We’re going to be in Psalm 128 while you’re turning there. Also, put a mark in, I’ll be in, I’ll reference a couple passages, but Psalm 128, but we’ll look at Deuteronomy chapter 6 as well. I would like for you to read that for yourself. This psalm is noted, titled, subtitled as a song of ascents, and it’s one of 15 psalms with this subtitle on it, and they’re all grouped together from 120 to 134. And it’s said to have been a small collection, sort of a subset of the Psalter that pilgrims would bring along with them or have memorized to sing. On their journey to worship God in Zion, there was a special select set of psalms to sing as they prepared their hearts for worship. Their themes are deep, and they’re highlighted with rich praises and deep longings and sure hoping in God. Their themes, such as this, they plead with God to protect them from backstabbers, renegades among them. They cry out for peace. In the city of God, they look to the Lord alone for help needed on the journey. They bless God alone as the rescuer from evil. They sing to God as our fortress. They lift up praises to him for restoration from captivity. They sing songs that look to him for victory over enemies. They sing of confidence in his forgiveness. Songs of sanctification. Songs of simple trust in his wisdom and his power. Songs that call for God to remember his faithfulness, to rule over us as his people and to dwell among us as his people. Songs that delight and highlight the blessed state that is to dwell in unity as Christian brothers. And songs that call for blessings on the servants of God. But right in the middle of these sacred songs, prayers and pleas and adorations, there are two that sing of the blessings of God who graciously gives us the family life and also causes that life to flourish. These are the songs of a happy home. Psalm 128. How blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. When you shall eat of the fruit of your hands, you will be happy, and it will be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children like olive plants around your table. Behold, for thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. Note the place that the songs of happy homes have among these other grand themes in this subset of the Psalter. And we find ourselves in many ways relating to what the singers found themselves in need of. A bleak political state for us, a hard economical environment for some, most maybe. Enemies lurking on every corner in our schools, in our marketplaces. A degraded doctrinal integrity in our churches. So we can feel the weight of these songs of ascent. Just look around. We’re in desperate need of deliverance and rescue and protection and help and shelter and victory and peace and unity with one another. We’re in desperate need of forgiveness. God’s faithfulness. But friends, we’re in severe need of God’s blessing on our homes. Home life, the family unit, is in awful shape. You really don’t need to look much farther than the church lobby. The church pew, even, in some cases. Even church denominations and local bodies like this that haven’t bowed the knee to the culture just yet. To find homes. that are disordered and so starve of the happiness of God. Husbands and wives are at each other’s throats. Neither knows their role and neither has a desire to know it. Each only wants to be right and to have themselves satisfied. Our children are neglected. They’re like messages in a bottle drifting out at sea, not sure where they’ll land or if anyone might ever read them. You say that might be a bit extreme, sensational. Nah, I don’t think so. We’ve replaced pacifiers with devices. Anything to get our kids to shut up. Anything to not be interrupted or inconvenienced by their inquisitive minds and their busy little hands always needing something, always asking something. We just keep them occupied so mom and dad can get back to what it is they’re doing like scrolling and memeing and shorts, such things like that, grown-up stuff, you know. Should I really even mention the culture, I think it would paint a picture well enough to say that confusion on the role and the relationship of mom and dad is child’s play compared to the celebration of the rebellion and the resistance of mom and mom. What is a dad anyways? So why would you even want a family in that environment? Why would you want to bring children into that world? How could you navigate that? How would you not get swept up in that current just like the rest of the world? How can you have a blessed home in such a cursed world? We live in a fallen state. One where we call evil good and good evil. One where we seek to be the pronouncers of blessings. Where we determine what is blessed and what isn’t. We measure ourselves by our own standards or by the world’s standards. And in doing so, we settle. We settle for things that are temporary. The things that are fading and rotting. And when we do that, men, dads, primarily preachers, they’re preaching to us today. Not just you, but myself. But moms and kids, listen. Grandparents, uncles, aunts. I think there’s something to be applied in the family life in general for all of us. And even in the family life of our church. So I’m speaking to you. When we settle, we lead our families to settle. How can we avoid this? How can we avoid missing this special blessing of Psalm 128 on our homes? What does the word say? It says that the blessing of God is on the one who fears the Lord. I’ve had