The histories of the Old Testament set forth family sins and triumphs with breathtaking honesty. As the Apostle Paul said, “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition...” (1Cor. 10:11a). A handful of these examples in Moses’ historical accounts in the Pentateuch will be examined and applied.

So, I'm speaking this morning about the theology of the family in Moses' historical narratives. So, most of you were in the main session yesterday when I talked about the theology of the family in the law of Moses. So, the whole of my focus has been the Pentateuch. Penta means five. Moses wrote those five books of the Bible.

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. So I'm drawing from all five of those books. In Genesis, I haven't touched anything prior to Abraham because there were men who handled Genesis 1-1 through Abraham, so you won't hear anything about that either yesterday or today. But I'm talking this morning about the histories. What has God done in in on planet earth to redeem people and to structure families, to order families, to regulate families, and how has he worked through what he's given us.

So what we find when you study this is that the histories of the Old Testament set forth family sins and triumphs. You find them both. You find sin and devastation and you find triumphs in the Pentateuch with breathtaking honesty. There are many reasons why I believe Scripture, but one of the reasons I believe Scripture is true is because it doesn't sugarcoat it. It tells you like it is.

It doesn't set forth only heroes, but there are villains and there are some that are part hero and part villain as they repent and fall and live and make mistakes and then the scripture gives it all to you. Here's what the Apostle Paul said when he was reciting some of this Old Testament history, the Apostle Paul says, Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for admonition, For our admonition. God is admonishing us through the Old Testament histories. He's teaching us. They're examples.

Is this all the Old Testament history? No, this is just a drop in the bucket. There's so many things that haven't been written. Why weren't they written? Because we didn't need them.

God gave us the things that we needed as examples. And so we should study, we should learn, and I'm going to take you through a handful of those examples this morning. Here's the roadmap for our time. First, I'm gonna give you six things that we see in Moses' historical narratives, in the histories that Moses gives to us. And then I'll talk about some of the contemporary attacks, modern day attacks against those things that we learn from these histories.

And then I'll have a final closing remark. So let's ask the Lord to help us. God, You are the God of history. Nothing has ever happened that wasn't happening under your all-wise sovereign control. You rule from heaven, and We thank you for that.

Much of it doesn't make sense to us, but this much we know that you govern the universe with perfect wisdom and your arm's never too short. You're always able to do whatever you want to do, whenever you want to do it. And you know all things, and you do all things well. I praise you for that. Help us to study your Word with attentive hearts today in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, well first let me give you six things that we see in Moses' historical narratives. I could give you a hundred. It takes a long time to read through Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and there's a lot of family life history so I'm just giving you six things to be drawn out of that so not representing it as comprehensive at all. Number one, we see God's plan to bless the nations and families through a family. How is God blessing nations and families?

Well he's working through a family and then through the families that came from that family to bless nations and families. Genesis 22 18 God says to Abraham in your seed through your family line all the nations of the earth shall be blessed." That last phrase is exactly what God told his father then he tells it to the son and then in Genesis 28 verse 14 Jacob being the grandson of Abraham and the son of Isaac, God says this directly to him, also your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth. You shall spread abroad to the west and to the east to the north and south and you and in you and in your seed in your generations your family line all the families of the earth shall be blessed So to Abraham and Isaac he said all the nations of the earth shall be blessed and then he repeats this to the grandson of Abraham Jacob but he switches it to families there. Every family in the earth is blessed through the work that he wanted to do, that he was pleased to do through a family line. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and in that family line you get down to the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson Jesus.

That's how all the families of the world, all the nations of the world have been blessed. So you can actually trace these promises to Abraham and then Isaac and then Jacob. You can trace these promises to fulfillments in the genealogies of the New Testament. That's exactly how the gospel starts. That's exactly how the New Testament starts is a genealogy tracing out Abraham to Jesus through whom all the families of the earth are blessed.

The point is that God was pleased and is pleased to work through family lines to bring blessing. You get that. He's not done working through family lines to bring blessing. God was pleased to work through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and their descendants to bless the nations, to bless the families of the earth, and he is still pleased to work through family lines to bless the earth. He still is.

That's true. Think of all the genealogies in the Old Testament. Don't you get tired of reading them. Admit it, you do. Okay.

It is a history of a family and the families that came out of that. It is a family history. Let me ask you, why all these commandments for the transmission of the faith? I went through some of them yesterday. Deuteronomy 6 is the classic one.

