Restoring God’s Family

Introduction

Deuteronomy chapter 6, if you will. Deuteronomy 6. Brother Purcell did not know that this was the beginning of my lesson. And so his invitation song works great. Deuteronomy 6, verse 4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might. And these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart, and you shall teach them diligently to your sons, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way. And when you lie down and when you rise up, and you shall buy them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead, and you shall write them on the doorpost of your house, and on your gates.

And that’s not just saying you need some witness imagery on your wall that has, you know, the appropriate scripture. I mean, Lauren’s got some scripture things she’s made on cricket and stuff on our walls that everybody comments on in once Glenn. That I go for more vinyl than the cricket company can make in a year, I think. Michael’s loves us. They see us coming. Hobby Lobby, too. That’s the biblical one, right? Hobby Lobby. That Hobby Lobby sees us coming and they say, okay, the Bowman’s are here. We’re gonna sell some vinyl. That everybody loves to have things like this on their wall. But that’s not just that’s not what it’s talking about expressly there. The idea of adorning your house with these things is that is that the message of God is front and center to everything that the family is.

Now, just a quick show of. I’ll ask for a show of hands. Normally I say don’t give me show of hands, but how many of you thought this was going to be a head fake? We’re gonna talk about restoring God’s family, and it’s really gonna end up being a lesson on the church. Nobody. Wow, you guys are good. Because that’s not what it’s about. I figure Daniel and Julianne would probably know better because I think they were actually there for this lesson the first time I preached at the center. But that’s not what this is about. It is a worthy topic of discussion, and we’ll make some points along the way that address those things, but that’s not what this is about. So now you may be wondering, why are we talking about the family and about marriage and particularly what we’re going to be talking about, the one o’clock hour, in a weekend meeting on restoration?

And I would say that’s a fair question. That’s even a good question. And I’m a firm believer, much to my wife’s dismay, that when there is an elephant in the room, you say hello to it. Or said another way, when there’s an elephant in the room, you address it. Because then everyone can listen and stop wondering about whether or not I see the elephant.

Number one, these series have been planned for 10 months now or so. And these were actually the two sermons that Tony said, Would you come preach those? We’re the two that we were getting today. I traded some text messages with Mike about it over the over the time. You sure these are the ones you learned? Three weeks ago, I wrote to Thomas, you sure these are the ones you learned? Ask me why it’s not you sure these are the ones you want. Not because I’m ashamed of these lessons, but because they’re lessons that require some maturity. And there were four other lessons in the series I could have plugged in. But I want to say something to you about this. This series is not about restoration in a vacuum.

But rather I like to think of it about as restoring it. Restoring things that the devil is tearing apart as fast as we can put them back together. And these two lessons, along with one that didn’t make the cut, which was actually the genesis for the whole thing. It’s called a passion for purity. Maybe Tony will borrow it to preach it sometimes. I have no problem with him doing that. I borrow enough from him. Were the first three that I wrote in the series. And so what I want to say is for these ten months, I’ve talked with your minister and I’ve talked with your elders, and I’ve come to two conclusions. You have great men serving this capacity. And you ought that ought to be a reason that you thank God for them.

You have men of foresight and conviction serving as your elders. And I know there’s been some turnover in their ranks because of life events happening over the last two, three years. But one of the things that has always impressed me about this congregation is that you look within yourselves and you find men capable and willing to lead. And then ask them to shepherd you the way God intended people to.

Because I know he approaches that with great courage and great faith and great conviction as well. It doesn’t take much in the way of deductive skill to look at Western culture and civilization and to conclude that culturally, at least for the time being, we’ve lost the battle when it comes to defining the family. Whatever laws may be passed, whatever decisions may be rendered, whatever verdicts handed down, culture is resistant to these kinds of images defining what a family is. They resist this. And while this may seem like a titanic shift, it’s really been building for some time. And for reasons like the proliferation of promiscuity or adultery or charge or changes in the way that we rear our children, it seems like every five years somebody pops up with some new theory about how kids are supposed to be raised.