Matthew Henry’s definition of the fear of the Lord saved in my notes for seven or eight years now. And it says this. The fear of the Lord is to stand in awe of His majesty. To worship Him with holy reverence. To submit to His authority. To obey Him cheerfully. To dread His wrath. And to be afraid of offending Him. The Christian, we as Christians, have seen at least a glimpse of the altogether separateness of our God. Maybe we’ve seen His backside pass in front of us. And even with that glimpse, we can’t but stand in amazement of who He is. In amazement of His power and His glory. In His faithfulness. In His tenderness. In His mercy. In His patience with us. His sovereignty over all things. There’s an eternity worth of jaw-dropping amazement in Him. So an appropriate response is to very carefully, according to what He has prescribed, come and worship Him. Now we know there’s none who can resist Him. And none of us will get away with this. Disobeying Him. So we come willingly and gladly conforming ourselves to His will and to His command. If you’ve come to Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, you were compelled by some reason. Was it the dread of hell? I think many have been drawn through the means of fear and judgment and destruction. And I think it’s a valid one. A dread of His wrath is healthy. And at some point we must come to see that the ugliness of our sin is because of the beauty of the one that we have sinned against. The one true eternal God. The standard. Perfect and righteous in all of His ways. Just and pure. And to think He saved you. Not by the blood of a bull or a goat. But by Christ’s washing His Son. The sweetest name. Jesus. Surely, surely, if you’ve been shown this kind of favor, this kind of pardon, you would be compelled to muster all the strength that you can to not add to the list of that wrongs.
I don’t want to offend Him. He’s been so good to me. If that grace and if that mercy that God has shown to you doesn’t move you to have this kind of fear, this kind of deep desire to sit, to listen, and then to obey His every word, nothing will. It comes down to the affections of your heart. Do you or do you not love the Lord your God with all your heart? Or at least do you strive to love Him with all your heart? Now, if your heart has truly learned to fear the Lord, it’s going to show itself. It has to show itself to be genuine in the way you live. Charles Spurgeon says this, this fear of the Lord is the fit fountain of holy living. To quote Matthew Henry, in vain, do we pretend to be of those that fear God if we do not make conscience both of keeping to His ways and not trifling in them or drawing back. So you see, holy living, piety, religion are both appropriate and necessary responses to a heart that has been so affected by the majesty of God, by the kindness of God. I’ve heard this and I’m sure you’ve heard it too. And maybe it’s something that you say. It’s about a relationship. It’s not religion. It’s a relationship. I think that misses the mark. I think it’s misguided. It’s too flat. And I believe it could and has given license to much of the relativism that we see in the church. Everybody has their own walk with God and what’s okay and what isn’t. We don’t operate that way in any other relationship in our lives. When I come to my wife in a covenant marriage relationship there are certain things that you can and you cannot do. Maybe it’s something that you have established between yourselves but certainly when you come to the living God there are things that He has said that you can and you cannot do to be in relationship with Him. I think I understand the sentiment of it’s not religion and if what you mean by that is that you don’t get salvation on the merits of good works fine, amen to that.
But there are stipulations on our relationship with God and know that you receive salvation not on the merit of your works but you receive salvation on the merit of Jesus’ religion.
Jesus not only took your sin and bore it on the cross in His body but now by faith you are a recipient of the perfection that He walked throughout His life. Jesus’ religion causes you to stand clean before a holy God.
Jesus walked this way before His Father and though we can’t attain to that perfection in this life we should at least be imitators of Him. So, it’s with the laws of God written on our new covenant hearts we should apply ourselves to the way of God fueled by that fountain of love for God who has so loved us. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord who walks in His ways.
How is it that you’re going to have a blessed home? Devote yourself to the Lord and His ways and you will enjoy His blessings on your home.
Some say this is frustrating studying this passage. Some well-respected theologians and such will say this is a general principle. It’s a truism. It’s a general thing that God has said. Some say it’s a promise. You do this and you will get this. The objection to it being a promise is to state that there surely must have been someone somewhere who was faithful to the Lord in word and deed and His home didn’t reflect this. I find some danger in viewing the text in that way because I feel we would be prone to reduce the word down now to a mere fortune cookie proverb. Like it’s something that you can set along any other number of words or a number of good ways to live because after all it’s not guaranteed. Why would you give yourself to it in such a way?
