[0:00] Well, good morning, church. And I should say good morning, churches. As Grace Church on 99 has the joy and privilege to be amongst all of you here.
[0:12] If you are unfamiliar with me, my name is David Corrente. I have the joy and privilege of being the pastor of Grace Church on 99 just down the road. And we are excited to have the opportunity to prepare our minds and our hearts for the family conference next week.
[0:30] If I could just take one quick moment, though, I just wanted to just thank this ministry here. I know last week we were at Stillwood Camp for the Equip Youth Ministry.
[0:47] It was such a joy to be able to be there last week with five or six fellowship churches. And just a small hint of why these things are so important.
[0:59] And we sang All My Boses in Jesus about three or four times. And so other churches sing the same songs. Now they come into our ministry, Squamish Baptist Church, and then they get to sing the same songs.
[1:12] And they get to be connected with youth that are hearing the same truth from one church to the next. Hearing the same songs from one church to the next. So they were exposed last week to the wisdom in Christ, the contrast between wisdom and foolishness.
[1:29] And so I just wanted to thank the Mitchells, DeMarcos, and Leslie, along with all the other leaders. Many of you put time and resources. Some of you gave full scholarships to some kids that could not afford it.
[1:43] Just that my heart as a pastor, I have teenagers myself. To be blessed in that way is significant. I am greatly encouraged by your faithfulness and your love for these teenagers.
[1:58] And I pray that the Lord brings fruit from all of that. So thank you from the bottom of my heart as a father and as a pastor as well. Let's pray before we get into God's Word this morning.
[2:13] Father, our hearts have been adequately prepared to boast in Christ. To know that all of our hope is in Him.
[2:25] And as we come to such an important topic on your mind and heart. Lord, I pray that your will would be done in ours.
[2:41] I pray that our hearts, including my own, would be humble recipients of your grace as we hear your word. Lord, we thank you for this gathering of precious believers here.
[2:54] Whose blood was purchased by Christ. Whose souls are now redeemed because of your Savior. And so as we gather, may you build up, may you strengthen for your glory, Lord.
[3:09] In your Son's precious and holy name. Amen. Amen. Well, as we come to the family conference, the family conference is not merely an add-on onto the ministry calendar.
[3:23] Just something to do. Hey, we got a free weekend. Let's just talk about the family. The family conference is deeply embedded into the hearts of your leaders.
[3:35] Because you rarely go one day without being reminded that the family is under attack. So the leadership wants to put some rebar in the foundation to build and strengthen your resolve about the family.
[3:55] I was immensely blessed last week, even by Pastor Dave's sermon. And if you have not seen it or listened to it, I would ask you to go to get the heartbeat of the beginning of these three sermons.
[4:09] There's a wonderful sermon exposing the hearts of selfishness. And how we want to exalt our own self-imagery instead of running to Christ.
[4:22] They've started off these three weeks wonderfully with exposing Christ to us. And I plan to do the same thing. It's not a secret that the family is God's central feature in God's plan.
[4:37] The family, home life, is the building block for all of the world in society for God to bring glory to himself in the plan of redemption.
[4:50] And I'm using the word family and home today kind of interchangeably. Because at the forefront, I want us to understand that family life is incredibly diverse.
[5:05] And can be incredibly difficult. Not only may your current home be diverse in its makeup, but then we add how we were brought up.
[5:18] What we bring into it could add more diversity and difficulty. So I want to admit, and I think we all need to admit, that when we hear the word family, sometimes our current situations make us struggle to really resonate.
[5:36] Pastor, what if my family doesn't kind of fit the mold? What if my family kind of doesn't look like other families in the church? What if I don't fit the ideal design?
[5:50] Or what if my family is in turmoil, constant division or trial, whether it's circumstances or sin? Some of you are coming in.
[6:02] In your home life, and you don't even know what to do next. You don't even know if you fit in the life of the church because of your home life and your family life.
[6:17] It's a reason why the sermon is called, The Blessing and Burden of the Home. I would argue that all of you desire to have a home that God blesses.
[6:31] I would argue that all of you desire to have the most Christ-glorifying home that you can make it. But the burden is also, we all know, you all know, how short you fall.