You and your son and your grandson love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and strength. Put these commandments into your heart then teach them diligently to your children so there's a commandment to teach the commandments. Why all that? Because God is pleased to work in and down through family lines. He wants to and he does and all the families of the earth and all the nations of the earth are blessed by God working through family lines.

Only through family lines? I didn't say that. I didn't mean that but yes but definitely through family lines. So that's number one. We see God's plan to bless the nations and all the families of the earth through a family.

Number two, for you who just came in, there are six things that I'm putting forth that we see in the the histories of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Moses' books. Number two, we see God overpowering family sins to save. This is really important. We see so clearly in these histories that Moses has given us God overpowering family sins to save. Why does that matter?

It gives me hope. The domes have family sins and it gives me hope that this doesn't have to be the end of the story that God isn't through with me though there are sins in our family we can repent and turn to him and he can make us fruitful. He does, we know he does because the Old Testament histories were given to us as examples. They were written for our admonition. They speak to us that there's hope for families to have sin in them.

Praise God for that. Let me give you two examples. The first example is Joseph. Any sin in that family? In Genesis 37 we see favoritism.

A lot of sons. How many sons have a coat of many colors? One son. Oh the dreamer. The dreamer has a coat of many colors and his brothers despise him and they sell him into slavery and they actually think they're doing him a favor because the original plan was to kill him.

They decide that they'll just sell him into slavery. So you fast forward a couple of decades, some of that time spent in languishing in a prison, and you fast forward and Joseph has been blessed and has been elevated and he's second in command in all of Egypt and through the series of events that God has brought about his brothers who don't know who he is had been brought before him and Joseph now as the second in command to whom they are totally beholden they are totally at his mercy and he reveals himself to them and what a terrifying moment that was for these brothers who had sold him into slavery we see this in Genesis 45 You can turn there if you like. Genesis 45 verses 4 through 8. Genesis 45 verses 4 through 8. And Joseph said to his brothers, please come near to me.

So they came near. Then he said, I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt. But now do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.

So now it was not you who sent me here but God and he has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. Should his brothers have sold them into slavery? No, of course they shouldn't have, but God's work isn't stopped by sin and families. God is able to overpower the sin that happens to families, to bring things forward even in the midst of things that were not right and to grant repentance. His brothers, you actually do find them repenting and to restore years that the locusts have eaten are restored.

God overpowers the sins of families. Let me give you another example. Judah and Tamar. It's a scandalous, the reading of this history is scandalous. It's difficult to read in mixed company.

In Genesis 38 we see these terrible sins of a father-in-law and a daughter-in-law And there is a child conceived through the sins that were committed there. And you find the names in Matthew chapter 1 verse 3. And the genealogy of Jesus is mostly father-son, father-son, father-son, but there are a couple of women named and Tamar is one of the women named. Matthew doesn't shrink from that scandalous history. He says that Judah begot Perez by Tamar.

She's one of the women named. The sin is pointed to, but God's plans weren't frustrated by the failure and sin and defilement in the family. God is able to overpower sin in families, and you better be glad of it, because there's sin in your family. These things were given to us as an example. They were written for our admonition.

They were written for sinful families to know that there's hope that we can run to God and he can make us fruitful. God can still work through our families. Listen, friends, family sins don't have to be the end of the story. Family repentance can be the great landmark in a family history. The family sins don't have to be the great landmark in the family history.

Family repentance can be. A family can point back to the point where they forsook their sin and sought the Lord and threw themselves on the mercy of Christ and were restored as the great monument in their family history. Praise God for that. Somehow this sovereign, perfectly holy, good and righteous God is working in and through and in spite of family sins. Explain that.

I'm not here for that. I'm not that good. But I know that the Bible teaches that God does work in and through and in spite of family sins. He has the power to overwhelm our sins because he is a God of grace, a restoring God, a God who receives those who repent and run to him. So that's number two.

We see God overpowering family sins to save. Number three, we see a powerful example of honoring marriage. I'm speaking here of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. Joseph is a servant in Potiphar's household. He's an official in Egypt, a powerful man in Egypt, and Joseph works his way up through the ranks of servants in his household and becomes essentially the master of the household.

And Potiphar trusts him so much that he doesn't keep track of anything anymore because all he knows is when Joseph manages it, it prospers and he doesn't have to give one second of his time to it and so he's earned the trust of his master and his master's house is prospering. And then in Genesis 39, Genesis 39 6 through 9, I'm going to pick up just in the last sentence of Genesis 39 verse 6. So I'm most of the way through that verse and I'll read through verse 9. Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. And it came to pass after these things that his master's wife cast longing eyes on Joseph and she said, lie with me.