If you do see this as a guiding principle I want to caution you and to urge you not to minimize its force because it’s not just a general principle it’s God’s principle if it is a principle. And so it carries it carries more weight. Listen to what it says though. Listen to what what the psalmist says. He says that the one who lives this way who walks in God’s ways when you shall eat not if you shall eat of the fruit of your hands when you shall eat. And he says you will be happy and it will be well with you. Whatever objections that somebody might raise to you whatever example that they could point to to demonstrate that they’re not this didn’t happen for such and such or so and so or me I just urge you to go back to the word and faith and plead with God Lord be gracious to my home and cause it to flourish. Lord I know I’m not perfect in your ways but be merciful. Establish my home like a tree planted beside waters.
Brothers I ask you are you pursuing this? Are you forsaking all your ways and all your worldly pursuits and all your vain dreams all your little empire building to pursue God’s blessing on your home?
It’s true that people around the world are blessed by God with wives and children else we wouldn’t have people around the world. Whether they know it or not God is that good. He causes the sun to rise on the righteous and the wicked. The rain falls on the crops of the just and the unjust. But this blessing this particular blessing on God fearers is of a qualitative difference. Their wives your wife will be like a choice vine fruitful. And your children like olive plants. Not just that you’ll have a wife or a child. He’s not promising that every Christian will have a wife or a child but he’s promising that the Christian who does have a wife and who does have a child or children and lives in this way will be blessed. It represents true life in your home. Joyful life. Christ like character. And it has to do with He has a view to a legacy through your children and your grandchildren to reproduce what you’ve been striving for.
Choice vines and olive plants but I think some of us live like we’re content with wicked weeds and thorn bushes. What are you cultivating in your home?
This is going to be a lifetime of labor. It’s going to be hard work. But we’re not talking about financial empires. We’re not talking about fleeting temporal pleasures. We’re talking about the souls of your wife and your child, your children. We’re talking about things of eternal significance. I’m not saying that if you do this everyone in your house will be saved. I can’t make that promise to you. That’s God’s business. But I do know that He uses means and so we have an opportunity to sing the gospel and to preach the gospel and to live according to the gospel in our homes every day. That’s abundant grace on your family. Don’t squander that opportunity.
How will they believe in whom they’ve not heard? But how hard it’s going to be to not believe in whom they’ve heard so many times.
It’s unspeakable grace I say to grow up in a home that seeks first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. You will eat of the fruit of your hands says the psalmist. Yeah, you’re going to enjoy food for your belly and clothes for your back and for your families. The Lord’s going to add these to you. But surely, surely you’re going to taste the fruit of the fruit of the hard work of laboring in the fields of the kingdom. The fruit of laboring in that vineyard that God has placed within the walls of your house. Your work is not in vain. So when you live this way, you will be satisfied. You may not see all that you thought you’d see or all that you hope to see in this life. You may not realize it in this life. But you have to have an assurance that one day your reward will be given to you. And you won’t regret a single worldly sacrifice that you made for the sake of pursuing your home’s blessing.
See how He directs these blessings. It starts out generally. Blessed is anyone who lives in this way. But you are going to eat. And your wife will be this. And your children. The Lord has entrusted to us men the Lord has entrusted to us precious things in our wives and in our children. Take ownership and be found faithful.
I want to give you three ways to put in the practice walking in the Lord’s ways that specifically relate to cultivating your family and your home life and working for His blessings on it. You devote yourself to thanksgiving and supplication to the Lord for your family. Our wives and our children are gifts from the Lord. Proverbs 18.22 He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. Proverbs 19.14 House and wealth are an inheritance from fathers but a prudent wife she’s from the Lord. Psalm 127.3 Another song of ascent. Behold children are a gift of the Lord. And our understanding and our belief of these truths are going to largely be reflected in the way we pray. If our families are from the Lord and especially the fruitful kind described in this passage we should overflow with thanksgiving to God for them. Praise Him for giving you a help fit. If your wife’s in here you should look over at her right now and just thank the Lord that you have a wife. Bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh. No one else would do. No one else would do.
A wife is like no other. How often do you think of your wife in your prayers?
And smile. Because she’s such a blessing in your life.
