How strong is your family? Scott Brown explains in this audio message that to cultivate a healthy family, there needs to be a healthy and strong marriage. In Scripture, we can learn from both godly and ungodly examples of husbands and fathers.

Ephesians 5:1-2 (NKJV) - "Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma."

I'd like you to open your Bibles to Psalm chapter 36. We're speaking about the heart of the matter of home life. The heart of the matter of home life has to do with the love of God the Father and the mediating of that love into a family. Psalm 36 beginning in verse five. The focus of this part of the Psalm is on God.

Your mercy, oh Lord, is in the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the great mountains. Your judgments are a great deep. Oh Lord, you preserve man and beast.

How precious is your loving kindness, oh God. Therefore, the children of men put their trust under the shadow of your wings. They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of your house and you give them drink from the river of your pleasures. For with you is the fountain of life. In your light, we see light.

Oh, continue your loving kindness to those who know you and your righteousness to the upright in heart." This is a picture of a father's love. Now when you boil it all down, so much of what happens in life on earth reduces down to what a man does with his life. And then he gets married. And then the stakes are raised. And everything that flows from what he does arises out of his marriage.

And God has given the world a man and a woman in order to bring about the declaration of the glory of God. Just like Solomon, just like Jim Santels and his son now who's walking in the same paths. A new kind of family. A new kind of family where a father realized, hey, I'm supposed to be the shepherd of this house. I'm supposed to be the head of this house.

What am I gonna do? I need to bring my wife near to me. I need to bring my children near to me. This is a picture of a revival. We need a new kind of father in the land today.

We need a new kind of family in the land today. There's so much brokenness in it today and I pray that God would give all of us such strength to recover such a beneficial thing in this world that there would be this ever expanding fellowship of love in our families. We talked about at the very beginning of this conference how the whole kingdom of God is a fellowship of love, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit working in love together. And then bringing many sons to glory, to baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So I want to talk about God.

I want to talk about the love of God and the ways of God. Because God the Father is the supreme example for every father who ever walked. And every father proceeded from God the Father. And every godly principle of fatherhood is traced back to God the Father. In reality, it doesn't matter all that much what kind of father you had because he is the father that you never had.

And sometimes the help that you need is right under your nose, right there, right there in His Holy Word. And you're not left alone. You're not left alone to figure it out all by yourself. What men long for is to be a better father. I think that's pretty universal.

And you wish you had a role model. You wish you had someone who could have led the way and you have a hunger for it. Your soul cries out for it. That's true of almost every man. But the Bible does give you the father you never had.

He himself gives you a role model. He gives you principles. He gives you specific practices of fatherhood. He actually gives you a schedule. He actually gives you commands.

He gives you mentors in the Bible. There are dozens of them. He gives you bad examples to follow as well. And most wonderfully, the Bible shows you Christ, who is the living representation of God the Father. And if you want to know how fathers ought to operate, Christ will show you in every part of his ministry.

Now the root of most fatherhood problems is that fathers have not taken God their father as their pattern. They've taken other patterns for their fatherhood. And what I would just like to remind us of is the Bible says in Ephesians 5 verse 1, therefore be imitators of God and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us. Be imitators of God as dear children. That's really the command.

And this is so important because God is the Father that you never had. It's amazing to read through the Bible and see what fatherhood is all about. Like for example, In the Old Testament, in the Pentateuch, you can see these remarkable pictures of fatherhood. In Genesis, God creates a perfect home for his children. And he puts them in a garden.

And He gives them a way to have a life unparalleled. And then He calls them to be fruitful and multiple. In Exodus, a father calls his son out of Egypt. And he rescues that son from bondage. And he carries his son.

Deuteronomy chapter four says that God carries his children as a father carries his son. And God carried his children through the wilderness for 40 years and he fed them. It's a picture of fatherhood, rescuing a son out of bondage and then carrying him into the promised land. In Leviticus, God the Father makes a place of worship for his son and he establishes the tabernacle. And then later on he establishes the temple, but he brings his son into a place where he can connect with God.

