Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 16, 2022 | Better Together - Family

Transcript

January 16, 2022 | Better Together - Family · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Whew, good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm noticing this TV's a lot higher than normal.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I get up here week after week, and never in my life have I ever felt short.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and then I move to Topeka and work at TBC, you know, where you know I'm preaching with Connor and Jim.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I get up here, Sam's like, let's lower the TV a notch.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I don't have time to talk about that.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's fine.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um well today, you know, I get the chance to uh continue our Better Together series that Pastor Jim and I are kind of working on uh together, and and what a fitting time uh to have a family dedication uh because today I get to talk about family being better together, one of my favorite topics.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um have you ever had that moment where something that you fantasized about turned out to be just horrible when it came true?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think a lot of us had moments like that, but that happens to me whenever my wife goes out of town.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, don't get me wrong, I love my wife, I love being with my family, it's my favorite thing to do.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but my wife is incredibly disciplined, right?
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: She's she's always on task, right?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really easy to fantasize occasionally about a weekend where I can just kind of like chill and do nothing for a minute.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh then when she does actually go out of town, I think this is gonna be this is gonna be a great weekend.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I can relax.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to, you know, do laundry, the dishes, all these other things uh that I normally would be doing.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but inevitably within the first 12 hours, I'm horribly miserable every single time, right?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because the first thing I do uh is go out and buy a frozen pizza, you know, buy some chips, uh cinnamon rolls, ice cream, you know, all my favorite food groups, right?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then I go home, I plop myself in front of the TV while my frozen pizza cooks, and I choose all my movies, and then I proceed to eat every one of those things uh and watch movies until 2 a.m., which feels great in the moment, and then I wake up the next day fatter and exhausted and brain dead, right?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And just generally more lonely than I'd ever been in the year before, you know, she left.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, then I then I end up calling her and and you know, begging her to come home, much to her satisfaction, right?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um but because like it or not, our families just make us better.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's as simple as that.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Without my family, honestly, between you and me, I'd be a depressed slob sitting in a pile of laundry.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's just true.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um but occasionally we get this chance to sort of step back and realize that we're just better together.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Independence is is really not all that it's cracked up to be.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the same is also true for our church family.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right, this uh a week ago, I was supposed to preach.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: Jim filled in for me because uh our family had COVID and uh it was taking me a while to recover, but we got COVID right at the tail end of me using up kind of the rest of my vacation time for the year.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we had just taken a week off.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: We get COVID, and then we were about we were looking at taking this quarantine for another week, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and at first, you know, Lindsay and I, we kind of have this fair amount of introverted tendencies, right?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and coming right at the end of the holiday season, you know, we had all these you know holiday events, and so we kind of we were sort of honestly peopled out, right?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: We were looking forward to a little bit of time together to just sort of recharge.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: So at first the idea of quarantine didn't really sound horrible.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're always so busy with church events, so it'd just be nice to have a moment.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um but as you know, we're out of commission for two weeks, as we had to miss church for two weeks, we began to suffer, and not because of COVID.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: We began to suffer, we became less disciplined in our parenting, we became less intentional in our marriage, and at some point in the week, you know, we just kind of both admitted like there was this just sort of despair that we sort of started feeling because, you know, honestly, we were just truly missing you all.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: We were truly missing the people who encourage us, the people who build us up, the people who challenge us, who who make us better.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so suddenly we couldn't wait to come back.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And all those, you know, tedious events that we were kind of dreading back a few weeks ago, all suddenly uh we couldn't wait to get plugged back into them.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And even though sometimes it's hard to keep up with it all, we realize that we're just better together with our church family.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so our individual family benefits when we are in fellowship with our church family.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the point is we're better together on so many levels.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So today, if it hasn't already been clear, I want to talk about various aspects of our family lives and how they were designed to be better together.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Let me see how many times I can use that phrase, you know, throughout this whole sermon.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: But specifically, I'm gonna be talking about how our home family relationship, our church family relationship, and our spiritual family relationship all individually uh uh uh are better together, and then also how they are each designed to work together to make us better.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, because it's it's really easy to compartmentalize all of these family lives.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: See, we have a compartment for our home life, right?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's over here, and then somehow we manage to separate that from our church life.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that we do family over here, we do church here, and then we even somehow separate our family and our church life from our relationship with God, because that's just you know, me and the Bible and God, and and we just honestly don't let them cross often enough.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to encourage you today to think differently about all of these family relationships that we have, because the Bible doesn't compartmentalize these ideas.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'll be arguing today that they are all necessary parts of each other.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: They all belong in the same compartment.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: They were designed to be held together, and when done so, each one of them is better, and each one of us is better.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we'll be looking at uh today.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: So let me pray for us and then we will uh jump into it.