Wives, this works both ways. If you have a husband pouring himself out to obtain God’s blessing for you give thanks. Give thanks that you have a man who’s diligent to get up and get after it to provide for you. And someone who is a protector over you. That’s a special and unique thing. I think you have. Men are lazy in today’s world. Not all. Too many.
Pray for one another’s progression in the faith. Pray for small things. Pray for big things. Pray for one another’s holiness. Pray together. And if you’re not married pray for someone that will treat you this way. Pray for God to send you a blessing like this. When you do get married. Pray for your spouse now.
Parents, put down your phones. Shut off your computers. It’s time to knock it off at work. Turn off that wear clothes sign and spend some time just looking at your children. And see the goodness of God. Give thanks for them that he would entrust you with such precious treasures. Pray for them. Pray for their salvation. Don’t let a single morning or a single evening pass by you where you don’t plead at the throne of God for their salvation.
And if they’ve professed faith maybe they’ve been baptized and they’re showing fruit in the spirit give thanks to God for that. They didn’t produce that. You didn’t produce that. It’s a work of God. Be thankful. And then plead some more that he would keep them and see them to the end. Pray and give thanks. Pray. Ask. Ask for the God who blesses to show favor on your home in the things of today and especially in the things of eternity. When we do this we prove that we know that anything that we have anything that we are any goodness that we enjoy is owed solely to the grace of God. And anything that we hope to be any hopes for our families to bear fruit inwardly or outwardly are to be looked for in that same fountain of grace. All good things come down from the Father above. Realize this and don’t look anywhere else for it.
Secondly, devote yourself to the Lord’s way of teaching your family.
Moms and dads this is a role for both of us. But again, dads it’s your job it’s my job primarily to set the tone of teaching in our homes. We are the heads of our houses. And it’s on us primarily to demonstrate the importance of learning the Lord’s way. How are we going to know what to believe and how to act if we haven’t learned it? How are you going to have an expectation on your wife to act a certain way or to be a certain way or to look a certain way in your kids if you haven’t learned the way you’re living according to your own standard at that point?
I want to break teaching up into two categories. The oral communication of the truth. The truths of scripture. And then the modeling of it with our hands and with our hearts. So for instruction in general to teach your family turn to Deuteronomy 6.
Verse 4.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall walk and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gate. It seems that the normal conversation about our homes is to be on the word of the Lord. We’re to be steeped and saturated in His word and be careful to obey what we hear. If we come anywhere close to what’s described in that little passage we’re going to be labeled as nuts in our time. If we just made a point to talk about them when we rose up we’ll be standing out from the crowd.
So what’s the conversation like in your house? Do you have any sort of regularity in opening the word and teaching it to your family? If you don’t I have a burden to help you see that change. And friends I’m not preaching this as one who has nailed this down and who is 100% on this. But I am preaching it as one who has been convicted of it. Just to be transparent when we had our pastoral visit that was one of my things that I shared with Pastor Chad. I want to be more faithful to regular daily teaching my family in the word. Not for some prideful sense not so I can say I did it. I’m tired of saying well now I don’t do it every day like if I’m having a conversation with someone and we start talking about family worship and I’m like well now just understand I’m not perfect at this. I’m tired of saying that. I want to be able to say I teach my family from the word every day. Not pridefully but because it’s commanded of me. And the blessing of my home depends on it. And by the grace of God there’s at least some part of my heart that delights in doing it.
We’ve been making good progress. I’m not perfect in it. But I’m making an earnest attempt to be faithful to it. And I want to see you do the same.
You’ll need to ask yourself some questions simple questions like what takes priority over family time with the Lord for you? Write it down on a piece of paper. Jot down the schedule of your week and note the things that block out the 10-15 minutes that you might use to worship the Lord in your house. There’s always going to be something. Every day. Every night. My mother-in-law is sitting in here and she’s sat in with us a few times. And I’ve had to come to the place where if somebody is over at the house I have to say hey would you like to join me? Because if I miss it tonight I’m going to miss it tomorrow and then here I am a month later man we really have to do this. We really need to get back into it. So I have to resolve that whatever is going on if you’re going to be somewhere that evening move your schedule. Do it earlier in the day. Make arrangements in your schedules. It’s extremely practical but it’s going to take you applying yourself and being diligent to do it. So if someone is over at the house hey you want to join us for family worship? And I hope that becomes just commonplace where when I’m over at somebody’s house to watch a football game or something maybe we’ll talk about that. Turn the TV off for a quarter or two or maybe half time at least and say hey you guys want to crack open the Bible? You guys want to consider the things of God for a moment?