[6:46] It maybe isn't the home that you desire it to be, or you think the home that it could be. If we are not in glory yet, no matter what your home looks like, if Christ hasn't returned yet, no matter the diversity or the makeup of it, if sin still exists, then we all must say we have areas to grow and have room to make our homes a place where God blesses to a greater degree.
[7:19] And we have to be humble to admit where we do fall short, where our sin does affect home life, where our weakness, or maybe the stubbornness of our pride, contributes to it.
[7:33] And it's going to be the same in the church as well. I would argue that you want to make each church a church or a household of God or a family of God that God blesses.
[7:52] I would assume that you want to make your church the most Christ-glorifying place that you can make it, but the burden is that we know that we do fall short.
[8:03] We all know that the church is God's vehicle for testifying to Christ all over the world.
[8:16] Our home lives in our neighborhood and our family life in the church are the vehicles that God brings the gospel as a witness and a testimony to the world.
[8:26] That's why we have family conferences. That's the heartbeat of your leaders and why we spend so much time because in the process of the Great Commission, He uses your home life and He uses your family life in the church.
[8:42] Those are the vehicles. So I have two points this morning where the home can be a place where blessing and burden are addressed in this way.
[8:54] The spiritual hope of the family is the gospel. That's point number one. And the spiritual home for the family is the church. The spiritual hope of the family is the church.
[9:10] And I want to get across this fundamental reality that the functional design of your home and the functional design of your church is to mirror the way that God cares for us.
[9:22] So He does this in four ways. His presence, His provision, His protection, and His purity.
[9:35] So our home life and our church life, we have the presence of God, the provision of God, the protection of God, and the purity of God, and we give that to one another, whether it's to your spouse or to your children or to another brother or sister in the life of the church.
[9:54] God gives the grace of Himself. He gives the care for our needs. He guards us in wisdom. And He guides us in truth. That should be the makeup of our home life and our church life, which cares for our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs.
[10:14] So we need to start where God starts, where the hope of the home is the gospel.
[10:24] Turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapters 1 and 2. We're going to start in chapter 2. We need to set the foundation.
[10:38] We need to see what God says about how He's provided for us and how He designed the world to be to help set our feet on solid ground when it comes to thinking about our homes and the church.
[10:56] Genesis chapter 2, verse 1. So God creates a world where He dwells, He lives with, He's present with, His creation in intimacy.
[11:32] His presence, His creating power provides, protects, and purifies. You can see in the text that He completed all of His work.
[11:43] He's there. It's like a builder in a home, just kind of stays around the house. He blesses it and He sanctifies it.
[11:55] Blessing in the Word of God features these two realities. The blessing of God provides and protects. Provides your needs and protects.
[12:08] And He purifies. He sanctifies. He gives. So God creates so that we receive all the blessings of heaven and are called to pass that reality onto the home and in the life of the church.
[12:26] You can see in His presence, He rested. He provided. He completed. He protected. He made all of it. And He sanctified it. He purified it.
[12:36] So that's what God does in creation. And He gives to His humanity the reality of Himself and who He is.
[12:49] Turn back to Genesis 1, verse 26 and 27. Then God said, Let us make man in our image according to our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
[13:21] God created man in His own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them. So God designs humanity after Himself, His own image, in the image of God.
[13:41] And then He gives them their duties. Verse 28, God blessed them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth, subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
[14:01] He gives humanity, His creation, the role of stewardship. You can see that in the text, to rule over. Maybe your translation has, have dominion over.
[14:14] What glorifies God is when He, in His creation, gives us a task and a role and we steward His creation. A steward is someone who cares for something that is not their own.
[14:30] Their property or resources. So we can come to this conclusion, your home is not your own. Your marriage is not yours, but God's.
[14:44] To steward for His glory. Your children are not your own, but given to you by God to steward for His glory. Your resources, your property, your finances, are not your own, but given from God for you to steward for His glory.
[15:02] And maybe if your home life is not exactly where you want it to be or desire it to be, remember that it's in the Lord's hands.
[15:15] It is not ours to define. It is not ours to change. It is not ours to adapt. It is not ours to manipulate. Humanity and home life are a gift of grace from the Lord where we are accountable to give back to Him as a steward what He gives to us.