Guess what? Every one of them’s wrong. Every one of them. If it doesn’t go back to the Bible, it’s wrong. It’s not going to get you where you want to go. And most of these books, it is interesting that you can walk into a barn’s and noble, and other than maybe science fiction, the section I usually hang out in. Lee and I are buddies. That he and I would probably hang out in that. I don’t think we’ve ever been to a bookstore together.

That would probably be our section. I know it’s my section. But other than that particular section within that store, the largest section you’re going to find is on self-help. And most of those books are about how to fix what’s wrong with the family.

And it seems that patterns and employment changing, more people being forced to work further from home and forced to work more jobs to make ends meet, working longer hours further away from home. And I want to pause right there for a moment because I’m not tone-deaf to the struggles in that last area. But those things are affecting the roles of men and women and how they address their obligations before God in their family. And I don’t care what your family looks like.

I don’t care whether it’s an easy time for your family or whether it’s a difficult one. We all struggle.

This is just clearly one of the areas where our adversary is focused. He’s trying to change how we think about this institution. So the question that must be asked why is he so focused on this area? Why is he so interested in undermining the roles of fathers in teaching their children, or mothers in teaching their children, or the unity between a man and his wife in bringing up their children, or even just the happiness that they have between themselves? Why is he so focused on this? Why is he interested in undermining the biblical father? I gave it away there, didn’t I? Or masculinity in general in our culture. Have you ever noticed that masculinity is considered a terrible thing in our culture? There is nothing worse to the Walt Disney Corporation than a man who acts like a man.

You don’t believe me, go watch the last two Star Wars movies. Men can do nothing right in those movies. I’m not going to get on that soapbox, I’d never get off. And some people told me they want to be out in time to go to lunch.

But a man of patient self-control is somehow seen as seen as toxic in the environment in which we now live. Sometimes just by virtue of his very existence. Why is Satan interested in conflating and bringing together chaste femininity with weakness and victimhood? If a woman doesn’t use her body and sex appeal to gain an advantage, then she is somehow enslaved by a patriarchal way of thinking. And when a man accepts that offer, he’s oppressing her.

And you know who’s in the crosshairs of these messages? Not guys in their 41 or 51. Maybe guys in their late 20s, early 30s. Young women in their early 20s. These guys that are just not even yet teenagers, I can go through the litany of pop songs that are targeted at undermining faith. But much more than calling out people since my day and age, Madonna, all the way up through Katy Perry and whoever this new one is, Ariana Grande, that seems to be making headlines by being as vulgar as she possibly can. It’s just a symptom of the same disease. Why is he interested in introducing the ideas of intimacy without self-control to our children? As early as elementary school. But when a parent speaks out about this or expresses some concern in the loudest voice, or heaven forbid decides they’re going to homeschool their children because of these things, culture looks at them and says, You have no right.

Give us homes where we are trying to keep the afflictions that the devil brings upon us at bay so that we can bring kids his age up in the nurture, in the admonition of the Lord, so that we can lay a foundation to where maybe, just maybe, if we can teach them the elements of faith, if we can, if we can teach them what it means to be faithful, if I can just show them an example, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll hold on because the devil is a raging storm, and if all he’s if all my son is seeing is me hanging on to faith with just my fingertips, that’s not gonna help him. We need Christian homes because this is where they, and they, whoever you’re they is, this is where they lay the foundation for who they’re going to be later in life.

1. Why Did God Create the Family?

You see, he’s involved in these areas because he knows that through the family most often are the first lessons that we learn about God taught. And if you break down the structure in any meaningful way, then you break down the path of instruction that God intended for children to have. So, why did God create the family? And what purpose does it serve? And when we say, when we say family, there are actually two aspects under consideration. There’s marriage, we’re gonna talk about that in the afternoon. But then there’s also the obligations between parents and children. And these both are areas of assault for him. It’s interesting in Genesis chapter 1, where the family is first introduced. Genesis 1 and 27 says, God created man in his own image.