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Lord, we thank you for this time that we can gather here as family.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we ask that you would lead us and guide us in our minds, that we would uh be unified in mind as we uh think about your design for family and try to understand how you're using it for our benefit to make us better.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you, we praise you.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, so the first thing I want to point out, right, just on a very basic level, is that the believer has three main family relationships.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty simple, not much to this.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the first is that your family is, well, family, right?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: It seems crazy.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but I thought of that myself, by the way.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, your family is family.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and this is just means this is the base illustration.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's not much more to say about it.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's the base illustration.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the family is the illustration for the other two family relationships we have, not the other way around.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, our home families exist for the benefit of the other two family relationships we're gonna be talking about.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: The other two don't exist to illustrate your family and to make your family better.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, the home family's not the end goal.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily the most important one, but it's a necessary part.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're gonna be talking about that.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: The uh the second family is your church is family.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you were to go through the story of the Bible and start to ask questions, what is church?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna see some descriptions about the church, and they center around family uh terminology.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So one is uh the church is called the household of God.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Paul says in Ephesians 2, you are no longer strangers and aliens, Gentiles, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so the church is described as this household of God.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: On top of that, it's described as the bride or the wife of Christ, which is another family relationship.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Revelation 19, 7 is one of my favorites.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride, the church, has made herself ready.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see this imagery all through the New Testament about the church being this family of Christ.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, if in seminary, I took a class called ecclesiology, which is just a fancy way of saying theology of church, where you look at what does the Bible say church is and how, you know, how should we do it?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so I spent a whole semester just on that topic, and at the end of the semester, our professor asked, you know, all of us to come up with one word uh that most uh faithfully described everything we had studied that semester.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: How would you describe the church in one word?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And unanimously, the word was family.
• 9:50
  unknown: Right?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's designed to be a family through and through.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can't study the church without coming to that conclusion.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so, as so our families exist, our individual home families exist to be an illustration for what church should be.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we'll talk about more uh on that in just a minute.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um so your family is family, your church is family, uh, and the third, your relationship with God is family.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: As we read through the Bible, we see our relationship with God described as we us being sons and daughters of God.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 8, Paul says, We all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: For you have not received a spirit of slavery, leading to fear again.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: You have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with him.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we are described as sons and daughters of God.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is the ultimate family relationship that all other family relationships, home and church, point to and prepare us for.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: And again, we'll talk more on that in just a little bit.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: But the point here is that all of these uh family relationships are all created by the same God.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're designed by the same rules, and so the same illustrations and principles apply for each of them the same.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: So for the rest of this sermon, I'm gonna look at the what I'm gonna call a sort of a three-step approach to family being better together.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's sort of the three steps to family being better together.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Step one is recognizing this principle: that our families are better together in body.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Families are better together in body.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so I want to look at each of these families.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm calling them our ultimate family, it's our relationship with God.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, our corporate family, that's our church family, and our individual family, that's our home families.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: But what I mean by better together in body is that, in other words, the family concept was designed to be together.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It is marred when we remain separate and divided from one another physically.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: In order for it to work properly, we must actually be together.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the Bible supports this idea for each of these family relationships that we're going to be looking at.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, in the ultimate family, as Jim pointed out to us last week, if you were here, our relationship with God in the beginning was broken.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Divided at the fall.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was marred by our sin in our separation from Him.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: But we look forward, as he said, uh, to a day when that family relationship will be fully realized and our adoption as sons and daughters will be finished and complete with the receiving of the full inheritance of the family, as Paul just told us.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right, so uh Romans 8 23 through 25, Paul says, not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, he's talking about him and the other apostles, groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body, for in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he already sees, so on and so forth.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um the point is that there's a sense in which, yes, we are already sons and daughters of God as believers, but there's also an anticipation, even today, uh, our relationship with God is still technically marred.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: The family relationship has been bridged, yes, uh, but we still recognize that the relationship will be better in the future when we are fully together with God in his physical presence.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: We look forward to that day.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says this is the day that we receive our adoption as sons.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so the point here is that our relationship with God looks forward to a better future day when we will be physically together with God in resurrected bodies.