[15:37] That's where the blessing comes in from. We saw that in verse 28. He created male and female and He blessed them. Verse 31.
[15:49] God saw all that He had made and behold, it was very good. God blesses when you're in the design.
[16:01] When you're in how God has made you to be within His blessing. God said, God created, God blessed, God saw.
[16:16] That is part of the antidote as Dave was talking last week of the glorious self getting in the way. What does God say about this? What is God's design? What is God's role for me as I'm a steward in His creation?
[16:34] Turn to Genesis 2. Genesis 2, verse 15. Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.
[16:49] The Lord God commanded the man saying, From any tree of the garden you may freely eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.
[17:03] So we see here in Genesis 2 that His work and spiritual responsibilities. He creates the work responsibility. He creates the spiritual responsibility.
[17:15] Here's your task. Here's the moral reality of your life. Then He creates marriage. He's the first wedding officiant.
[17:29] Men and women now grow and have a new union. Male as the primary responsibility and accountability for the leading and the stewardship and the care of the home.
[17:43] Female to be a precious helpmate to bring a sweet togetherness in the stewarding together of the home. There is order. There is design to receive all that God gives in the home.
[17:59] A leaving of one connection of family life to another. That's the design. That's how God made it to be. That's how it's always been. That's how it will always be.
[18:11] No matter what culture, no matter what political regime, thus says the Lord about family life. Then we come to Genesis 3.
[18:27] The primary reason for the burden of the home. Sin. Sin is the primary reason why a breakdown of the family.
[18:40] You have sin and Satan's desire to take it down. Verse 1. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.
[18:52] And he said to the woman, Indeed has God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? Has indeed God said, which is treachery, anarchy.
[19:11] Adam and Eve fell trap. They ate the fruit. Verse 7. Their eyes were opened and they knew that they were naked.
[19:22] They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
[19:38] Then the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and was afraid because I was naked.
[19:50] So I hid myself. We see in that part of the text here that now fear and shame dominate the patterns of guilt and how they respond to family life.
[20:03] They ran. They hid. They tried to cover it up. It's a tale of old as time, isn't it? Family life. Run. Hide.
[20:15] Fear. Shame. Shame. And guilt. Desire to be wise in our own eyes just like Adam and Eve were Satan attacked the very foundation of God's design.
[20:32] When we leave the presence, protection, provision, and purity of God and start imagining in our own pride that we know better, that we can adapt and change and manipulate the situation to benefit ourselves, the Bible calls that we are a fool.
[20:51] That's what the teens learned last week. What's important to understand in this is where did he attack? He attacked the marriage. He attacked the vulnerabilities in the marriage.
[21:05] He didn't go to Adam. He went to Eve. Eve didn't go to Adam and Adam didn't go to God. So Satan knew that if he can attack the marriage, the very foundation of the home in a married life, he can tear anything apart.
[21:29] He doesn't have to get to your kids. He doesn't have to get to your grandkids. He gets to you and your marriage. He can take them all down. He seats out weakness and patterns of temptations and our hearts can grow selfish and cold.
[21:46] As Dave mentioned last week, the four horsemen of attacks. Can I just say from my heart and my desires, men, this is our mandate.
[21:59] This is our duty to provide, protect, and purify, to be that voice in the home. Of course, with the Lord's grace and His instructions, we need to be those kinds of men.
[22:22] Sin entered in. A lack of hope now. We come to Genesis 4. Home life gets a little bit more difficult.
[22:35] You can see the desire in chapter 4, verse 1. Now the man had relations with his wife Eve and she conceived and gave birth to Cain and she said, I have gotten a man-child with the help of the Lord.
[22:50] Help is on the way, they thought. We're ready to go. We're going to have hope again. Unfortunately, the result of sin in this family was now murder.
[23:03] The brothers Cain kills Abel. You go to the end of chapter 4, you have verse 19, Lamech took to himself two wives.
[23:17] We're already one chapter away and there's been murder in the family and now there's polygamy. From here on out in the scriptures, there's quite a rap sheet about the family.
[23:30] If you think your house is running in a little bit of dysfunction, let me give you a small taste of how open and honest God is about how sin affects a family.