Can I tell you that ought to be significant to us? God created man in his own image, he created us with the ability to discern. He created us with the ability to praise, he created us with the ability or to in possession of an eternal, immortal soul. He created us in his own image. That means a lot of different things. He created them male and female, and I know he expands on that later in the second chapter when we kind of get a little more detailed view of how this all went down. We’re gonna talk about that in the one o’clock hour. He created them, and God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and every lint and every living thing that moves on the earth.

Then God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed, and it shall be food for you, and every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the sky, and to everything that moves on the earth which has life. And I have given every green plant for food, and it was so. And God saw, look at this, all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was even and there was mourning on the sixth day. Right from the very beginning, God tells you what the purpose of the family is. The purpose of humanity is, the purpose of man and woman coming together is it is to fill and subdue the earth.

It is to glorify him, it is to in fact be very good. When Noah and his sons and their wives and Noah’s wife come out of the ark. It says in Genesis 1, and God blessed Genesis 9 and 1, and God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Tell me if this sounds familiar. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Wow, that sounds like the exact same instruction he gave you to drink. The fear of you and the terror of you will be on every beast of the earth, and on every bird of the sky, with everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, and your hand they are given, and every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you, and I give it all to you, and as I gave the green plant, only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is its blood.

But surely I will require your life, blood from every beast, and I will require it. And from man ever and from every man, from every man’s brother, I will require, I will require the life of a man, sorry. Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God he made them, and you and for you, be fruitful and multiply, populate the earth abundantly, and multiplying it. So do you see what he said? Did he give anything else that responsibility of subduing the earth? Did he give anybody else a responsibility for invoking justice or invoking righteousness? Only man has that. By man I mean mankind. And can I say these ought to be the things upon which we focus?

Or said another way, our families ought to be families that honor God. They ought to be families that look the way that God intended. And isn’t it interesting how easily and how fully and completely we could become distracted today? Now you open, I call it the Wikipedia crawl. It’s also the Facebook crawl. You start on one article, you end up 20 in, and you end up reading something, and you go, How in the world did I get here? But I was reading an article the other day where, and the gist of it was, I can’t exactly remember everything I said because it was so weird when I was reading it, but the gist of it was that this woman believed that her obligation was to teach her children how to nurture mother.

I don’t see that there. Good steward, yeah. Take watching over things, making sure that there’s the exchange there of the lifeblood. The man is supposed to, as the animals for food, the animals are now afraid of him. So you’ve got an exchange there. You’ve got you’ve got some dominion over that. But it’s interesting to me that we have elevated the thing that God created that’s not like him, and we’ve denigrated the thing that God created that is like him. We’ve elevated this thing that God created that was meant to serve us, and we’ve torn down the thing that God created. Then he says, pay attention to this. So you come to the 127th Psalms.

Unless the Lord builds the house.

Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman keeps awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early to retire. Or late. To eat the bread of painful labors, for he gives to his beloved even in his sleep. Behold, children are a gift of the Lord. You know what the psalmist just said there? Let me tell you the thing that God gave you that really matters. He says, You can go work as hard as you want to get as much of this world as it has to offer. But let me tell you the thing that God gave you that really matters. Children are a gift from the Lord. The fruit of the war the womb is in reward, like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth.

How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them, and they will not be ashamed when they speak with him, speak with their enemies in the gate. He says, Look, your obligation, where your industry, and I think he’s speaking primarily to the fathers here, where your industry is needed, is to launch your children into the world, prepared to give the godly answer. He says, All of our attention gets focused on maintaining the house. He says, you know what? If you’re not building the house the Lord built, you’re not, it’s not going to stand anywhere. All of our attention is focused on the industry of rising early and staying up late to make sure all the balls stay in the air that make up the American dream that we had.

My wife is not an early riser, nor is she, nor is she angry. She does go to bed late, but she’s not an early rising. She says, You get up early, don’t wake me up. And she can say that because our kids usually sleep full night burning. We got a good one. But he says, Well, this is where your focus is needed. You are propelling these people out into the world. They are a testament to the kind of godly person that you are. Prepare them for that work. Prepare them to answer the enemies that they will encounter in the gate with a godly answer. Prepare them for what the devil is going to do when they are out on their own in culture alone. You see now why he wants to undermine the family.