You just got to resolve to do it.
So I’m not trying to speak about myself but I’m trying to make this as personal as possible and to let you know that I want to do this with you. So I’m trying not to use illustrations from somewhere else but what I’m about to explain to you I did get from somewhere else. There’s a book out on the card out there. It’s family worship. Dr. Joel Beeky they wrote a summary of every chapter in the Bible and they have a couple questions that you can use after it and I’ve benefited from him as of late and just learning how he’s approached family worship with his family. And so I’ve really stolen this entire format and it’s been working. So it doesn’t mean that you would need to do it this way. I’m just sharing what has been working for us. We, most of the time after supper we’ll set apart again 10 to 15 minutes. We have young kids. It’s hard. We’ll sit and we’ll worship as a family. I’ll lead us in prayer. I’ll ask God to be with us and open up the word to us. Give us understanding. We’ll read a passage of scripture. Lately we’re moving through Mark’s account of the gospel. Sometimes we read two verses. Sometimes we read 20. It depends on the context. There’s no rule on that. And then after we read I’ll try to come and it’s hard. You gotta work at it. When you sit down to do it and you find yourself after you read the passage you’re like, what do I say now? So you have to work at it. You have to apply yourself and study. Maybe you take 30 minutes that morning before you go to work or something and read your passage for the night so you can be thinking about it and have something meaningful to comment on it. Sometimes it leads to really good, rich dialogue. Like Emma last night we were talking about the Gerasene demoniac and I said, what should we do with this? And Emma was like, we should have built that man a house. Amen. These people drove Jesus out of town. But a five year old was like, hey, this man was just cleansed of demon possession. He was probably naked and hungry and afraid. Let’s build him a house. Sometimes it leads to really rich things like that. Sometimes it feels like a complete dud and it’s discouraging. It’s discouraging. But I’m investing for the long term. And then we close by going around the room and we’ll all share something that we adore about God, something that we love about God and something that we’re thankful for. We’ll close in prayer. Sometimes we’ll sing a song. Most times not. And our goal is to grow and build on this. And that’s what we found works as of late. That may evolve and change in style over time, but the essentials need to be the same. And it doesn’t need to be complicated. We just want to be faithful to do it. Parents, it’s our jobs, our duty, and it’s also a privilege to sit and teach our kids in the way of God. Men, we also have a duty to be able and willing to teach our wives. You’re the head of your home.
1 Corinthians 14, 35, 34. Bear with me for a second. The women are to keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but are to subject themselves, just as the law also says. If they desire to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home. A highly contentious passage this might be, but I only want to draw off this one thing. In discussions related to church practice, I’ve heard this passage cited dozens of times, using it as a point for why women can’t do this or can’t do that in our gatherings. But I’ve been wondering this week, and I’ve really been perplexed at how I’ve never heard this, I’m not saying it’s not out there, but I’ve never heard this element of the text dominating conference panels and podcasts. Does anyone, does anyone see the implication in that text that the wife is to have the benefit and the luxury of being taught by her husband at home?
I’ll ask you again, gentlemen, are you sharpening yourself and growing in knowledge, of the scriptures and applying yourself in the hard work, the hard work of studying the Bible so that you are equipped to fulfill your duty in the passage to teach your wife?