[23:47] In Genesis 6, all of the thoughts of humanity were only evil continually. That's pretty dysfunctional in a family. We get to chapter 9 and we see Ham is seeking out his father's nakedness.
[24:05] You continue on and you see that Sarai gives up her husband to another woman. By chapter 19, a whole city turns into a homosexual fantasy and Lot was willing to give over her daughters, his daughters, to it.
[24:22] And then you have daughters deceiving their father to have children with him. Abraham gives up his wife to a foreign king not once but twice.
[24:39] Abraham had to trust the Lord and give his son over as a sacrifice. Laban gives Jacob Leah instead of Rachel. Finally marries Rachel.
[24:52] And all the clans of Israel came from those deceitful actions. The plan of God through a family that had massive dysfunction because of the father-in-law.
[25:08] Then you have Jacob or Israel by that point who favors Joseph and all the other brothers get jealous to the point where they want to knock him off. They want to kill him.
[25:19] They want to kill him. ended up putting him to slavery and lying to their father. And then a daughter dresses up as a temple prostitute for her father-in-law.
[25:36] And beloved, we are not even out of Genesis. So God is very aware of how sin affects families. You're not going to surprise him.
[25:53] Aaron must have been a proud father. His sons are in the priesthood. Suddenly taken out of judgment by fire from heaven because of their lack of reverence.
[26:07] Achan and Joshua disobeys the Lord and it causes his whole family to be judged and stoned by Israel. Eli is judged for not faithfully rebuking his boys and stepping in because they are a stumbling block to the whole nation.
[26:27] We all know the story of David. Adultery. Murder. What happened to his life and to his boys after that?
[26:40] What about Solomon and his house being filled with wives and concubines? What happened when he loved foreign women?
[26:51] What happened to his sons? What happened to his kingdom? What happened to that house? God is not blind. He's not unaware of dysfunction and how sin hits hard and how personal sin hits in the family.
[27:07] Some of you wake up every single day with personal grievances because of sin in your home. God knows. Especially when it comes into the reality of sexual sin.
[27:18] God knows. He knows your pain. He knows your heartache. He knows your struggle. Whether someone else has caused that in your life or whether you have caused that with your own sin, there is hope and the hope is in the gospel.
[27:41] Genesis 5 just reminds us of the heartache of loss, how sin produces lost in our family life. It's just a graveyard of remembering sin kills.
[27:56] Sin causes death. the pain we feel when we want relief and rest. We all want rest.
[28:08] We go to chapter 6. They desired rest as well.
[28:25] They desired rest as rest. Noah's name means rest. Actually, go to chapter 5 verse 29.
[28:41] I just wrote the wrong scripture. Look at chapter 5 verse 29. This one will give us rest from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed.
[28:55] rest. They thought this one. Every child, everyone born, they just thought it would be a new opportunity. Maybe the Lord's providing rest. He's providing hope.
[29:06] Sin has gotten its claws in too deep. I can't deal with it on my own. I don't know how to fix any of this. It's been that way from the beginning, beloved.
[29:19] it. When we understand that the primary burden placed on the home is sin and the effects of sin in our lives, we can understand where to find hope.
[29:30] Now turn to Matthew chapter 11 for a moment. Matthew chapter 11 verse 28.
[29:42] Verse 28. Verse 28. Verse 28. Verse 28. Verse 28. Verse 28. Verse 28. Verse 28. Verse 28. Verse 28. Here's the invitation of God when your soul is burdened in family life.
[30:04] Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.
[30:21] For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. We can spend days and so much of our brain energy and our power to try to figure out how can I just make the home the place I want it to be, and Christ says you can't, you must come to me.
[30:43] the burden is sin and I am the one that takes sin on my shoulders. He's the one that can be present with you.
[30:55] He's the one that can provide and care for your needs. He's the one that can protect and guard you in wisdom. He's the one that can purify your heart and mind. He's the only one.
[31:05] you go to him in your marriage so that it cultivates spiritual life.
[31:17] It cultivates union together where you and your spouse are cultivating forgiveness and mercy and compassion and you're building a life of fruit together.
