Beneath His Wings Part 2
Scriptures: Psalm 91:1-6; Exodus 20:12; Matthew 6:3-4; 2 Timothy 2:15
Introduction:
This is part two of my series that I have titled “Beneath His Wings”. Last week I focused on how we are under the wings of Christ. When we become a Christian we immediately come up under His wings and our jobs are to try to get as many people as we can to join us. Under His wings exists everything we need to walk through this world. Our foundation Scripture last week was taken from Psalm 91:2-6 which says “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust.’ Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day; nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness; nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.” As I shared with you on last wee, when we understand that within Christ we have a place of refuge when we are going through trials and we do not have to walk in fear when we are facing these trials and tribulations. This understanding allows us to spread our wings to allow others to receive what we have received through Christ.
This morning I want to focus on our being under the wings of our parents. When I use the term parent I want you to generalize this term to include your parents by blood, adoption, foster care or whoever it was that was the parent figure for you. The person who was a parent to you took you under their wings so that you could learn how to exist in this world. Part of this teaching focused on how to treat others. Whether it was good or bad, whether you had good teachers or not, you learned something about how to treat others. This morning I want you to focus on the good that you learned. Those good things that you learned from your parent figure have enabled you to take others under your wings and I will explain shortly how this takes place. But first I want to tell you about something I saw on a nature show.
I was watching this nature show once about birds. On this show it demonstrated how the mother birds teach their chicks to fly. It is rather crude, but extremely effective. When the small chicks grow to a certain size it is time for them to stretch their wings and learn to fly. Now these chicks are very comfortable staying in the nest and allowing the mother birds to continue feeding them (it is the mother bird who knows when the small chicks are ready to leave the nest.) When that time comes, the mother bird eases the chick to the edge of the nest and then pushes them out. At that moment, two things happen. Either the chick will start flapping its wings and start flying, or it will look around and wonder what happened as it crashes to the ground. If you have ever seen small birds on the ground dead beneath its nest chances are that they did not pass the test of spreading their wings. This phenomenon happens with humans also when we “kick” our kids out of the house when it is time for them to go. As a matter of fact, we call parents whose kids have left the house “empty nesters” which comes from what happens when the mother birds kicks her chicks out of the nest.
I. Honor Father and Mother
With that story in mind, turn to Exodus 20:12. Exodus 20:12 records the first commandment that carries a promise. It states the following: “Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.” Honor has several definitions, but there are two that I think warrants our attention this morning. The first is “to have high regard or respect for” and the second is “adherence to principles considered right.” Both of these definitions of honor allow us to fully walk under the wings of our parents. When we respect our parents, we listen to them with open ears and open hearts. What we learn from them, we adhere to it or follow those teachings throughout our lives. These two elements are crucial to how we learn to spread our wings.
My parents taught me to spread my wings naturally and most important, spiritually. They gave me lesson after lesson until I came to the point of understanding and stepping out on my on. Even then they remained available to counsel me if I needed their help. When God gave Moses this commandment, He did not put a time limit on it. What I mean by this is that as long as our parents are alive, we are to honor them. We continue honoring them once they have died by continuing in the right teachings that they taught us. God says that if we do this, our days will be long in the land which He gives us. Many are those whose lives have been cut short because they did not honor or listen to their parents. They thought they knew what was best for them and that they were old enough to make their own decisions. However, there are many more that do honor their parents, listen to them and continue to live by their teachings. Even if you did not have good parents growing up, God probably placed someone in your life to provide what you needed, even if it came much later in your life.
Since I cannot speak for any of you, I will share some experiences from my past that speaks to how my parents taught me to spread my wings spiritually. These experiences are so ingrained within me that today I do some things without even thinking about it. So let me start with this story about my father.
You Don’t Have To Broadcast What You Do! My father was one of those men who did things for others without expecting anything in return and more importantly, he never bragged about what he did for others. I remember when I was about 10 years old, I went with my father to visit our pastor at his home, he had been sick. My father talked with him for a little while and then we got up to leave. My father casually reached into his pocket and grabbed some money that he had already placed there. He pulled it out in such a way that you could not see it in his hands. When he shook our pastor’s hands, he placed the money in his palm. I was not sure if I saw what I saw but I filed it away. On another occasion I went with my father to visit someone he knew in the hospital. Once again, I noticed as we were leaving that he reached into his pocket and removed some money that he placed in the person’s hand as we were leaving. When we were back in the car, I asked my father about it. He told me that when you’re helping someone in need, you do not want to share it with the world. He also said that you did not want to embarrass the person you were giving the money to by doing it where others could see. He let me know that it should be a private moment between you and the person. What is so amazing to me is that I watched my father do this for years even though sometimes he was struggling to keep us with everything we needed. But his actions stayed with me. When I do something for someone now, I try my best to make it private and without expecting them to do acknowledge the action. Again, I am not doing it for the recognition, but because that is how Jesus wanted us to do it. Jesus told us in Matthew 6:3-4 “But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.” My father taught me to give to others and do so in such a way that God would be pleased with it. Many are those who do things for others and then stand on the mountain tops and yell out what they did, oftentimes embarrassing the person they did it for. God is not pleased with that, so I thank God for my father teaching me through his example. Let me share another example of something I learned from my father.
