Families: The Next Step

MP3 File: 

20100321 Sermon.mp3

I like to think that every weekend is "family" weekend. We want to help families "take the next step." But this message is not just for parents; it's also for singles, for couples, for grandparents—for anyone in relationship with others.

Deut 6:5-7 ⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

The family is the fabric of society. As the family goes, so goes our nation. If the family disintegrates, society itself begins to fray and fall apart.

Many people far smarter than I am have talked about the importance of the family.

• Families are like fudge—mostly sweet with a few nuts.
• Martin Mull: Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
• Phyllis Diller: Cleaning the house before the kids are grown is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing.
• An unknown philosopher: One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.
• George Burns: Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.
• Harry Truman: I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
• Walt Disney: A man should never neglect his family for business.
• Winston Churchill: There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.
• Lyndon Baines Johnson: The family is the cornerstone of our society. More than any other force it shapes the attitude, the hopes, the ambitions, and the values of the child. And when the family collapses it is the children that are usually damaged.

We hear a lot of talk today about dysfunctional families—unhealthy relationships, absent fathers, broken homes, addictive behavior, abandoned children. And it's not just preachers that talk about it. Educators, social workers, government agencies all acknowledge the growing problem.

David Popenoe, professor of sociology at Rutgers University and author of Life without Father: Compelling New Evidence that Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society writes, "Sixty percent of America's rapists, 72 percent of adolescent murderers, and 70 percent of long-term prison inmates come from fatherless homes." [ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), p 63.) [http://www.kairosjournal.org/document.aspx?DocumentID=6332&QuadrantID=4&CategoryID=8&TopicID=49&L=1]

The National Fatherhood Initiative (NFI) was founded in 1994 by former White House advisor and civil society scholar Don Eberly and child psychologist Wade Horn. [http://www.kairosjournal.org/Document.
aspx? QuadrantID=3&CategoryID=8&TopicID=49&DocumentID=6416&L=1]

The NFI has found [2002] that children suffer greatly from the absence of their biological fathers.

• 24 million children (34 percent) live without their biological father.
• Nearly 20 million children (27 percent) live in single-parent homes.
• 1.35 million births (33 percent of all births) in 2000 occurred out of wedlock.
• The federal government spends $99.8 billion dollars every year on programs—such as child support enforcement and anti-poverty efforts—that support father-absent homes.
• 43 percent of first marriages dissolve within fifteen years; about 60 percent of divorcing couples have children; and approximately one million children each year experience the divorce of their parents.
• Over 3.3 million children live with an unmarried parent and the parent's cohabiting partner.
• About 40 percent of children in father-absent homes have not seen their father at all during the past year; 26 percent of absent fathers live in a different state than their children; and 50 percent of children living absent their father have never set foot in their father's home.

40 years ago we had programs on TV like "Father Knows Best." 20 years ago we had programs like "Little House On the Prairie," with a strong father figure in the main role. Not anymore. Today society laughs at the bumbling antics of Jim Beluchi (According to Jim), Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor, Homer Simpson, and Raymond Barron.

With all the problems we see in society, so many stemming from a breakdown of the family, we can see our need to return to God's instructions on how to keep a family healthy and functioning properly.

Deut 6:5-7 ⁵ Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

Many centuries later, I believe these words are still relevant today. God's ways—God's principles—God's truths and commandments must be upon our hearts. We must impress them upon our children.

We should talk about them at home when we're watching a TV program and something pops up on the screen that provides us with a "teachable moment." We should recall them when we're driving along the road and we see a billboard advertisement that challenges our convictions.

1. God's words are much more than good advice. It's not the Ten Suggestions; it's the Ten Commandments! God's words are essential truths to help our families and our society survive!

If the doctor writes a prescription to help you recover from an illness, you're receiving much more than mere advice. Advice sounds optional—take it or leave it. The doctor advises you about a lot of things, but when he writes out a prescription, it's not "advice." The doctor offers a solution to your problem. It's not optional. You have to take it as directed. If you don't take your medicine, it can't cure you.