He refused and said to his master's wife, look my master does not know what is with me in the house and he has committed all that he has to my hand. There is no one greater in this house than I, nor has he kept back anything from me but you, because you're his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" Pleasure was, instant pleasure was offered to him on the spot, but Joseph feared God and so he understood the sacredness of marriage? And so he ran, he left his garment, and he sprinted out of that house. And he gets sent to prison falsely for it.

God cares about marriage, and Joseph cared about God. So the things that God loved Joseph loved and Joseph knew that God loves marriage so he loved marriage. He wasn't even a married man yet but he knew that is sacred to my God. Those are lines that cannot be crossed and maintain faithfulness to my God. When we assume God's disposition towards marriage, he honors and blesses.

We learned that. We just see it. It just...you cannot miss that point. Joseph honors marriage. He honors God through honoring this marriage with just a chance right before him to greatly dishonor God through dishonoring that marriage and God blesses him.

So that's number three. We see a powerful example of honoring marriage. Joseph fears God and because he fears God he knows that marriage is sacred and he won't cross that line. Number four, we see a powerful example of the devastation of rebellion against God. Rebellion against God will bring devastation into your family.

Turn to number 16. This is actually going to be sort of an extended reading so I'd recommend that you turn to number 16 so you can follow along. It's hard if you can't lay your eyes on it to keep track when somebody reads for a long time. So I'm reading number 16 verses 16 through 33. Number 16, 16 through 33.

As a preface, let me just read 16 verse three. This is Korah and Dathan and Abiram are three men who rise up against Moses and Aaron. Verse 3, they gathered together against Moses and Aaron and said to them, you take too much upon yourselves, for all the congregation is holy. Every one of them, and the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?

So what's happening here is God has made Moses and Aaron leaders among the people, and three of these men rise up and say, why are you acting like hotshots? We're all holy. We're all the Lord's people, and you're always telling us what to do. So this comes out of that and I'll start in verse 16, number 16, verse 16. And Moses said to Korah, tomorrow you and all your company be present before the Lord, you and they as well as Aaron?

Let each take his censer and put incense in it. And each of you bring his censer before the Lord, two hundred and fifty censers, both you and Aaron, each with his censer. So every man took his censer, put fire in it, laid incense on it, and stood at the door of the tabernacle of meeting with Moses and Aaron. And Korah gathered all the congregation against them at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Then the glory of the Lord appeared to all the congregation.

And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, Separate yourselves from this congregation that I may consume them in a moment. Then they fell on their faces and said, Oh God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin and you be angry with all the congregation. So the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the congregation, saying, Get away from the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Then Moses rose and went to Dathan and Abiram, and the elders of Israel followed him. And he spoke to the congregation, saying, Depart now from the tents of these wicked men.

Touch nothing of theirs, lest you be consumed in all their sins. So they got away from around the tents of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. And Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door of their tents with their wives, their sons, and their little children. And Moses said, By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, for I have not done them of my own will. If these men die naturally like all men, or if they are visited by the common fate of all men, then the Lord has not sent me.

But if the Lord creates a new thing and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them and they go down alive into the pit, then you will understand that these men have rejected the Lord. And it came to pass as he finished speaking all these words that the ground split apart under them, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, and all the men with Korah with their goods. So they and all those with them went down alive into the pit, and the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the assembly." We have this terrifying phrase in verse 33 with their households. Were their households guilty of the sins of these fathers? No.

Were their lives impacted by the sins of their fathers? Their lives were ended by the sins of their fathers. They didn't have the courage and I don't know whether I would have but they didn't have the courage to get away from their fathers. To separate from their fathers in that moment. And so they died with their fathers.

Brothers, I wanna speak to the men, the young men, the boys in here, headship is no joke. We are leading these ones entrusted to us somewhere. They led them into the heart of the earth. The earth opened up and swallowed them. They died that day.

Their wives died that day with them. Their children died that day with them. They led them somewhere. We are leading these ones entrusted to us. The only reason they're entrusted to us is God desires to bless them through us.

Now imagine the polar opposite of that happening and devastation coming into your family line. That's number four. We see a powerful example. What an example of the devastation of rebellion against God. If you think you can throw off God's government in your own life as a father, as a mother in a family, and that that is not going to impact the lives of your children for the rest of their lives.

