down mainly to your mom and dad tell you to clean your room, go clean your room. Go actually do what we tell you to do. But for you and me, who are adults, and if our parents are still living or even if our parents are not living, there's still a reverence due to our parents. There's still a reverence due to them as those who raised us, as those who imparted their wisdom to us.

I think even I'm in a bit of a unique case where I bear the name of my dad and my grandfather. So there's a very real sense in which what James Wilson III does reflects on James Wilson II and James Wilson I. Why is it that our children bear our name? And in many cultures, the child is first known by the accomplishments of their parents, And then the opposite happens where the parents, the conduct of the children then affects the reputation of the parents. This is just how the Lord's built creation.

We owe them reverence and honor. And while the obedience looks different, because we're being taught how to obey the Lord when we're children, when we're little children. And then we grow into adulthood and we leave the shelter of our parents' household and we strike out. There's a reverence that's due for our parents, which is gonna look different than just strict obedience, but we're taking the lessons and we are acting in a way where we understand that my conduct reflects on my upbringing. My conduct reflects on my parents. I think if you're a son, especially my conduct reflects on my father.

The New Testament family structure was such that there's honor due in the home in the spheres in which the home was structured. So honor was due to the husband from the wife, Honor is due to the parents, so mom and dad, from the children, and to the master and the mistress from the servants, or the slaves. And we don't, you know, our servants today are like robot vacuums, right, or a dishwasher. They're not, we don't have people, actually, in our homes doing that, unless we're paying somebody to come over and clean.

But, we apply these same, The principles of the New Testament family structure, almost straight across, the children are commanded to honor their mother and father. The husband is commanded to lead and serve and love his wife, and the wife is commanded to submit to, which also includes obedience, her husband. This is the family, and we are primarily to honor our physical parents, our natural parents. This extends then to what the family unit is teaching the children, which is that the children are learning how to operate in a sphere under authority. And so then as they move about in society, as they get older, The application of this broadens out to, you honor those in authority over you.

So just going back to this principle, the families have been the core of all human civilization, nations and people groups developing from patriarch. The king or ruler would even take, you know, it kind of takes the place of the clan's father. And masters are called fathers. And you remember Naaman when he's coming to, into Israel, and Elijah tells him, go wash in the Jordan. But he tells him through Gehazi, go wash in the Jordan seven times. And Naaman just absolutely rejects it. And his servants come to him and say, my father. If he told you to do something great, you'd go do it. But he told you to do this small thing. Why not just do it?

But they address him as father. Deborah is addressed as mother, as a mother in Israel in Judges 5, verse 7. So that's just illustrating that these rulers, or in our setting, be the civil magistrates, be the judges, the police officers, the ones who are in local or state or federal rule over us, these are the ones who are, in a sense, acting as the fathers and the mothers of the communities that they're in. And this is even the way the language is of elders in the church, where an elder, in order to be qualified as an elder, has to prove in his fathering, in his home, and how he leads his home, and how he is a father to his children.

Why? Because the church is, one, because the church is to operate like a family. but also because that is the fundamental place, realm of authority, and if his authority isn't operating successfully there, his authority's not gonna operate successfully in the church. So the broader application of this is we need to honor those who are in authority over us, even if they're not our natural mother and father, or the parents who raised us, but they're the sheriff or the sheriff's deputy or the county clerk or what have you.

So the question then is who is your authority? It could be your husband, it could be your father, it could be your pastor, it could be your employer, your mayor, the judge, whether it's a state judge or a federal judge or what have you. We honor them. We give them Reverence, we give them obedience where it's due, and we're grateful for them.

Now, all authority, the reason why is because all authority from the parents whom the Lord gives you to those who are in authority in the government you're in, all authority comes from the Lord. And it's no accident that the Lord is called Father. that he's God the Father. It's not, he's obviously, that's helping us understand his relationship between him and his son, that they've eternally been in a father-son relationship, those two persons of the Trinity, along with the Holy Spirit, and so they're, we speak of them in those ways, but also Paul says in Ephesians 3, that he gives glory to God the Father, from whom every family on earth gets its name.