• 14:32
  unknown: Right?
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So it's certainly true of that relationship.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: The corporate family relationship is better together in body.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: That is the church-family relationships, because the church is family, as we looked at a minute ago, it follows the same rules as our relationship with God.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is, that just as our relationship with God is or will be better when we are actually physically together with Him, so our church-family relationships are better when we are physically together.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible supports this.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the most natural passages is Hebrews 10.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: For he who promised is faithful, and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And all the more as you see that future day we just talked about drawing near.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right, so the church here is better together, uh, according to the author of Hebrews, for two reasons.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: For one, stimulating one another to love and good deeds, and also encouraging one another.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: As the day draws near and things get more and more dicey in the world, we come together and we encourage one another and spur one another to love and good deeds.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: That can't be done on the same level if we are separate from one another.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: It should be happening even more increasingly as we get closer to that future day, not less and less, as is the habit of some today, even.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: So the point here, just as the ultimate family relationship, our corporate relationship with the church is most beneficial and most realized when we are physically present.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the fact.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the same is true in our individual families, that we're better together physically.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, this level of family is the base illustration.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is better when physically together simply because the other two are better physically together.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: So God's family relationship with us is loyal, it's unconditional.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Likewise, we are called to be loyal to our church family in the same way that God is unconditionally loyal to us.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: A concept we've all but lost, probably today.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, our head our home family relationships were created to illustrate and teach us practically about this unconditional loyalty to these other two families.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's as simple as that.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: God's famous for saying in Malachi 2 that he hates divorce.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it's for this reason because he created this family relationship as an illustration for his family relationships with us.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the first step in family togetherness.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: You need to actually be together.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So if if this already sounds challenging to you, maybe this is where you need to focus first before going on to the next step.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: If your family is divided at home, you first need to reconcile your family.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Plain and simple.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: If this is the level you struggle.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: If this is the level you struggle, if you find yourself skipping church a lot or have settled into a bad habit of only attending online, right, you first need to find a way to get yourself to the church gathering.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you struggle on this level, in the ultimate family.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh basically this we all need to find a way to fix our eyes on that future day in beautiful or in hopeful anticipation of our physical reunion with God in the resurrection.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's step one, and it's prerequisite for step two.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: We got to be together.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to fight to be together.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Step two is embracing this concept.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not only do we need to be better together in body, our families are better together in mind.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Once we actually gather together, we can focus on this.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so throughout the, this is kind of what I mean by this is throughout the biblical story, uh, the family theme carries with it this idea of being unified in mind.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or the idea of walking in a state of agreement with those in the family.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know it kind of sounds strange, so I kind of want to explain what I mean and how this works.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this is the concept.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: But throughout the biblical story, the ideas of sonship or being a son or daughter of somebody or being in the family equals representation.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: Those who are in the family represent one another.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so in the biblical story, in the beginning, right, God created birds and fish and land beasts, and he told them all to multiply after their kind.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: So fish multiply fish, you know, birds multiply birds, you know, it's it's pretty simple.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: But he created man differently.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Man had the image of God.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: He had the task of representing the character of God by walking the task to walk according to God's words, to represent his character, to do what he says is good or evil, right?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: To live according to what he says is beautiful or ugly.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: They have this task of representing him.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: So when God told man and woman to be fruitful and multiply, it's not just physical representation like all the beasts, it's rep, yeah, it is partly that.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: As they have children, they were to then pass on to them the revelation of God, teaching them to reflect his character and to live according to his ways, to represent the family.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: But we know that instead of representing God's character, they chose to represent the character of the serpent.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And from for the rest of the story of the Bible, all the characters find themselves in one of two families.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: They're either sons of God or they're sons of the serpent.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Seed of God or seeds of the serpent.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we're split into this category, and it's not as if the serpent is actually having physical descendants.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like humans walking around were actually born out of the body of a snake.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: To be begotten of the serpent, to be a seed of the serpent was to represent his character, to represent his family, his desires.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so when Jesus here in the New Testament, John the Baptist and Jesus look at the Pharisees and say, You seeds of serpents, you brood of vipers, you sons of snakes.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's not saying they were actually descended from snakes.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying they represent their father, Satan, in character.