The whole picture of the tabernacle is God coming near, that you can actually be near God himself, that He will never leave you or forsake you. And there in Leviticus, He defines what worship is, and it's so sacred that He actually threatens to kill anyone who violates His principles of worship. It's absolutely remarkable. And then he establishes feasts for worship and celebration, Passover and Pentecost and the Feast of Trumpets and dedication and Purim. God provided a place of worship and celebration for his children.

It's a pattern for all fathers. It's a pattern for a new kind of family. And then in the book of Numbers, God brings families together for service. In the book of Numbers, God is establishing family heads and giving them a job to do. In the north side of the tabernacle, these families would do this job.

In the east and the west and the south side, families were gathered together to serve the Lord, to bring their families together to foster, promote worship. The book of Numbers begins with heads of households reciting their genealogies. And while most people today can't recite their genealogy back beyond their great grandfather, these guys were reciting their genealogies back 400 years. Can you do that? You can almost never find anyone who can do that.

They had a generational sense of life. They they had a sense of fatherhood. They had a They had a sense of ancestry and purpose across the generations. And some of these families were just huge. You know, one family is 59, 000, another 32, 000, another 74, 000.

This is just of fighting men. And several times in Numbers these families are called what? You know, armies. The families in Numbers are called armies. God actually Has designed the family to be like that you veer your family like an army You're like these shock troops going about doing the will of God That's what that's what the picture is in numbers and then when you get to Deuteronomy a father gives his children laws and he calls fathers to take his laws and walk beside their sons and teach them when they sit in the house when they walk by the way when they lie down and when they rise up.

This is a vision of fatherhood. Think about all the things that God the Father does in the Old Testament. Remember, God the Father is the father you never had. He creates a family that you so need. In Jeremiah chapter 10, we learn that God creates.

He takes action. He's a mover and a shaker. He takes decisive action, which is what fathers ought to do. They ought to take the bull by the horns, they ought to get their families together and say, it's Sheba time. In Deuteronomy 1 he carries, in Psalm 103 he pities his children, in Psalm 27 he adopts, in Exodus 1 he delivers, in Exodus 8 he judges, in 2 Samuel 7 He keeps His promises.

In Micah 7, He pardons. In Isaiah 64, He saves. In Exodus 15, He reigns forever. In Deuteronomy 8, he disciplines. He hears the cries of his children as Joseph and Hannah and Samuel and David cry out to him.

He lifts yokes from necks in Hosea chapter 11. He heals in Exodus 15. He loves in Hosea 11. He destroys his enemies in Psalm 68. He disciplines.

In Proverbs chapter 3. This is the father that you never had. This is your example. Brothers, follow this example. This is the kind of Father that God desires to create in the world.

He is the Father that you never had. I just mentioned what the Father does in the Old Testament. What is the Father in the Old Testament? Well, in Deuteronomy 18, He is the prophet. In Matthew 2, He's the king.

In Ezekiel 34, He's a shepherd. In Psalm 75, He's a judge. In Exodus 34, He's merciful. In Ezekiel 38, He's jealous. In Exodus 4, he's a teacher.

In Deuteronomy 32, he's a parent. In Exodus 19, he's an eagle. In Exodus 32, he's a listener. In Psalm 46, he's a refuge. In Habakkuk 3, He's strong.

In Psalm 89, He's a rock. In Psalm 103, He is compassionate. He's gracious, slow to anger, abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us, as a father pities his children. So the Lord pities those who fear him, for he knows our frame and he remembers that we are but dust. In Exodus 15, he's a warrior. In Isaiah 5, he's a farmer. In Psalm 62, he's a rock.

In 2 Samuel 22, he's a shield. In Psalm 32, he's a hiding place. In Psalm 61, he's a shelter. In Numbers 24, he's a lion. In Deuteronomy 9, he's a fire.

In Isaiah 55, He's a spring of water. In Matthew 19, He's omnipotent. In Jeremiah 23, He's omnipresent. In Psalm 147, He's omniscient. In Joshua 23, He's reliable and not one word He has spoken has ever failed.