[31:31] Husbands, men, whether you're a husband or you're preparing to be a husband, you're learning how to be sacrificially loving, you're learning how to set the spiritual pace of devotion to Christ and discipleship for everyone in the home.
[31:48] Or ladies, if you're married or if you plan to get married, desire a wife who graciously submits to her husband and helps him and encouragingly leads, helps him lead with encouragement and joy.
[32:01] Children who honor and obey their parents and serve the home with joy and gladness. Or if you're single, you're devoting your time and energy that even if you desire to have a spouse, you're devoting that extra energy to the life of the church to serve.
[32:20] Home is a picture of the gospel and Christ is at the center of it all. hope for every soul is the home.
[32:33] In the home is the gospel. Whether you have a believing spouse or not, whether you have believing children or not, the gospel is the hope. Your devotion to Christ, his providing for you, his protecting you, his purifying you because his presence is with you, that's your hope.
[32:56] The one who came to die for sinners, just think about this for just one moment. In the gospel, you have a father who was willingly giving up a son who was perfectly innocent and didn't do anything to deserve what he got except honor and glory and worship.
[33:21] And someone tells one lie about your son and how do you feel? In the gospel, you have a son who perfectly submits to the plan of his father, even knowing it is going to be the pain of crucifixion and death as he submits to him.
[33:41] A brother who gives himself for his brothers and sisters who rejected him, a husband who showed mercy, compassion, and grace, and love to an adulterous people.
[33:53] A bridegroom who gives himself to a bride and as was already read, the one who did not come to be served, but to serve others. A God who is present in our home brings the blessings of it because the gospel is present in our homes.
[34:17] Maybe saying, well, I would love a home like that. Maybe it's not there yet. There's only one perfect savior, we know. But he has also given you another home to help encourage you along the path.
[34:32] That's point number two. The blessing and burden of a home, the hope for that home is the gospel, trusting Christ as Lord and savior, following after him, submitting to him and the design and what he provides in the home.
[34:47] Secondly, you have a church family. A home, a spiritual home for your family is the church. If you are in Christ, you're a part of the family of God.
[35:00] You're adopted. You're in. Your sin has been covered by Christ. Your hope is now steadfast in him.
[35:12] And in the central feature of God's plan, not only do you have a home life that you're trying to build up in Christ, but now you have a spiritual life through the church to be strengthened. Turn to Colossians 1 for a moment.
[35:34] Colossians chapter 1, verse 16. Colossians chapter 1, verse 16. For by him all things were created both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.
[36:00] Speaking of Christ, he is before all things and in him all things hold together. So, Paul is just letting everyone know again, right?
[36:10] In Colossi, Christ created the world. he said and it was. God said, God saw, God blessed, that's Christ.
[36:24] Verse 18. He is also head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that he himself will come to have first place in everything.
[36:40] So he is the priority. So that Christ is worshipped and exalted all over the earth and especially in his body, the church.
[36:54] In the same way that there's design and order in the home, so there is in the church. All of this is connected theologically and practically.
[37:07] A believer is rescued from the burden of sin, transferred into the kingdom of God through his beloved son, that is verse 13. We now have a heavenly father and we are called the children of God.
[37:26] You're in Christ, you're blood bought, you're born again, you're now part of a spiritual family no matter what bloodline you come from, from whatever parents, whatever nation, whatever culture, whatever tradition.
[37:39] that means something to God because he offered up his son for you to be a part of the family.
[37:53] It means something to God, does it mean the same thing to you? Being a part of the family of God and now how he tries to care for you and has given you a design so that you will be blessed in your home life through the church.
[38:14] Turn to 1 Timothy chapter 3. Continue to connect these two realities. 1 Timothy chapter 3 verse 14 and 15.
[38:36] I am writing these things to you, hoping to come to you before long, but in case I'm delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in what?
[38:50] The household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth. You want to have a home life that God blesses, you are in the design of God, but Paul says, starts connecting the reality of being in the family of God, calling the church the household of God, and there's a way to conduct yourself in that.
[39:15] There's a way to live. There's a way to receive the blessing of God because it's the pillar in support of the truth. It gives to you the truth needed to support you, to hold you up, to strengthen you, to encourage you.