• 21:42
  unknown: Right?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the same on the other side of the story.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Those who were sons of God were those who acted according to God's desires and sought to represent his character and what he in his revelation.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, this was fulfilled in the only true son of God.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: The one begotten of God.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that Jesus was created at some point, born at some point.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: He's eternal.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: His begottenness refers to his representation of God.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: He is the Son of God.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: He is the perfect image of the Father, the perfect representative of God's character.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the point is that sonship is equal to representation of the Father's characters and desires.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So the better the Son represents the Father, the more the family resemblance is seen.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: The more it's manifest.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so how does this play out in our three family relationships?
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: So let's look at our ultimate family, our relationship with God.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: We've already seen that God considers those who believe to be sons and daughters.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: So how does this fit into this idea of representing him?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Again, there's only one man who perfectly represents God, his true son, Jesus.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the Bible teaches that if you believe in his son, the one image of the Father, the perfect representative, the resemblance of God, you too are called a son or daughter of God.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is, you now represent him and his family.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're a part of his family.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this character imputed to you from his son, who already has the character of the Father, because he was already in the family.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not necessarily that you do every day what God would do, like Jesus does, that's what he does.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: But rather it's now that when God looks at you, he no longer sees a sinner begotten of the serpent.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: He sees his son Christ, right?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: His perfect representative.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: But eventually in his plan, he wants you to represent the family perfectly.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's the goal.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: He wants you to do what he does at some future day in the kingdom.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: But now, in this age, he is in the process of conforming us to his image, making us to have his same mind.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to be in his family, to have his mind and walk according to his ways and represent, learning to walk in the way of the family.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Paul says in Romans 12 do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good, acceptable, and perfect.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, you've been adopted from one family into another.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's time you learn the ways of the family.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh so the point is that our family relationship with God is most manifest when we are in agreement with the Father and walking according to his ways.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this will be complete in the resurrection at our reunion with him.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: But yet the same is also true as we're seeing the common themes.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's true of our corporate family.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: The church family follows, again, the same rules as our family relationship with God.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so this idea of representation doesn't just apply to fathers and sons, it also applies to husbands and wives, which the church is, as we've already seen.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians uh 10, or sorry, 1, verse 10, Paul addresses this divided church, this church family, and he tells them, I exhort you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be made complete in the same mind and in the same judgment, because y'all are family.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Time to act like it.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes on to say, uh, for who has then known the mind of the Lord, uh that he will instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the same mind that they're supposed to have is the mind of Christ, the husband, the groom of the relationship.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the bride of Christ represents the groom by submitting to his word.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is by agreeing or walking in his ways or his leadership.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: So as each individual in the body, in the bride of Christ, increasingly has the mind of Christ through the teaching ministry of the church, the whole bride then represents the groom, Christ, better.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: The point here is that our church-family relationship is most manifest when we are all in agreement with the head of the body, Christ, and therefore with one another, thus better representing our groom, Christ, who perfectly represents the Father.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And again, the same is also true for our base illustration, for our individual families.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Again, our individual families are the base, so they follow these rules.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as Paul is describing to the Ephesian Gentiles what it means to be part of the body of Christ, what it means to be in the church, he ends up boiling it down to the individual family.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he has instructions for husbands and wives and sons and fathers, and the point is that sons and daughters represent their parents well in the family relationship by walking in agreement with their ways and teachings.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is what it means to honor your father and mother, to walk in the way of the family.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way as a husband leads his wife into having the mind of Christ, she represents his leadership well by walking in agreement in submission to the teaching of the word.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: See, these aren't foreign concepts to us.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds strange, uh, but it's not foreign.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Lindsay and I were at the Discovery Center a few weeks ago, and I was sitting there with our youngest, uh, three, our three-month-old Judah in the baby area, and there was some grandparents sitting, just sitting, relaxing while their two grandsons ran around and played and had a great time.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I heard some mom walk up to these grandparents and say, uh, excuse me, are those your grandsons over there?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, Yeah, that's that's uh them.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Those are the most well-spoken and kind young boys that I've ever met.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: You've done a great job raising them, you and their parents.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so the idea was that these kids didn't just pick this up on their own.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: They were taught to walk in this way.