Say, if you’re going to throw this out in a theological argument, but you’re not willing to teach your wife at home, you should keep your mouth shut. And if you’re ever around somebody who throws this out, and it’s what often seems to be the case, just vain chattering and theological camp rallying, ask them, maybe you’ll draw something fruitful from the conversation, ask them if they’re faithful teaching their wives at home. No excuses are going to stand for us here. What are we going to say for ourselves? Go home and take inventory. What’s getting in the way of this? Laziness? Busyness? Most things probably fall into those couple categories, but teaching our families is the Lord’s business. Let us be about it. We heard in Pastor’s sermon from Psalm 1 how influenced are the world all around us. And if we’re not active in teaching, don’t be surprised when our minds and the minds of our children are shaped by it. So secondly, we should also teach by modeling with our lives what it means to live according to the scriptures. We can’t be simply hearers of the word or teachers of the word. We must be doers of the word. I’ll use one example to demonstrate what I mean. And you can apply it to other areas in your life. So let’s say at the Como home we read a passage on humility and seeking forgiveness. And then this real life situation happened. Some of you know that my wife is extremely particular and diligent to keep our home clean and orderly. And I love that about her. Sometimes it’s kind of hard to live up to the standard. But in a very gracious way one day she pointed out that I had continually been draping my blue jeans over a piece of furniture in our room. Very graciously. And that it would help if I didn’t do that since she cleans up after all five of us. Especially our three children. It was a completely reasonable request. And it was done in an acceptable spirit. Well, here’s Chase a few days later and I walk into the bedroom and I notice a pair of jeans on the furniture and completely out of spite. I said, hey, are we supposed to leave stuff here?
Regardless of what prompted me to say that whether I thought it was inconsistent of her. Whether the jeans should have been there or not. It was completely unacceptable for me to say what I said out of the heart that I said it. So after some time I did go and I apologized. And I sought forgiveness for my attitude for my wife. And she quickly forgave me. And it just so happened that our kids were in the kitchen to witness it. That’s a simple illustration of practicing what you preach. Our families need to see us demonstrate that we believe what we’re teaching them. When you teach a text calling you to be slow to anger, don’t turn around and have an outburst the next time your kid does something. When you teach that it’s a sin to be a glutton, demonstrate self-control in food and drink. When you teach that there’s salvation in no one but Christ alone, demonstrate a constant drawing from that fountain alone. Our children and our families are watching. Let us not give them any reasons to doubt the genuineness of our faith. Just the opposite. Prove to them the realness of your Christian life by applying yourself to both the verbal communication of God’s commands and the zeal to live it out. Be careful how you walk. Devote yourself to the Lord’s way of tending your family. Be a shepherd. Day in and day out be watching. For your sheep. If you really love Jesus, take care of His sheep. This is probably one of the hardest aspects of this whole thing. When you take all the teaching and the studying and the knowing, that’s hard work. But I think it’s easy in comparison to actually putting it into practice in your home and applying it to your family. So in a sense, you’ve built a sheep pen. That’s the easy part. That’s the easy work. Now, you’ve got to make sure all the sheep inside are fed. And you’ve got to keep them from wandering outside of the sheep pen. And you’ve also got to protect things from coming in that would destroy your sheep. Again, it’s hard work. But remember, the fruit of it, you’ll be happy that you did.
Ephesians, husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her. Jesus gave all for us that he might cleanse us and present us without blemish. And Jesus is still in the cleansing business. And Jesus is concerned about the holiness of his bride. We can’t remove the sins of our wives. But we can most certainly and we should most certainly be concerned about their holiness. And we should give ourselves to cultivating that vine and working a lot alongside of her to help her to shine that inner beauty that’s more precious than a neck strung with pearls and ears pierced with gold and fingers adorned with diamonds. Something simple, don’t let your wife hear for the first time all week. Look to Jesus when she walks in here. Be concerned about your spouse’s well-being. Concern yourself with their struggles. Concern yourself with their fears. Concern yourself with their sorrows. And tend to them. Apply the word of God to them. Some friends were over the other night and we were talking through loving God and loving neighbor the passage in Deuteronomy and we drew this thought out. It seems that generally when you think of loving your neighbor well I’ll ask you what do you think about when it says love your neighbor as yourself?
It seems that our immediate thought go outside of our homes. We think of the neighbor down the street. We think of the person abroad. We think of the inner city kid. We think of whatever outside of the walls of our home. It’s a valid question to ask who is our neighbor. Remember that man who asked that question sort of to get around you know loving somebody he didn’t really want to love. But our nearest neighbor is the members of our households. How eager we should be to serve and meet their needs. We’re eager to meet other people’s needs. We’ll give ourselves to go to soup kitchens and parks and whatever but we so neglect the needs of the spiritual needs mainly of our home. And you should be serving and doing and reaping fruit for the kingdom outside of your home. But not first. You’ve got to be strengthened inside of your home before you can expect to go out as a family and help somebody else.