[39:33] the way the church is called to function and cultivate all that God does through his people. Again, here's these P words again.
[39:45] The presence of God. Christ is the head. And then he provides for the needs. He gives leaders and raises up elders and he gives all of you gifts to be able to encourage and support and love one another and care for one another.
[40:00] he protects, he guards in wisdom by giving his word and we preach the word of God. We encourage one another by fellowshipping in the truth and he purifies you in the truth by giving you the Holy Spirit to help you grow, to help you produce fruit.
[40:21] God gives in his church his presence, his provision, his protection and purity. And just like it spreads out in the home as we're faithful to him, it spreads out into the church as we're faithful to him.
[40:37] If you want help in your home life, if you want to serve in your home life, the Bible is connecting, God is connecting the reality of your home life and church life. And we all know, just like the home, when sinners get into close quarters, they sin.
[40:58] Guaranteed. No church has been glorified yet, so you're not going to find the perfect church. The biggest problem in our churches today is our own sin that we bring into it.
[41:14] But we are saints. We are holy ones. A blood-bought believer is one who has been given spiritual life and we have spiritual resources to help give life to others, especially in the home.
[41:31] I love it when Pastor BK says we want to be a life-giving church. I love that. That's what God does to a faithful people who want to be blessed.
[41:43] In all of her flaws, speaking about the church, she is beautiful. She's in the design, the perfect design of God, of how we connect family life with spiritual growth, your personal growth and your family's growth connected in the life of the church.
[42:03] The church is called to be a living example and a testimony to the world about how God's presence, provision, protection, and purity goes out into the world. So both our home life and our church life is a testimony of God's redeeming work to the world.
[42:25] Both of them. How you live at home, how you live in the church, how you serve at home, how you serve in the church, and the connection between those two. They're inseparable in God's eyes.
[42:40] No matter what your family looks like, the church ought to be a place where there is a giving of needs of that family dynamic. The church ought to be a home for the family.
[42:54] No matter what it looks like, no matter in the diversity, no matter in the difficulties, a spiritual home that cares for the needs of the family so that they're built up to serve the Lord more faithfully.
[43:08] Wherever the lack is, whether you're married with kids, single parent, single person, the church helps you grow and prepare for wherever you are now and wherever the Lord is taking you.
[43:27] We need to understand how to make that a reality. And if we want to use the analogy, think of a marriage. If that marriage does not spend time together cultivating an intimate union together by devotion to Christ, cultivating a friendship, going through hard times, trusting the Lord together, bringing each other truth, the marriage isn't going to be as spiritually fruitful as they think it's going to be.
[44:05] Same as a Christian who believes that they are growing, yet there's no real connection to the life of the church. No real communication about how they can grow or how they can help provide into their spiritual life and then put that in the home.
[44:21] One pastor put it this way, a child who strays from the home and wants to live down the street in another is called a prodigal. You want to separate yourself from the local church and all that God has designed it to be for you to create the home life that God blesses, it's going to be a burden for you.
[44:44] God is not unclear about what the church is called to be in your life, in your home life.
[44:58] So do your convictions, what you believe, and the patterns that you are setting out to grow and conform to the image of Christ for which he saved you, do those match with your local service to your local church?
[45:24] Don't turn here. There's a couple scriptures that Jesus Christ himself will challenge us on. He says in Luke 7, blessed is the one who does not take offense at me. Are we offended at Christ about the design?
[45:37] Are we offended about the design of the home life or the design that he put in the church? So we don't really want to participate. Here's the charge from God the Father, Luke 9, 31.
[45:52] This is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him. This is the call of heaven to listen to Christ. Luke 11, 27. Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.
[46:03] We want to be in churches that God blesses. We want to be in homes that God blesses. We take the word of God to it and we observe it. We're not offended at it.
[46:14] We don't try to change it. We don't try to manipulate it. Whatever the design is, we submit ourselves to it. So is the church a help to you as you grow or is it a hindrance?
[46:30] Does it compete with your family life or is it on the calendar for your family life? Do you have competing affections with the role of the home and the desire of the world and how church life fits into all of that?
[46:48] Remember that the church is a disciple making enterprise that does not end until the Lord returns. Let's sharpen our convictions here a little bit. Don't turn there just for the sake of time.