So there's all human fathers are somehow analogous back to him, but so is the rest of any human authority. In Romans 13 verse one, every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. There is no authority except from God. And those which exist have been appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists that authority has opposed the ordinance of God. You see that it's from God. And so our parents are supposed to be in a position of delegated authority from God to us was when we're children. So there's a sense in which it's, I obey you as though you are God telling me what to do. And obviously the Paul bounds their authority in Ephesians one, where he says, obey them in the Lord. So, if your parent tells you to sin, you're not obligated to obey that. In fact, you're obligated not to obey that. But, excuse me. They occupy a position of authority from the Lord.

So does the mayor. So does the governor. So does the president. So does the congressman or the congresswoman, whether that's in the Oregon House and Senate or the Washington House and Senate or the National House or Senate. All of them are owed our honor.

So then the question comes, This is the last one I want to ask and consider here. So then the second part of the commandment, that your days may be prolonged in the land, which your God gives you. How is that related to this? What's the, why is that promise or that, um, that hope given? after this command. And the ones that follow, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery. He doesn't say you shall not murder that your days will be prolonged in the land. You shall not commit adultery that your days may be prolonged in the land. So why is it that this one, that there's this promise attached to it, that your days will be prolonged in the land, Calvin actually said we should apply it to all of them. So I guess there is that belief out there. But why does it show up here is the question I'm going to ask.

I think there's two reasons. The first one, and most importantly for Israel, is that this is the covenant. And so if they are to remain in the land, they need to obey. So you'd say that's a bit obvious, but I think that's just the first one. Let's just name it, see it, and recognize it, that living in the land required obeying the Lord. perfectly, perpetually, and out of the heart.

The second reason is, I think this, that since authority has been put in place by the Lord, and disobeying that authority, when it's executed lawfully, is tantamount to disobeying God, You actually bring about the wrath of God when you dishonor the authority put over you. And you see that in what's commanded for children who are not obeying their parents. It's probably thinking of a teenage son in Exodus 21, verse 15 to 17. He who strikes his father or his mother shall surely be put to death. I don't think this is a three-year-old who's throwing a fit and slaps his dad when his dad's walking him into the room to go teach him. This is a son who hates his father or his mother, probably in his adolescence or early adulthood, where he's still in their home under their authority, but clearly shows that he hates them and is striking. He needs to be put to death. Or the one who curses his father or mother, same kind of thing. He needs to be put to death. And these are serious, breaches of this command because this authority was put there by God. So if you disobey this authority, if you dishonor this authority, you are dishonoring God.

Okay, so that's perhaps the most, or maybe the second most obvious. And in Romans 13, The judgment that people who disobey the governing authorities can expect is to have that authority use its power against you. So you see this where somebody is just not driving according to the law, and the police apprehend that person, and they give him a ticket or take him off to jail. Perhaps he then has a court-ordered appearance later on in order to stand before a judge. But the point is, failing to obey the law brings penalty. This is the authority that's been delegated to them by God. So spurning authority, failing to honor authority, brings just natural consequences like that. 

The other one which I think maybe we don't think of right out of the gate is this, that your parents have striven to give you wisdom so that you can lead a life that goes well. Let me just think about that. When I'm training my son, my goal is not that I'll just get him to obey me, because it'll go easier for me. It's not just that I'm tired of having to get up off the couch, so I'm finally going to go correct him so that I can go back and sit on the couch. That's not the point. The point is his education, his good, his success in life, his knowing that, knowing what right and wrong is so that he realizes his guilt before God and so he can turn to the Lord in dependence of faith. Like that's, I'm trying to get across all of that. 