2. We Try It Every Way but God's Way

And he works on it in so many ways. We’re going to talk more about those a little later. But I want to pause right here for just a second. I want to take a little bit of a soapbox. For those of you that know me, that means maybe find some earplugs. Because while I don’t do this much anymore, I do tend to get loud at these times. This is why I didn’t use my soapbox on Star Wars earlier. We didn’t have a lot of the problems with the family that we have today until we started trying to fix problems that didn’t exist.

And I don’t want to be guilty of saying the former days are better, but I will say this. There are many instances that I can point to where the cure preceded the preceded problem. We didn’t have to talk about toxic masculinity before we started creating homes without fathers. We didn’t have to talk about the dangers of what abstinence education might do to children who didn’t who weren’t governed by fathers and mothers that were teaching that at home before we stopped teaching it at home. We didn’t have to talk about the effects of denying transgenderism on our children, which supposedly harms people emotionally before we started telling children that they were transgendered rather than just confused about their pronouns.

And there were no rampant suicides because of that, despite what your media may tell you.

Some of you were older than me. In fact, even things like homosexuality, most people that felt that inclination eventually grew out of it before we became bent as a culture to trying to affirm every strange thing we wanted to do. By strange I mean ungodly. What positive effect has the culture had on the family in the last 60 years? Even those who champion such things are hard pressed to give one example of how families are better when we moved away from God and started accepting society’s remedies for things.

The only thing that’s come out of the free love movement that’s still the battle cry some 50 years later is an increase in divorce, children born out of wedlock, pop music that sexualizes your daughters, disease that we can’t cure, self-loathing, and maybe a culture of aggression that has led to random acts of violence, including things like school should be because you want to know why those things are happening. Because testosterone is both destructive and creative. And it needs a father to guide it. This is why you didn’t have these things 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. We told fathers they were disposable, replaceable by another man, another woman, or in some cases just not needed. And now masculinity has become toxic. Why? Because we’ve had 40 years of boys growing up with no one teaching them how to deal with the effects of the hormones raging in their body.

God created an outlet for that. And while I know there are times and circumstances that some people may not be able to do anything about, we should not dismiss because our culture is changing. The role that God ordained himself in the very beginning.

And yet we still say that God has no place in the discussion. Where this gets really insidious is when it comes to our young women. Buckle your seat belts. For them, not only have we introduced disease, we’ve introduced depression. First, we’ve allowed Disney to turn love into something that is entirely self-serving affair. After letting that corporation have their way with their emotions, our daughter’s emotions, we turn them over to magazines to be told that they’ll never find love unless they’re willing to loosen up on the morals concerning sex and those things that ultimately perpetuate the myth of the patriarch. When she does, we tell her the only way anyone will love her is if she looks like the person on the cover, who, by the way, doesn’t exist anyway because she’s so photoshopped that it’s not even real.

So we send them off to the gym to tone, to the dietitian so she can hear that she’s too fat to be loved, to the retailer so that she can learn that a size two is now an eight. And you don’t even want to know what yesterday’s eight is. We do all this based on the lie that no one will want them if they don’t comply. No one will love them if they don’t look like the woman on the front of the magazine or in the advertisement or on the store in the mall from which I have to avert not only my own eyes, but my child who’s only four. All these people have been so heavily airbrushed that they don’t even really exist anymore. And if it even breathes a word about marriage before any kind of intimacy is considered, they’ll be considered a spinster until they die.

That’s the message they get. And when they tell her to do all these things and she becomes pregnant out of wedlock, we quickly tell her that no man will want to marry, much less love a single woman, but don’t worry because the nearest altar of Moloch is right around the corner. I mean Planned Parenthood Clinic. Doctors waiting. No one. Do you see how insidious this has become? This is our culture. This is who we’re allowing to tell us what the family looks like. And all of this is supposed to be liberating, and yet, isn’t it strange that she’s only liberated when she’s enslaved to doing it their way? Our culture has created a multi-billion dollar industry on telling you that you aren’t good enough, on fixing problems they’ve created and blamed it on your parents.

They blamed it on men, and woe be to the man who is actually beguiled by these charms because to notice these things is in itself a kind of oppression. Do you see the lunacy of this?