In Psalm 68, He's a Father to the fatherless. In 1 Chronicles 21, He's a Father of mercies. That's who He is. And when we think about fatherhood, when we think about a new kind of family, we have to recognize that we have a pattern in heaven. That God the Father is our shepherd.

He leads us in the ways that we should go as fathers. And in living like that, like your Father in heaven, you become a new kind of father. And he becomes the father you never had. If you turn to the New Testament, you see even more about fatherhood. In John chapter one, we learn that Christ shows us the father.

Christ is the exact resemblance of all of God the Father's excellencies, and He, His wisdom, His love, His holiness, all are loaded into the Lord Jesus Christ. And every father who wants to be a different kind of father, needs to look to Jesus Christ and become like Him. What kind of patriarchy are we talking about? What kind of fatherhood are we talking about? We're talking about a patriarchy that's consistent with Jesus Christ and His fatherhood as he declares the glory of the Father.

He said, he who has seen me has seen the Father. He said that knowing him is to know the Father. You know what that means? It means that Christ ends fatherlessness. Isn't that astonishing?

The Lord Jesus Christ takes the most common problem in the whole world and He ends it by becoming the face of God, the Father, to all of his sons and daughters. It's the most wonderful thing that's ever happened to mankind. That fatherlessness has ended in Jesus Christ. What is the Father in the New Testament? Well, he's a provider of everlasting consolation in 2 Thessalonians 2.

He blesses with every spiritual blessing in Ephesians 1. He guarantees an inheritance in Ephesians 1. He begats sons in 1 Peter 1. He judges in 1 Peter 1. He chastens in Revelation 3.

He gives good gifts in James 1. He responds in Matthew chapter 6. He gives grace and peace in Romans 1, He rejoices in repentant sons. In Luke 15, He loves in 1 John 3, this is a picture of fatherhood. This is a picture of a new kind of father.

And what God has done is He has given a father to every man to show him what it means to be a father. And I pray that God would give us such understanding of His fatherhood. In 2 Corinthians chapter 1 he's the father of mercies and comfort. In Ephesians one, he's the father of glory. In Hebrews 12, he's the father of spirits.

In James two, he's the father of lights. You know, the summary of his fatherhood is contained in one single four-letter word, love. That is what characterizes everything regarding fatherhood. You've heard of the law of first occurrences in the Bible. You know when something appears first in the Bible that it has particular meaning.

Did you know that the first mention of love in the Bible is a love for a father, for a son? It appears in in Genesis where God says take your son your son whom you love. The very first mention of love is the love of a Father toward a Son. Did you know that the very first words spoken by a Father in the New Testament are words of love? When the Lord Jesus Christ was being baptized, there was a voice that came from heaven which said, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

The very first mention of love in the New Testament is the love of a father toward his son. What that means is that God has established a way for every father, his heart so fixed on love. God defines that kind of love. You know, people have had different experiences with fatherhood. One of the great atheists of the modern day is Richard Dawkins.

Here's what he says about God. "'The God of the Old Testament is arguably "'the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Now that's a man who does not know God.

He never knew God, he never knew the Father of mercies, he never knew the Father who pours out his loving kindness, who draws, who helps, who cares like a father. But if you had a father like that, you have to recognize that God has ended your fatherlessness in Jesus Christ. He's given you the Father of lights, He's given you the Father that you never had. God is so kind. Behold your Father.

Behold your mentor in Fatherhood. We need a new kind of Father. And that kind of father is found in heaven. Now, it's so important that a man understands where he ought to get his fatherhood. Because who he is and how he operates has such a profound influence on the very next most important thing really in the whole scheme of relationships on planet earth and that is his marriage.

What God does is He gives a father and He gives a marriage. And in giving a marriage, it means that He gives a mother. So what God is doing in the world is He is providing these very precious and tender relationships in order to declare his own glory. And I just want to talk about your marriages and my marriage as well. Ephesians chapter five speaks so beautifully of the way of a man and a maid in a marriage.

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands and everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.