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as they walk in this way that the family taught them in kindness and being well spoken, it reflects positively upon the parents and the grandparents.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the grandparents are just beaming with pride, right?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: That they they represented the family well.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Likewise, you can also not represent the family well, but in this case they did.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the individual family relationship, again, is most manifest when we are all in agreement, walking in the same direction, in the same character system, representing the individual family in unison.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Ideally centered around the word of God, since it is the illustration for that relationship.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the second step of family togetherness.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: You be together in body and then together in mind.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: So our families need to be together in mind concerning the word of God and his desires, thus increasing the family resemblance.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it means to be in his family.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe this is where you struggle.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here in step two, you've got the, you know, we're we've determined to be together in body.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: We're not dividing in that sense, but this is where it gets hard.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: If this is where you struggle in an individual family to be together in mind, I encourage you, husbands, fathers, mothers, parents.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not leading your family and learning and walking according to the word of God, it's time to start.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Make that your family identity.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Lindsay and I have decided as our kids get older, you know, we're going to develop the wolf clan, right?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is the wolf family, and as wolves, this is what we do.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is how you act, this is how you represent the family well, and we as a family represent Christ.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we teach our kids to walk in this way.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe this is where you struggle in the church family.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you struggle with just dividing over really silly things like worship music or mask mandates or vaccine status, whatever it may be.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk more about that next week.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe if you don't know the word of God, it's time to start submitting yourself to the teaching ministry of the church.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's sermons or Bible studies or classes, we have an endless number of those.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's time to learn what TBC believes and start growing in the Word and gaining the mind of Christ so that we can better represent the family together.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you struggle here in this area, in our ultimate family.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is simple.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Christians, it's time to start prioritizing personal Bible study.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Period.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Getting on the same page with our Father.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: So this is step two.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: As we learn and grow in the mind of Christ and come together in agreement on this, we learn how to better represent Him.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then that knowledge that we grow in then teaches us about step three.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And step three is this concept.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Once we're together physically and starting to become together in mind, we learn this fact that our together families that we just talked about work together to make us better.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds really confusing, but it's pretty simple.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: That once our families are together in body and mind, these families are designed to all work together in the same compartment to make us better.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the goal of God in our lives, the highest ideal of the family, is that we become better sons and daughters of the Father.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: That is, we become sanctified, conformed to the image of his son, representing the family well.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: God is doing that in our lives already, making us better representatives.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he's using the vehicle of the family relationship to do it.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is his primary vehicle for getting you to be a better representative of his family.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: And here's how I think it kind of all fits together on a practical level.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: I came up with this idea called the family funnel.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: It seems to work to me, so hopefully it's not too confusing.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: But uh you have your ultimate family up here.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is the biggest ideal, right?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have our corporate family and we have our individual family.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: And again, they're all meant to be held together in the same concept.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but it's interesting how this works, right?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've kind of made two arrows, one for discipleship, the discipleship path and the sanctification path.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And here's kind of how this relationship or how these things tend to work together.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: As you come into a relationship with the Father, when you first become his son or daughter, the first thing you should have been told, and the first thing we instruct people to say in evangelism after someone accepts Christ, is read your Bible and get plugged into a church family.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So this family relationship then pushes you to the next level, deeper.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Get involved in that family.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've been around the church family long enough, you'll start to recognize some recurring patterns of our teaching.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Love your husbands and wives well, love your kids well.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: We have endless parenting and marriage classes.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: We spend a lot, as pastors, we spend a lot of our week doing marriage counseling.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because as we spend time here, it then pushes us to focus here.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the path of discipleship.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: This relationship tells us to focus on this relationship, which tells us to focus on this relationship.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then as we begin to come together in body and mind here, interestingly, it kicks us back out to the top.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: As we live our family lives out, it teaches us about how to function in the corporate family.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's the illustration.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: As we do it well, it even qualifies us for leadership in the corporate body.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's no surprise that when Paul is talking about elder requirements and leadership for the church, the family is the proving ground.