Do you see the craziness of this? Our problems are not with God’s way of doing things, but because we try it every way but God’s way. Ladies, can I tell you the secret? Real men don’t care. I do not notice when Lauren changes her eyeshadow and the color that it is. I just don’t. I don’t even notice the new outfits. And ladies, he doesn’t notice the $200 haircuts either. But he also doesn’t notice the 20 extra pounds that you put on because you were busy raising his children. So busy, in fact, that all you had was time to put junk food in your mouth. Didn’t have time for the gym that day. Or money for the personal training. When we turn in at night, if all you had time to do is wash the teething biscuit out of your hair and make yourself a promise that tomorrow you’ll really get it washed.

3. Raising Families Is About the Next Generation

As long as you’re happy, you’re beautiful, but you’re beautiful to us because the comfort of having you beside us as we drift off to sleep is all any of us wanted in. Because raising families really is about the next generation. Open your Bibles now to Joshua 24. Joshua 24. We’ve already looked at the Deuteronomy passage.

Now, therefore, verse 14, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and truth, and put away the gods which your father served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. And if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve. Whether the gods which your father served, which were beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites and whose land you’re living, but as for me and my house, look at what he says here. We will serve the Lord. He says, This is our commitment. Doesn’t that just ring of Deuteronomy 6? He’s like, here, oh Israel, the Lord your God is one. Here’s your message. So what do you do with that? You love him with all your heart, your soul, and your strength.

But not only do you love him with all your heart, soul, and strength, you pass that message on to the next group of people. You raise the next generation to appreciate God for who it is. You raise the next generation to appreciate the God that brought you out of Egypt. Can I say that spiritually? We have all come out of Egypt at some point, and we were all brought out of Egypt by the blood of the Son of our God, and there is reason for us to raise that next generation to know those stories. That’s why we talked about the second generation Christian mentality last night. There is a reason to pass on those stories. This is why your family exists. This is why children are not created as they are in the animal kingdom in a vacuum without the father and the mother and the stability of a covenant.

Because it’s not just about breathing entities that are capable of eating and procreating. It is about creating a group of people that understand what it means to be made in God’s own image. And who have been redeemed by the Son of God. And so you look at a passage like Proverbs chapter 1. In verse 8, where the text says, Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. Indeed, they are a graceful wreath to your head and ornaments about your neck. Well, what was their teaching? My son, if a sinner entices you, do not consent. And if they say, come with us and let us lie and wait for blood, let us ambush the innocent without cause, let us swallow them up alive like Sheol, even with all, even whole, as those who go down into the pit.

Because we will find all kinds of precious wealth. We will fill our houses with spoil. Throw in your lot with us, and we shall all have one purse, my son. Do not walk in the way with them and keep your feet from their path.

Fathers and mothers are here when they are filling those obligations to stop culture from doing what it does to people who don’t know better. Because every one of these beautiful young people, and I mean that from the low from the smallest babies all the way up to people’s age. I still learn from my parents. I guess you guys still learn from yours too. I ate dinner with them last night, so I’d say good now. All of you are in need of someone to help you better see your creator. And they’ve crossed the threshold where they’re now helping the next generation to better see their creator. That’s what this is about. Culture is a dangerous place. And this is the real reason why the devil works against the family structure.

4. Men Have to Step Up First

And if we’re going to get this right, if we’re going to have to start, guys, we’re going to have to step up, and by guys, I mean men. We’re going to have to step up first and do our part. Because God intends fathers and husbands to be a reflection of the love, compassion, and holiness he has shown to us. Open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians. I know this is not the passage you’re supposed to go to for fathers, but we’ll get there. Open your Bibles to 2 Corinthians chapter 16. Can I show you something interesting?

I said 16, I meant six. Keep looking for 16. 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 17. It says, therefore, actually back up to verse 16. It says, Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, just as God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people, and therefore come out of their midst and be separate, says the Lord, and do not touch what is unclean. And I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. Isn’t that interesting? I’ll be a father to you. Therefore, having these promises, beloved, listen to what the example we see in God’s Fatherhood.