He that loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it just as the Lord does the church. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself and let the wife see that she respects her husband." This is a picture of marriage. A man coming, becoming a husband, becoming a father, a woman, filling in and becoming a wife.

Such a beautiful picture. I want to talk tonight just in closing about what marriage is really all about. And I just have a few things I want to say. I have six things that I want to say about marriage. First of all, I want to talk about the purpose of marriage, which is to display the gospel.

Secondly, the essence of marriage, which is oneness. Thirdly, the mission of marriage, to take dominion. Fourth, the design of marriage, to have a shared mission with role distinction. Fifth, the reach of marriage, to spread the knowledge of God across the generations, and then sixthly the bond of marriage avow. Let's begin with the purpose of marriage, to proclaim the gospel.

Marriage is designed by God to be a picture of the gospel. And you have different roles that are played in the gospel. You have a father and his love, you have a husband. You have a wife who is being rescued by that husband. And you have children.

Marriage is a picture of the gospel. And the husband, he gives his life for his wife, just like Christ does the church. He gives himself up. In Christianity, men die for the women. And the wife, her role is to play the church.

She has a role. And she is the church. A wife is the church. You wives need to know who you are. You are the church.

You are playing a role in the world to act like the church of Jesus Christ. In the same way that your husband has a role to play, there's a meaning in his life and he has a way of living. And that way is to play a role, to be like Christ. Children also have a role. They play the role of the believer who honored their father and obey their father in heaven.

Whenever you have abdication of love and authority and a lack of sacrificial love in a father. You have a distortion of the picture of the gospel. Whenever you have a wife who's rebellious and she's not submissive to her husband, you have a picture of the contradiction of the gospel. Whenever you have children who disobey their parents or who dishonor them, what you have is a distortion of the gospel because family life is designed to be a picture of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now you have to recognize why your marriage.

Your marriage exists for something greater than you. So whenever you have a conflict in your marriage, you have to recognize why that's happening. It's happening so that you would declare the glory of the Gospel. When a husband wrongs his wife, she is the church and she trustfully submits to her husband. She has a role to play.

The same with the husband, the same with the child. The Lord has established a marriage in order to be a picture of the Gospel. Most of the problems in a marriage happen because a husband or a wife or a child forgot who they are. They forgot what role they're playing. When a wife is pining away in dissatisfaction and discontentment, she's forgotten who she is.

She's playing the role of a submissive, obedient, trustful church, a humble church, who has really God as the only one who has her life in his hands. And so what you have here is that Marriage is a picture of the Gospel. So you have to know the purpose of your marriage. Do you know the purpose of your marriage? Did you think that your marriage was just all about having somebody to please you all the time?

That wasn't the purpose of your marriage. The purpose of your marriage was to declare the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to show the world what authority looks like, what submission looks like, and what honor looks like. That's why you're alive today as a husband and wife. Maybe you need to recover that. Then there's the essence of marriage.

Oneness. The central component of marriage is oneness. This is the center of everything that marriage is all about. The two shall become one flesh. This is sort of the irreducible principle of this essence of marriage.

God has called a husband and a wife to oneness in everything. It's an emotional oneness, it's a physical oneness, it's a spiritual oneness, it runs through absolutely everything in their lives. Do you have oneness in your marriage? I mean, are you one in your understanding of your marriage, like the purpose of your marriage? Are you one in your thinking about your life purpose?

Have you sat down as husband and wife and said this is the purpose of our life. We're united. We are as one. Our hearts beat as one. Our feet are walking together as one.

How about the priorities of your daily schedule? Are you one about that? Are you agreed together and are you walking together just about the daily priorities of your life? Have you sat down and really considered everything in your life? Or your overall goals, your ministry in the community, your life and your ministry in the local church.

Are you one in those areas? God has designed marriage for oneness, and it's really, really practical. It's not just a spiritual one. It has to do with absolutely everything in your life. And it includes your oneness of heart.

Do you have a heartfelt unity? Do you say in your heart, I am so on the same page with my wife. I'm so on the same page with my husband. This is how God has designed marriage. You know, oneness is so important, yet it's so threatened today.