2. God's words bring healing. They're like medicine. Many years after these words in Deuteronomy were given to God's people, a prophet named Jeremiah came along lamenting the sorry state his nation had come to. Many of the symptoms he described sound a lot like problems we see today.

In Jeremiah, chapter 8, he spoke of their rebellion against God. They had turned from God's way to go their own way. He spoke of terrible consequences in the land—marriages were broken, their wives and property were gone, greed and deceit had taken over. The whole land trembled, he said, threatened by enemies from without and poisonous "snakes" from within. His nation had become rotten to the core.

Jeremiah ended his lament (8:22) with a several rhetorical questions: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?"

The answer was, "Yes! There is a cure for what's wrong. Yes, we have a physician. Yes, God can heal our land." But Jeremiah was frustrated because the people had refused to take their medicine. They had rejected God's solution for their problems. They no longer followed the instructions and commandments God had given way back in Deuteronomy.

Our government agencies and educators talk a lot about dysfunctional families—families with unhealthy and destructive patterns, with addictive and codependent behaviors. Families that are broken, fathers who are absent, children who are abandoned.

Yet God's words bring healing to sick souls and dysfunctional families. The Bible prescribes the best medicine to keep a family healthy and to cure dysfunctional relationships. God's Word tells us what we can do to resist the strong negative influences in our culture—even to overcome, to raise healthy kids and build strong homes. To put it simply: Love God completely and teach his ways to your children.

However, we have a problem trying to do that. We have trouble living up to good intentions; we have a fatal flaw that prevents us from doing what we need to do. What is it?

3. Sinful nature is stronger than good intentions.

We read God's Words to our children; we take our kids to church and Sunday school; we bring them to a kid's crusade. But the problem is we can cancel out what we say when we don't live up to our own words.

Children learn more from our ways than from our words. If we fail to live up to God's ways, our actions will teach them things we wish they wouldn't learn. Our own lives are greater teachers than our words.

So it's obvious we cannot merely say, Well, if you just love God with all your heart and soul and strength... if you just recite God's Word to your kids, then they'll be okay and your family will be strong.

Why? Because we have a sinful nature, which we must address. We can't really do all we need to do or even all we want to do unless we cure our sinful condition.

But that's why Jesus came into the world! He came to give himself on the cross to cure us from our sins and our dysfunctions. He paid the price so we could receive healing for our souls.

Isaiah said, "But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5).

You see, once Jesus heals our hearts, then we can begin to build a solid family. Jesus transforms us, so we can have the strength and the discipline to make a real difference in our homes.

Do you want to build a healthy home? A stable family? Meaningful relationship? Jesus said...

Luke 6:47-49 ⁴⁷ I will show you what he is like who comes to me and hears my words and puts them into practice. ⁴⁸ He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built. ⁴⁹ But the one who hears my words and does not put them into practice is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. The moment the torrent struck that house, it collapsed and its destruction was complete.

Notice what Jesus said:

1. A flood is coming—it's not "if," but "when." In these last days we can expect a tidal wave of immorality and trouble to sweep across the land. There has always been wickedness and evil, but in these days it can spread like never before! With TV and the Internet pushing it along, it will become like a tsunami. A flood is coming like a torrent against your house. We can't avoid it, but
2. We can prepare for it. We don't have to sit idly by, powerless to do anything about the times we live in. There is something we can do. We can build a house that can withstand the flood.
3. We need a foundation on solid rock. We must dig down deep—go to the base of our faith. We can build our lives on the promises of God's Word! We can strengthen and prepare our family for difficult times when we put God's words at the foundation of our homes.
4. Jesus' words are like a rock. But we need more than his words! Some people come to Jesus and hear his words—but Jesus said it's the person who "puts them into practice" who is like a man building on a solid foundation. Breathe his words. Live his words. Do what he says. Put his words into practice.