Your parents, you know, so far as they were honoring the Lord, were striving to give you wisdom. And so then if you reject their wisdom and live opposite it, live foolishly, you bring about natural consequences that they knew were going to fall on you and they tried their hardest to get it to where you wouldn't live that way. And they tell you make sure you pay your credit card off every month. You don't do that, they can get out of hand real easy, and you're gonna be digging yourself out of a hole that they keep filling back in. You say, whatever, I'm just gonna rack that thing up, and when it maxes out, I'll open up another one, and when that maxes out, I'll open up another one. What do you find? You find that you're buried under debt. That's just one practical example of this principle that the Lord in our parents has given us so much wisdom and failing to apply it will bring much harm on yourself and could even spell your destruction, just naturally. 

I know it's Ted Tripp, or somebody has said that eventually your children are gonna listen to somebody. And it's just that the longer you don't correct them, the more painful it'll be for them when eventually they have to listen. Because it could be that you're not correcting them and teaching them, so then eventually it gets to where now they're being dragged. into court and now they're being sentenced to a severe jail penalty or something. And what happened? Well, now they're being forced to learn a lesson they should have learned when they were a child. So parents are to teach wisdom and the children are to heed it. And we're to live even as adults with the building off of the wisdom that we received from our parents. 

I've given you a lot of applications. Let me give you just a couple more that I think flow from this, but might not be what you'd think of immediately. I think there's an application here for honoring what we might consider the great men who've gone before us. And so you think of a statue to a significant man from American history, or the Lincoln Memorial, or the Vietnam Memorial, or the Iwo Jima Memorial, or something like that. There's something particularly reverential in that, where you recognize what these men have done for the nation, for society, in history, and the fruit of their labor that we still enjoy. I think there's something connected to this commandment with that. There's a kind of showing honor, showing deference to them. 

I think that deference should be paid to the elderly, especially the elderly in the church, those who've walked with God. for years, who've raised us or who've raised our parents, who've learned from the Lord, who've contributed much to the life of the church before us, who are really largely responsible for us inheriting what we inherit in the community that we live in, in the church that we live in. There's a deference and a consideration and esteem that should be paid to them. 

Obviously connected to that is caring for the elderly in your own family. When your parents or maybe if your grandparents are older and becoming more infirm, these are ones that you ought to take care of and make sure that they are being honored and cared for. 

Reformed systematic theology, so Joel Beakey, Paul Smalley, they say this, which I thought was helpful. The fifth commandment requires us to regard our parents as important and worthy of our respect. It prohibits us from regarding them lightly. That is the primary application of this command, and then it flows out into, all aspects of society where there's authority systems. 

Because the commandments teach us to honor God. And that's really where we end up. That's just the main application. This is the law of the Lord. And when we obey this, we honor the Lord. And we revere him, we respect him, we obey him, we submit to his word. And when we obey our mother and father, when we respect them, live the lessons that they've given to us, when we heed their instruction and take to heart the wisdom they imparted, when we desire to live in a way that reflects well on them and brings honor to their name, which we continue to carry with us as we go, when we do that, We glorify God, and God is pleased. 

That's where it all ends up, is that when the Lord gives us this command, and we heed it, and we obey it, that he receives the glory, because we're living how he desires us to live. That's the sermon. 

So let me close in prayer, and then Dylan can come up here if he's got his hands free. 

Heavenly Father, we praise you for your good law. We praise you for the parents you gave us, and we praise you that You have raised many of us in this room in godly homes from godly parents. We thank you for the wisdom that they imparted to us. Or for those of us who did not have that experience, I pray that you would teach us what it is to honor our parents, even if we did not inherit much in the realm of wisdom from them. and pray that you would teach us to honor our authorities. And so, Lord, that you would be pleased and receive glory and honor from us in our obedience and our diligence, even our peaceableness in society and in every realm of society where you've placed us. 

Go before us this week, Lord, and enable us to honor you. Pray that you would shape us into Christlikeness, teach us to live in a way you would have us. And we ask this in Christ's name. Amen.