[47:00] I'll read it. Ephesians 4, verse 15 and 16. We are to grow up into all aspects of him who is the head, even Christ. So there's your task as a Christian to grow up and to be conformed to Jesus Christ.
[47:15] So how does that happen? Can you do that on your own? Well, the text says, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
[47:33] So you contribute to the entire body being built up and strengthened. When you are not here, there is a lack.
[47:44] When you are not in the life of the church, I personally as a Christian, not just as a pastor, am lacking because you contribute to my spiritual growth and to the building up of the body.
[47:56] Each individual part. In the same way that in the home, each individual person contributes to the whole of the body.
[48:11] Colossians 1, 28. We proclaim him admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete in Christ.
[48:21] That's our desire. That was Paul's desire for Colossae. It's your leader's desire to present you complete in Christ whenever the Lord comes back or takes you.
[48:37] So we think about shepherding and we think about church life in a way that strengthens and equips and encourages so that you go into your home.
[48:48] So you're the man, husband, father, grandfather you were called to be.
[49:02] And if you know that you're not and you lack, you come to the life of the church and you get discipled. You get poured into. Women, are you the women or wife or mother, grandmother that you are called to be?
[49:20] And if not, are you being discipled? Are you having life poured into you by other women? Are you as a Christian thinking about Titus 2, how there's men, older men and older women and then they're to call, they're called to pour into the life of the younger men and younger women?
[49:47] If you know that there's lack and we all do, if you know that there's weakness and we all have them, if you know that there's sin and we know it's all there and you are called to grow and contribute to the growth of the body and be presented whole in Christ and the church is providing that for you and your family life, it might be wise just to take a moment of thinking why that's not being made available to you in your own home.
[50:27] Family life, are you striving together in the things God calls you to strive together and not in perfection? No one's thinking about that. We all came in from the parking lot and we all came in with our burdens this morning, all of us.
[50:46] One of my mentors says the sanctifying grace of the church parking lot. What happened in the morning, get to the parking lot and somehow all of that just disappears, right?
[50:58] And we just come in and we put our smiling faces on. We all know better than that. We all know that every single day, each and every one of us are burdened by something in the home life.
[51:14] Where's the lack? Where do you need to grow? It's not an if, but a what. Designed for your home life is to be connected to the life of the church.
[51:29] So the ministries in the life of the church are for that reason, to disciple, to make disciples. Because if anyone came to you and you said, do you love the Great Commission?
[51:43] What would you say? I already said, yeah, I definitely want to be a part of the Great Commission. Everything that God is doing in the Great Commission, count me in. Well, what's the third point of the Great Commission?
[51:55] To teach, to obey. To teach everything that Christ commanded to obey. Are you being taught personally about how to be a man, woman, husband, wife, mother, father, grandfather, grandmother by others who have already walked down that road and can prepare you for the challenges ahead, can encourage and strengthen you?
[52:23] Are we talking about the challenges of marriages and family life and raising children and entrusting ourselves to the dynamic of how difficult it can be sometimes?
[52:36] That's what the church is for, beloved. Not just for a 90-minute opportunity for us just to gather on Sunday morning and smile at each other, but so that there's a building up of the body in love so that we can present every person complete in Christ.
[52:58] Is that your desire for every single person in this room? Is that what you're called to? A central feature in God's plan is the home life, the building block of the world to bring glory to himself and redemption and salvation through his son and in the church.
[53:20] The blessing of God to care for us. We step outside of that care. We're only causing greater burden for ourselves. Spiritual hope of the family is a gospel.
[53:31] The spiritual home for the family family is the church. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for how you work in every single soul that hears truth.
[53:47] Lord, I pray for our ministries that it would be life-giving.
[54:02] That every member, every body part would be functioning in such a way that produces life in the body. That no matter what the dynamic, whatever the makeup of a family, that they come here to the church and they see Christ.
[54:22] They don't fit in because of a mold that we set. It's because Christ is in all and through all. So may you receive the glory, Father.
[54:35] Build up this body. For the sake of Christ. The building up of the body and the church and your son's precious and holy name we ask.
[54:48] Amen.