• 35:17
  unknown: Right?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: He says it's a trustworthy statement.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it's a fine work he decides to do, desires to do.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, so on and so forth.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: He must be down here, uh one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: But if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is the proving grounds, right?
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it qualifies for this.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not doing this, uh then you're not gonna understand this.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the family teaches us how to function in the church.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the practice ground.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then the church then teaches us how to function as sons and daughters of the king.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it's an interesting relationship, but the point is that they're all intended to be done in the presence of one another.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can't separate them out.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: The family related, the only way you know if the elder is leading his family well is if he's leading his family in the midst of the church and we're all watching him.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing if he's really managing his household.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: We can fool somebody for a few days.
• 36:35
  unknown: Right?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can't fool somebody if you're living in the midst of it.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: So these individual family relationships are designed to be lived out within the corporate relationship, and those working together prepare us to be better representatives of the Father.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: The main point is basically this don't compartmentalize your family life, uh any of your family life.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: They're meant to be better together.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is kind of if you take nothing away from this, this was all gibberish to you, you weren't paying attention, fell asleep, that's fine.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this is what I want you to leave with.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: Live your home family life in the midst of your church family life for the sake of your ultimate family life.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is the design, right?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is how it works.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, we when we compartmentalize these things, they they compete with each other.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, oh, you know, I have to sacrifice my family to go to church.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or sacrifice, you know, and so suddenly, you know, you can't go to church because you know you have to focus over here, or maybe you prioritize the church too much to the neglect of your family.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's not how it works.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're not meant to compete with one another.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Don't use your family as an excuse not to go to church.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're a better parent when you bring them to church, a parent in the midst of that church.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's how it's designed to be.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's meant to work together.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know, just some closing thoughts here.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because we are better together in body.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: My encouragement to you is fight to be together on every level.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Fight for your family to be together.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Fight together with the church.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Focus on the future hope we have when we're going to be together with our Father in heaven.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and because we are better together in mind, center your home life around the Word of God.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Make it about Him because it's not about you.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is sort of the problem we have in our families.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh because this is such an important ministry for God in developing us into His character and sanctifying us, it's no wonder that the family is the thing Satan likes to attack the most.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the thing he likes to redefine the most.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: He likes to say, you know, it's all about you.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's a vehicle for your happiness.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about you.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a vehicle for your happiness, it's a vehicle for ministry to illustrate the highest level of our family relationship with God.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: So center your home family life around the Word of God.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: And third, because they're all meant to work together to make us better, live your life openly in the midst of the church.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we're meant to do.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe for you, that means getting plugged into a small group.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good step.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're kind of a decent-sized church.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to just come in here and get to know everybody and live in the midst.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: So plug into a small group.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Live your life alongside those believers, those family.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh another thing, if you're a young parent, we have a class we're starting up this Wednesday that my wife and I are teaching with uh some other couples as specifically for parents of young children.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: That'd be a great place to start.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: The sign up is the deadline is today.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so if you're looking for a place to come and parent alongside other people as you should be, that's a great place to start.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: Get plugged in.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some other thoughts.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: Be be subject to one another.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: We kind of have this uh attitude.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, don't tell me how to parent.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me how to worship.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell me how to relate to God.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's none of your business.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's my life over here.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: You you have no part in that.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the attitude we should have.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: According to this model, like it or not, right, you have every right to look at my family and tell me when I'm doing a poor job.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, you have that responsibility as we live out our marriage and our family life in the midst of the church, because it's there for your benefit to build one another up to love and good work, to encourage one another to represent the family well.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: So just some thoughts.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for uh this design.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: That you've woven every aspect of our family lives together to work together to accomplish your purpose in our lives, to conform us to the image of your family.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray that that would be true of us, that we would lean in and help one another to live out the family representation well.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we love you.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: We praise you.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, guys.