Having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit. Perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Can I tell you that’s what God intended fathers to do? An example of cleansing ourselves from all defilement and striving to perfect holiness. Ephesians chapter 3. Again, we’re getting closer to the passage we’re supposed to use for fathers, I know. Ephesians chapter 3, for this reason I bow my knees before the Father, verse 14, from whom every family in heaven and on earth arises name. That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with the power through his spirit in the inner man. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses all knowledge, that you may be filled up with all the fullness of God.

Did you catch what he called God in verse 14 the Father? He says, Why do you need to grow in the love of Christ so that you can look more like your Father? Alright, here’s a passage everybody wants. Ephesians chapter 5. Beginning in verse 25. We’ll get to the other verses in just a second. Beginning in verse 25. Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by washing of water, with the word that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. So a husband ought also to love their own wives as their own body.

He who loves his own wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church. Because we are members of his body for this reason. A man shall leave his father and his mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Isn’t it interesting? He quotes Genesis 2 there. This is a mystery. And it is great. But I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife, even as himself. And the wife must see to it that she respects her husband. Children obey your parents in the week. For this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, so that it may be well with you, and that you may live long on the earth.

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. And so I want to ask you a question this morning. What does it mean for us? And our walk as fathers, and I should have said as husbands there. That God has chosen this name for himself. Why do you think God chose to call himself a father? We get the feeling that maybe there’s something from that we can learn. Why does he identify Jesus as the husband to the bride that is his church? Is there something that we can learn through Jesus about how he deals with those who are his spouse? About how we should deal with our spouses. Maybe we should follow the example of Peter in 1 Peter 3, and that is to live with them in an understanding way.

Guess what, guys? She’s got struggles that we’ll never understand. I finally learned something, and sometimes I still forget it. About eight years ago now. And that is sometimes there are times when I cannot fix what’s going wrong with her. But I can sit with both ears open and give it my heartfelt. Babe, I don’t understand it, but I’m sorry. Because sometimes the understanding way is to say, I don’t have the answers. I don’t understand the struggle. But I love you like my own flesh. So when you tell me you need me to do something, my ears are open.

And what I need.

Just be quiet. Just open your ears and listen to what the one is saying to you whom you love. Isn’t that what God does when we pray? He listens. He doesn’t just start moving pieces around in the middle of the prayer. I got this honey. You go give us that out. I’ll take it. I’ll take care of this one. Super dead.

The other part of that is fathers provoke not your children to wrath. I’m going to tell you something. This does not mean never make your kids angry. But that is flowing out of the idea of teaching instruction to your children. And can I say to you, I think the danger there is being inconsistent in that instruction. There is nothing more frustrating than feeling like you’re trying to live up to one ideal, and when you finally attain it, you realize the goal is something different than you want. You need to be careful with that. And I think even though we know we love them, sometimes we forget how much we love our families. How important they are.

And that is to nurture and love, to nurture with a love that overcomes sin and chooses holiness.

5. Ladies, Let God Be Seen in You

I’m kidding. 1 Timothy chapter 2. 1 Timothy chapter 2 verse 9. Likewise, I want for women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly. Not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim of godliness. That ought to be the first lesson for our women when it comes to their role of wife and mother. Ladies, let God be seen in you. We sing that song, Let the Beauty of Jesus be seen in me. Beautiful thought. I don’t care whether you’re a father or a mother, but a beautiful thought to start your day with. Just let me look like God. Let people see me moving in a Godward direction. Woman must quietly receive instruction with the entire with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

For it was Adam who was created first and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children, and if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. Too many times we get to passages like this in Ephesians 5, and we want to focus on the hierarchy. Man here, woman here, children here.

Ladies, I am sorry for the way that we have taught this passage for a number of years. Which is you were somehow less worthy of giving instruction giving instruction, and I’m not trying to patronize you in saying this. God has actually placed you in a place where you give the most important instruction. You’re saved through childbearing. And did you notice that was linked to teaching? That’s not just talking about passing a child out of.