The charge is to pastors and elders how can you be concerned with the household of God if you can’t even maintain your own house? And give some thought to this. When your spouse does need a little cleaning up this is both ways. Husbands and wives. When your spouse needs a little cleaning up and when they’ve strayed a little outside of the pen and they need some correction or maybe it’s not even regarding sin they just need something. They need something to be fixed and remedied. Maybe your spouse conveys burdens that they have and you find them to be silly or insignificant and you just can’t understand why they would be thinking those things. Do you come down with a heavy hand and use sharp words for correction? Are you harsh and are you rude in your disagreements? Do you use demeaning tones and backhanded comments such as I did about the jeans on the couch? Thankfully in my experience Jesus has been extremely gentle in his correction of me. A soft and a loving hand he corrects me with. Most times he withholds the rod and he uses the staff. He uses the staff to pull me in. Husbands, your wives will be like a fruitful vine. Delicate in some ways. Love her as yourself. Cherish her and nourish her. Be an encouragement to her. Be gentle to her. This is the blessed way of God. This is how you will experience happiness and joy in your home. Tend to your children in this way. Bring the word of God to bear on them and discipline them in it.
Ephesians again Fathers do not provoke your children to anger but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. Seek to be consistent in your discipline but in the way you parent in general. Don’t exacerbate your children. Don’t correct out of inconvenience and frustration. Correct them out of a heart of love. A heart that desires to produce a holy result in them. A desire to see them grow out of whatever it is that you find inconsistent in the scriptures. To repeat myself again this is going to be hard. It’s going to take detailed attention on your part. To be mindful of your child’s heart. To pay attention to their behavior. Why they’re acting a certain way. It’s going to take you thinking a lot on them. And seeking the Lord’s mind and His hand to help you navigate that. It’s going to take commitment and perseverance to see it through. You’re going to have to be willing to spend your time on it. The time that you otherwise would be spending on hobbies or leisure. Whatever you would be doing. You’re going to have to spend that time on the action of bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. To make an example again I’m using all personal examples and I do not mean to commend myself in this. I simply want to be as personal as I can with you on it. So I’m not speaking this from pride. And to draw from the well of Proverbs again in our family study this has been I don’t know last year. Proverbs 18.21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue. So we went through a season where we would somewhat at random choose a proverb and read it discuss it. Again sometimes it was well that was a dud. Sometimes like this one it has stuck with us a year later. I’ll oftentimes bring this up to my girls in order to correct them when they’re saying harsh things to one another. It might seem silly in our minds calling fuzzy coconut or saying saying rude names to one another. But you’re training them up. Those things are going to grow into more significant things later on in life. And so I’ll say don’t you remember that your words have the power of life and death? The power to build up and the power to cut down? Now you tell me which one do you think that was? And I’ll let them consider it. And I’ll let them weigh it against the word of God. And prayerfully God will work in them and sanctify them out of that. The idea is that it’s going to be eventually rooted in their hearts and so when they grow older they’ll be mindful of their speech to one another and to their friends to their employer to their pastors. And then Lord willing they’re going to carry it out into the world and show what it looks like to be a Christian. Quickly I’ll comment on keeping the wolves out of the sheep pen. We must be protectors of our homes. First we sanctify Christ as Lord in our hearts. Then we become able to give a reason for the hope within us. Part of this tending is going to be thinking on and teaching and applying the word in regards to the outside world. This may primarily be when they grow a little older and they have reasoning skills. But they need to know how to show and why they believe that Christ is the only way. Why doesn’t Buddhism work? Why doesn’t Sikhism work? Why is atheism a foolishness? What are the foundations that they’re to believe those things on?
How are you going to expect them to go off to college or you never know when it’s coming. You never know what kids know. I know some things I knew in the second grade. Your kids are going to be met with the lies of the world. They ought to be trained in how to defend the Christian faith. How to defend their own hearts against the lies of the enemy. No, I’m standing on Christ here. And this is why. Because I’m convinced and I’m persuaded from the word of God.
Our children they’re like olive plants it says. They spring up around you. They’re young. They’re vulnerable. They’re moldable. And by God’s blessing they’re going to grow up to become strong and fruitful olive trees. And they’ll bring much joy to their circles. But for now they’re young plants. They need help. They need to be protected. They need to be trained. They need to be nourished. So nourish them. Water them. And yes, prune them. This this is the blessed way of God. And this is the way that you’ll experience happiness and joy in your home. Quickly I’ll use the gospel according to Matthew to sort of drive home the weight of seeing to it that you do this. And we’ll close.