Helping Strangers. Hebrews 13:1-2 says “Let brotherly love continue. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels.” We know that God has angels here on earth helping us. Some of us have encountered angels and did not know it. My father believed this Scripture. When we were growing up my father would bring people home and feed them, especially new people from the job. I remember one young man who was doing an internship where my father worked. He did not know anyone in the city so my father brought him to our house for dinner. He did this on several occasions while this young man was doing his internship. All of you have been to our house – and we try to make it your house so that you feel welcome. When I was growing up we always had visitors coming in and out of our home. My parents did their best to make them feel at home and that has stayed with me. Most of what you see today in me came from those teachings that I received from my parents. Now let me give you one example pertaining to my mother before I close.
What Do You Think? My mother came from a line of ministers. Her father was a minister as were her uncle and some cousins. My mother, when she was a child, would follow my grandfather when he went to preach at a Church. She grew up in Church and she grew up asking and getting answers to biblical questions. When she did not know something, she went to the Bible or other books to find the answers. For this reason she was known at our Church as someone who understood and knew the word of God. I remember our older pastor would sit in his study with the door cracked and listen to my mother teach the adult Sunday school class. When he delivered his sermon, he would often mention things that my mother had said to her class. My mother was in her thirties during this time. Well, as all of you know, I was a mother’s boy. So what does a mother’s boy do? He debates with his mother. My mother and I would have these long discussions that started when I was a child. I remember when I joined Church at the age of six and came home and told my mother. Her response to me was “I knew you would.” When I would ask her questions, sometimes she would tell me to go and look it up and then we could talk about it. I debated my understanding with her while she defended hers with me. We could go on for hours. When my grandfather was around it would get extremely loud in the house with the debates. Most of the in-laws would leave the room while the blood relatives argued Scripture. My father would not participate in these debates, but he would discuss his opinions quietly, one on one. But if you got my mother’s side of the family in one room with me and my older brother – the debates would start. One of the last photo’s I have of my grandfather is when he and I were sitting in my parent’s living room debating Scripture. So what did I get from this? My mother believed what Paul said to Timothy in his second letter to him. He told Timothy to “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” The only way to answer questions was you had to study and my mother stressed this to me. I remember when I preached my first sermon, she was very proud of me. The title of that message was “Time is Running Out”. A couple of weeks later, I was invited to speak at another Church. This time the title was “Get Right Church and Let’s Go Home.” After that sermon I asked my mother what she thought and she told me that it sounded like the first sermon and I needed to have studied more. She spoke it plain and simple – I had taken the easy way out. That was a learning experience.
So what did I learn from those debates? For those of you who come to Bible study, you already know this. I teach and push each of you to reason out your beliefs the same way my mother pushed me. She expected me to read the Bible and come up with a reason for what I believed. As I got older, she started calling me and asking for my thoughts on different subject. It was not so much so that we could debate, but because I had entered the ministry and she expected me to be studying so that I could answer or give an intelligent opinion on her questions.
These are just three examples of ways that my parents taught me to spread my wings – and there are many more. But let me put these three teachings into perspective for you. Had my parents not taught me these three lessons, I might not be standing her today. You see, some of the seeds that I sown based on my parent’s teachings led me to being here right now. Some of the people that I have helped have helped me in return when I needed it. Some gave me referrals to jobs. Some looked after my family while I traveled. My understanding of Scripture and my being able to know where to go and get answers to yours and my questions comes from what I have learned. My willingness to talk to a stranger and yes, introduce them to Christ came from these three teachings. All that I am started with me first being under my parents’ wings and learning from them. Once I got to the point where I needed to stand on my own and spread my wings, my parents released me. My parents stood on the promise of the wisdom from Proverbs 22:6 which says, Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
What Did You Learn?
Remember at the beginning when I talked about the mother bird basically kicking the chick out of the nest so that it would learn to fly? If the chick did not flap it wings and fly, it fell to the ground, either to its death, or to be killed by other animals should it survive the fall. Well in our lives the same thing happens. When we leave our parents’ home, we do so either with the wings to fly or we fall to the ground and become the prey for another predator in the world.
So this is where you complete this sermon with your own experiences. When you were kicked out of the nest, did you fly or fall to the ground? Think about it like this, if you are living on your own right now, you learned something from your parents, or parent figure, that allowed you to mature and eventually get out on your own. Someone taught you about paying bills. Someone taught you about budgets, finances, check books, etc. Someone taught you to cook or at least how to order out. All of these things we have all learned over time, but the real question is what did you learned spiritually in order to help you spread your wings. Did you learn to love others? Did you learn to give to others? Did you learn to pray and expect an answer? There are many ways you can spread your wings, but the most important way is to spread your wings on behalf of our Savior, Jesus Christ. If you do everything with Christ in mind, thinking about how he would do it, that is a major start. If you incorporate what your parents taught you in the natural about spiritual things, then you know how to spread your wings in such a way as to draw others to you. Reflect on what you have learned from your parents and finish this message!
Next week is Father’s Day Sunday so I feel obligated to speak to the fathers next week, so I will complete this message in two week. God bless.