Is popular to say calls you mom. Your work of instruction is bringing up these little guys and these little guys, and even most of our older little guys, I think are related, coming back from Texas camp today. Oh, there’s there’s a couple right back there. Those bigger guys and gals.

Girls. To love the Lord. And that is a beautiful role. But guess what? Because of how we’re built. Emotionally, mentally. I’m not capable of instructing Will in the same way as the Lord’s. I teach him the nurture of the admonition of the Lord. I teach him to see God. But I see a million little lessons that Lauren is teaching him every day about glorifying God in small things. I was watching the other day as they were talking about picking up their toys. I say their teaching. And there was a lesson in godliness that she’s trying to teach him. About being grateful. And about honoring commitments and about doing whatever you do in a way that glorifies God. I never would have fought to teach you that as we’re doing that.

I just go pick up the toys, because that’s what I told you to do. And I’m tired of seeing this demeaned by our culture. Tony and I have had conversations about this before, so no, it hasn’t been demeaned in the pulpit that there have been places where it has been. Well, the way this is taught is just shut up and accept it. You don’t get to teach anybody. That’s not what this says. You get to teach the most important people that there are. You’re bringing up the next generation of elders and gospel preachers and wives and Bible class teachers. You’re bringing them up. You have a beautiful obligation, and I am hungry before what you were able to do. And the only encouragement I want to give to you in this matter is do it in a way that God is pleased.

Because I know that they start off with cherub faces and they turn into hormonal teenagers. Sometimes it’s not easy. Sometimes, and I’ll wake up one morning and I’ll ask Laura, how’d you sleep? She goes, I stayed up all night crying. I said, Why? She says, it’s hard to be a mom. It’s hard to be a mom. And it’s doubly hard to be a mom with the kind of oppression that is raging against the family today. But I want to say this you are the firewall to your children against the onslaught of culture and the devil. You are the protector with compassionate strength. When they come home from the from school during the day and they want to tell you about how their day went, they want to tell you this person was mean to them or this thing happened, or worse yet, when they tell you nothing at all, they just go straight up to their room.

Unlock that door. Because your babies need to talk to you. Build that bridge. Because I gotta tell you, particularly when it comes to teenage boys, and I know something about teenage boys. Teenage girls are a mystery to me. They were when I was a teenage boy, too. But teenage girls are a mystery to me, but with teenage boys, I can tell you we are lousy builds, build bridge builders. But if you give us dynamite, we’ll blow it up. We’ll rage, we’ll scream, we’ll throw things across the room. That’s that testosterone that’s got to be governed. We’re mad at our buddy on Xbox who said something to us that we wished he hadn’t said.

But we’re also worried about the assignment that we haven’t thought about until this particular minute, even though it was assigned three or four weeks ago. We need help. We need to get this figured out. And I’m not telling you that women should not work apart from the home. I think Proverbs 31 disagrees with that. I think that the woman is industrious for her family. But I want to say this. Figure the family part out first. Not because of any kind of jeopardy, but because it will make your life better. It’ll make your life better. Maybe there won’t be so many nights, and I don’t think my wife is alone where you go to sleep crying because your mom and your husband will never understand the struggles of mind.

6. Children Learning Obedience and Humility

But guys, you need to realize when I’m talking here to children. Oh, I forgot to say that serving our families in the ways of love and holiness is integral to helping our families seek things. But when I want to turn our attention now to children, because we’re running out of time, and I promise to get people out of here for lunch. Guys, you have responsibilities too, and that is children need to learn. Our children, as God intends. What do they look like? Well, they’re learning obedience and humility.

That’s the importance of a verse like Ephesians chapter 6. Notice I read right through the children’s requirements there in Ephesians 6. Children obey your parents. That includes your mom. In the Lord. Why? Because this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with a promise. I’ve looked at the first commandment with promise, and I’ve got to tell you, I still struggle with what that means, but I think it’s the first time God turned their attention to kids and say, hey, there’s something in this for you too. Because the first three first three commandments actually had some promises associated with them. So it’s something to do, maybe specifically with the children there. Ask Tony, he’ll preach a whole lesson on it. I’m sure he’ll get it figured out.