Matthew 25 verse 14 in the parable of the talents. Talking about the kingdom of God he says for it is just like a man about to go on a journey who called his own slaves and entrusted his possessions to them. To one he gave five talents to another two and to another one each according to the word of God. According to his own ability. And he went on his journey. Immediately the one who had received the five talents went and traded with them and gained five more talents. In the same manner the one who had received the two talents gained two more. But he who received the one talent went away and he dug a hole in the ground and he hid his master’s money. Now after a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. The one who had received the five talents came up to him and brought five more talents saying Master you entrusted five talents to me see I’ve gained five more talents. His master said to him well done good faithful slave you were faithful with a few things and I’m going to put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master. Also the one who had received the two talents came up and said Master you entrusted two talents to me and see I’ve gained two more. His master said to him well done good and faithful slave you were faithful with a few things and I’m going to put you in charge of many things. Enter into the joy of your master. And the one also who had received the one talent came up and said Master I knew you to be a hard man reaping where you didn’t sow and gathering where you scattered no seed and I was afraid and I went away and I hid your talent in the ground see you have what’s yours. But his master answered and said to him you wicked lazy lazy slave you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed. You ought to put my money in the bank on my arrival at least I would have received some money back with interest. Therefore take away the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For the one who has more shall be given and he will have an abundance but from the one who does not have even what he does have shall be taken away. Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. I think essentially we should consider how we’re stewarding the blessings and the graces of God. God has given us all if you’re a Christian certainly God has given you talents faith understanding whatever it might be but I can’t think of anything any more precious entrustment to me than my wife and my children. So I must consider how am I stewarding it? Am I applying? And God gives to each of us according to how he sees fit. So God is not going to expect from you what he expects from someone else but he does expect a return. And so to whatever degree you’re equipped with you may not be you may have not written a commentary on a Bible and know the ins and outs of every line of Scripture but I think everyone in here can read. And I think that Jesus said if you don’t have ask and you don’t have because you don’t ask if you don’t feel equipped to lead your family in a 15 minute Bible study at home ask the Lord. I’m confident that he will help you. Reach out to a brother in the church. Ask for help. God has given us according to the measure that he sees fit what we need to accomplish what he wants us to accomplish. Are you going to hear in regards to your home enter into the joy of my presence good and faithful servant because you applied yourself and you brought a return on the blessings that I’ve been giving you. Are you going to hear you wicked lazy slave.
The blessings of this kind of home are not for everyone. These blessings are for those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways.
Lord Brother Bill is going to come up and play and we’ll have a few minutes to meditate and to consider the text. So Lord help me
I’m foremost I’m preaching this to myself.
Oh God I’m so urgent. Don’t let us don’t let us sleep well if we’re not doing this in our homes. Don’t let us rest easy Lord if we’re not diligently seeking and pursuing and walking in your ways but to bless our homes. There’s too much at stake. God forgive us where we have been wicked and lazy slaves. Forgive us Lord and I do pray that you would restore us and that you would be gracious and that you would move in the way that you move so often and woo us and sway us. Lord I pray that you would produce something that is extremely rare it seems in this world. I pray that you would produce in this church I pray for the Brook Lord Brother Bill here I pray that I pray that we would be churches I pray for hope I pray that we would be churches filled with homes that seek first your kingdom that are are applying themselves with everything that they’ve got not in their own strength but in yours but applying themselves to walk in your ways for there’s no other way to be blessed like this.
Oh God and we want to stand on the promise that you will bless Lord and for all the ways that we fall short all the ways that we lack in applying ourselves in fearing you and walking in your ways Lord we look to Christ
Christ did it for us and we look to Christ so Lord form Christ in us that we too could walk bless our homes Lord with the view that we would we would change our day that our children and their children and their children’s children would reap the fruit of our labors Lord that we would that we would that we would be producing right now in our day a generation that that is going to surpass us and their generation after them is going to surpass them and we’re just going to be on fire and pursuing you Lord and so we’ll see the church benefited we’ll see our nation benefited and we’re going to see the world benefited for your sake for your glory Lord and we ask it all in Christ’s name alone Amen