You're not a Bible student. Number five, we see a channel of blessings and cursings. In Deuteronomy 27, let me start by reading verses 11 through 13. It sets the scene. Deuteronomy 27, 11 through 13, and Moses commanded the people on the same day saying, These shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people when you have crossed over the Jordan.

Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph, and Benjamin. And these shall stand on Mount Ebal to curse Reuben, Gad, Asher, Zebulun, Dan, and Naphtali." And so I'll stop there. What's happening? God is getting the people ready. Moses is getting ready, getting the people ready to cross over the Jordan into the Promised Land.

Moses won't end up going with them, but he's preparing the people for it. He says, when you go over, there will be two mountains, Six tribes are to assemble on Gerizim. Six tribes to assemble on Ebal. And so there are these two mountains. You can go see them today.

Gerizim is going to be the mountain of blessing. Ebal is going to be the mountain of cursing. Because of the way the sun is, Gerizim is lush. It's lush because it doesn't get the direct afternoon sun. So it's beautiful, it has lush vegetation, it's alive.

Okay, so six tribes go and they're going to be pronouncing blessings for obedience from this lush mountain. So right next to it is Mount Ebal and it gets the afternoon sun and it's a barren rock. You can go to Israel and see this today. I've seen pictures. And Shechem, you're familiar with Shechem, It's a city that is right there and these two mountains essentially form an amphitheater.

It's an acoustic feature meaning you can hear it sort of forms an amphitheater with these these two mounts. So six tribes to assemble to pronounce blessings and the people are going to say amen to the blessings and six tribes to pronounce cursings and people are going to amen the cursings and if you go to Joshua chapter 8 it says they actually did this. When they cross over after Jericho fell and they came into the land they assembled six tribes on Gerizim and six tribes on Ebal and they did what Moses commanded them to do here. Just imagine being there at that event and just six tribes saying cursed be and then all the people are instructed to say amen. Like God is right to curse those things.

Blessed be obedience for this and everyone says amen. God is right to bless for that. Imagine being there at that event. So Moses tells them things to curse. Look at verse 16, Deuteronomy 27 verse 16.

Just imagine six tribes. I don't know this is this is a million people or something like that Six tribes saying this in unison cursed is the one who treats his father or his mother with Contempt and all the people shall say amen Yes, God curse For dishonoring fathers and mothers look at verse 19 Curse is the one who perverts justice due to the stranger, the fatherless and the widow. And all the people are saying, Amen, you're right to curse people for perverting justice due to the fatherless and the widow. Look at verse 20, cursed is the one who lies with his father's wife because he has uncovered his father's bed and all the people shall say Amen God is right to curse that and then the subsequent verses are sort of more of the same in that category there are family things here that God says I curse And the people were commanded to say God you're right to curse that God you're right to curse that and the whole point is that These things in a family life are a channel for the blessing of God or the cursing of God whether we obey or disobey.

Listen to Deuteronomy chapter 5. I read you cursings. I want to give you Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 29. Deuteronomy 5 verse 29. God says, oh that they had such a heart in them that they would fear me and always keep all my commandments that it might be well with them and with God is just expressing his desire that they had this heart to fear him and to obey him so that he could bless them and their succeeding generations who blessed them and their children forever.

He wished they had that heart in them so that his blessing could flow down. This family life would just be a channel. The obedience in a family would just be a channel for a blessing. Just as disobedience grows bitter fruit, obedience grows sweet fruit. Everybody knows that.

Disobedience grows fruit. What kind of fruit is it? It's bitter fruit. Obedience grows fruit. What kind of fruit is it?

It's sweet fruit. That's true in family lines. Family life is where so much of life is lived out. So our homes are designed by God to be a fountainhead of blessing. God wants blessing flowing through home life, flowing through generations, but homes can be a fountainhead of cursing too.

That's number five. We see a channel of blessings and cursings. Number six, we get a glimpse of the ultimate family. Listen to Deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 5. Deuteronomy 8 verse 5.

Here Moses is describing God's care for them in the wilderness. God saw them through 40 years in the wilderness, so Moses is describing this great multi-decade care of God for the people and he says this, you should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son so the Lord your God chastens you. As a man chastens his son, so the Lord chastens you. Out of good intent, God disciplines his people like a father disciplines his son. The example of the model family is not found in a human family.