So I’ll listen. Do it on a Sunday night so I can log in and listen live. But the idea here. We’re either getting him a trap or a sermon. I don’t know which. But the idea here is look, there is something that associates you with the promises of God when you listen and when you obey, and your instruction needs to be consistent. And it’s interesting that we can go back and we can look at it at the beginning of Ephesians 5, and it says, Therefore be imitators of God as what? In verse 1. Beloved children who are loved by him and children who love him. It’s interesting that Jesus is invoked. We don’t have time to read this passage, but in Hebrews chapter 5, he is this, he is the son who being born in the flesh learned obedience.

Believe me, I’ve already promised my kid he was going. So you will see pictures of me at Disney at some point. But I it is a hostage situation. I want you to know that. But this is what Disney gets it wrong with. They’ve been getting it wrong for a long time. And it started with one of one of our favorite movies growing up. That was a little mermaid. Now I realize she doesn’t wear enough clothes. But the little mermaid with the kind of rebellion that she was going through. And guess what? It got amplified and things like Brave and Frozen, where the hero is singing who they are now possibly trying to turn into somebody who’s homosexual. Singing, let it go. Well, what’s she letting go?

All authority, all instruction. She’s tired of obeying their rules. She’s tired of listening. The songs are catchy, I admit it. And maybe you can spin it in a positive direction in some in some instances, like the let it go thing. Maybe we need to be letting the right things go. But we need to be careful about letting our children grink too deeply, unaided by our guidance from culture. And I mean all of it. I mean video games that the kids are going to hate me when I’m done. Video games, movies, magazines, comic books, television, their friends on the internet, take up their phones and look at their chat logs, guys, because you need to know what they’re struggling with. And do not let anything called Snapchat on their phone.

I don’t care what it’s used for. Now it started out something really ugly. Pictures that girls can take of themselves at dissolve in ten seconds.

And I don’t think we even realize it. In the 11th chapter, the Hebrew writer makes an interesting point in verse 23 about Moses. He says, By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents because they saw that he was a beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. Well, what came out of that? Verse 24. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasure of sin. Can I say that’s what we want from our children? Because that’s what the Hebrew writer says is good for all people, to endure the ill treatment of those who are the people of God, because the passing pleasure of sin has no value compared to the glory that is to come.

Children, we’re trying to lay for you what is girls, teenagers.

We’re trying to lay a foundation for future godliness with you. So give mom and dad some grace if you would. Give them some grace. They’re going to make mistakes, they’re not going to be perfect. In fact, there are going to be days when you hate them, and that may be the day that they’re doing the best job. Because you are under attack. And we hate the one that’s attacking you. He’s trying to steal the most precious thing that you will ever have. And God give us Christian homes is as much about insulating you from the onslaught of the world as it is for us to stand firm in truth. And so, what’s the purpose of the family? Well, we’re in children. It’s not just about raising them to be adults, but I would say it’s about bringing them up to be God.

That’s all right. Whoops.

Conclusion

And even with consideration for their souls that we approach the responsibilities that we have for our families. Each of us is going to have to make some decisions about how we govern our families, the kinds of employment we’re going to take, the kinds of social activities we’re going to engage in. I talked about baseball last night. I always have to be careful about that one because that turns yourself just like that. You have to find a way to sneak it in. But right here at the end of the lesson, you heard the little thing. Baseball and soccer and basketball and football and all of those things, we’re going to have to make some decisions. Maybe we need to make some decisions about how much family time we’re going to have or how much importance we’re going to place on being with the people of God.

But all those need to be made with consideration for their souls. And how we approach responsibilities that we have for our families. If we’re not doing full in these obligations, if we’re not sincere in our messaging, if we’re not giving them the absolute truth of these things, you can rest assured. That the world and our adversary will undermine. I want to end on this note.

I want every person to walk away here from this session this morning’s feeling like I can do better in God’s love. By the grace of God, I can be a better husband or father or child or mother or why. And that’s what I’m dedicated to doing because we all need it. I don’t care how well we think we’re doing. This is as good a place as any. If you owe some duty to God, why don’t you come forward though?