When fathers are looking for a great example, there might be human fathers out there who have conformed their lives somewhat to Scripture, but no human father is the model. God is the model. God is the example of the ultimate Father, the best Father, the wisest Father. Even the best of families have feet of clay. It means they have sins and deficiencies.

So if you go chasing after human families, try to be just like that family, understand this, like you're chasing something that has deficiencies and defects in it and God has none. God is the perfect father. When we get to the prophets, that's not part of the Pentateuch, when we get to the prophets, God is often put forth as a husband. And of course, we get more precision on that in the New Testament, sort of Trinitarian precision, what part of God is the husband. That's Christ.

He is the husband to his people. In Matthew 22, yesterday I started talking about progressive revelation. God didn't give us all the truth right from the start, but he's been progressively revealing more and more and all of this culminates in Jesus. It's the best, purest, fullest revelation that there is in Jesus. Those are the footsteps that we walk in.

That is the model family, the ultimate family. And that's said over and over again in the Pentateuch. God is your father. God is dealing with you as a wise father. Okay, some of the contemporary attacks.

I'll give you three. Number one. Point number one that I made today was that God was and is pleased to work through families. So if God wants that to happen, God wants families to be a source of blessings for the nations and for the families of the earth that don't know him yet, then if God wants that to happen, then his enemy doesn't want that to happen. In other words, family is in the sights of the enemy.

It can't be any other way. Our enemy is like a prowling lion seeking whom he may devour and his malice is directed at marriage and child-raising for that reason because God wants to use marriage and child raising to bless the nations, to bless the families of the earth who don't yet know him. And so marriage and family is in the sights of the enemy. And it can be no other way. Brothers and sisters, forewarned is forearmed That we know this from the histories of Moses and all of Scripture that marriage and child raising is in the sights of the devil should forearm us for the fight.

The last thing, the last position you want to be in is to be the object of the hatred of an enemy that never sleeps and not know it. Forewarned is forearm. There will be a fight, It can be no other way. There is a great enemy and his malice is trained on us because God wants to work through our family lives, through our marriages, and through our child training to bless the nations and the families of the earth. Number two, the erosion of the fear of God.

The erosion of the fear of God is because of the erosion of the knowledge of God. To know God as he reveals himself in Scripture, is to fear him. Yes, it is a reverence like a son would have, like a daughter would have towards a good father, but it goes beyond that. Fear means fear. I've heard preachers just bring it down to just sort of a reverence and leave it at that.

Do not leave it at that. Fear means fear. Should you fear God? Should you love God? Yes.

Should you also fear him? Tremble before him? You should if you know your Bible. You should if you know your Bible. What do we see in Joseph?

The fear of God and the corresponding understanding of the sacredness of marriage. Because he feared God, he would not cross those lines. And we're seeing an erosion of the fear of God and the manifestations of that are endless. You could start the list now and you'd spend the rest of the day and you'd not be done. When you lose the fear of God, everything's up for grabs.

And we don't fear God because we don't know God. Number three. So few People inside the church live like family life is a channel for either bitter fruit or sweet fruit. So few people, even in the church, live like family life is a channel either for bitter fruit or sweet fruit. You can preach on it and you get nodding.

And then we go home and live like our interactions, our lives together, aren't going to produce either bitter fruit or sweet fruit, Like we're not conscious of that and how we live out our lives often. God visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation. That's embedded in the second commandment that shows mercy to a thousand generations of those who love and obey him. Our family lives, the way we interact and live out life together, are going to produce either bitter fruit or sweet fruit. A closing remark.

There's nothing new under the Sun. Wow, when you read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, you find out there's nothing new under the sun. There are terrible defiling things happening right now, there just aren't new things happening now. You find them in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These things were written for our exam as an example and they were written for our admonition.

So don't read the Pentateuch, Moses's five books, as an academic. These things are to teach us where the pits are that we fall in, that the bitter fruit comes from. Don't you study the Pentateuch like a math book. This is going to affect your life. You study it like God has given these to us for our admonition.

Not for classroom endeavors, for our admonition for us to learn and shape our lives around. You can see where family life goes off the rails in the Old Testament and they still go off the rails in all the same old ways. There's nothing new under the sun. God, thank you for your Word. Thank you for laying these histories of how you've worked through human history to bring things about and how things have played out so many different families.

These things are an example to us. We know that in our minds. Help us to know that in our hearts. These things are for our admonition that our lives would be informed and shaped by the histories that we see of families in these five books of Moses. Thank you for them.

We know they're a great and precious gift to us. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.