There's so many sort of new threats to marriage today. Maybe one of the biggest one is technology. Are you aware of how technology can destroy your marriage? How technology can slowly make you single again? How technology can just suck you into your own intensely personal ever-expanding world while your spouse is being sucked into her intensely personal ever-expanding world.

And you might be in the same room, but you're not really in the same place. Whenever we have a new technology there are always challenges. I'm not against technology, I think technology is good, but if you don't take dominion over technology, technology will take dominion over you. And you have to recognize that the challenges that new technologies present. You know it's an enormous problem in the rising generation.

In my country, you know, children ages 8 to 18 spend almost every waking hour online, seven and a half hours and then 12 and a half hours of media is consumed during the rest of the day. It's remarkable. This is a radical transformation in culture. Is it affecting your marriage? Oh, I think it affects most people's marriages for sure.

You have to recognize that. How these computers and games and blogs and curiosity internet surfing. You know, one of the realities among some homeschool families is that the wife is at home, but she's not really at home. She's on this blog, she's working on Facebook, and you call her a homeschool mom but she's not really it's not really at home her body's at home but her mind is wandering all over the world it happens You have to recognize how technology can destroy your oneness and make you slowly single again and suck you into your intensely personal ever-expanding world. So the essence of marriage is oneness.

I just want to have us consider oneness. You know a new kind of family is really an old kind of family. It's like the family in heaven where the Father and the Son and the Spirit are all one. They glorify one another, they work together, they submit to one another. They are one.

And then there's the mission of marriage to take dominion. Is the primary purpose of marriage, fulfillment, companionship, physical gratification, entertainment? This is kind of the idea that you get in the modern culture, that that's the purpose of marriage. But actually what does God want out of marriage? Well he's bringing husbands and wives together to take dominion.

That's why God, that's why man needed a help me. He needed a helper so that he could take dominion. He couldn't quite take dominion well enough all on his own. We think so wrongly about marriage, we think marriage is kind of a pleasure institution for us, where somebody makes us happy. But actually, marriage is a labor of love.

It's a labor that comes out of love. That's why the Apostle Paul talked about equal yoking. Well, yoking has to do with work. And you just can't marry anybody. You have to be equally yoked.

That's what Paul is saying. But he's picturing the way that work took place in the ancient world where you had two animals in a yoke. And you can't just put any two animals in a yoke. You can't put a large one or the small one. You can't even put the same kind of animal that would have two different personalities.

That's equal yoking. And for those of you who are not married here in this room right now, Just recognize that God's design for you in your marriage is to find someone that you can labor with, someone that you can labor with your whole life long. Someone about whom you can say, it's better for me to labor with that person than any other person I've ever seen because marriage is a labor. That labor has so many different aspects to it but we have to recognize that marriage is about taking dominion And that husbands and wives should be taking dominion together. You know, do you have a dominion agenda together?

My recommendation is you should write it down. You should sit down and write down the 10 points of how you're going to take dominion in the next year or two. You know, why do you exist as a couple? And to understand the dominion that you ought to be taking. And then the fourth Principle of marriage is the design of marriage.

It's a shared mission with role distinction. Now, our culture hates everything that implies gender distinctions. That's why it hates marriage. That's why it hates the womb, by the way, because the womb kind of presents maybe one of the most extreme differences between men and women. The world hates a division of labor.

It hates authority of any kind. But in the Bible, you find a shared mission with role distinction, where a husband has one role and a wife has another. This is the way that God designed it, and it's a beautiful thing. Have you fully incorporated this into your own marriage, that you are equal but different? There is authority and there's submission.

And there's a head and there's a helper. There's an authority and then there's one who submits. You know, these things are so noxious to say in a public setting in this world, but I'm just really quoting scripture. The Bible says the husband is the head of the wife. But it's not just some interesting idea.

It has to do with the gospel as also Christ is head of the church. This is a divinely ordained institution of authority and submission and those those who try to overthrow it are trying to overthrow something they will never be able to overthrow completely. They will finally bow their knee to God and admit how bankrupt it was to try to overthrow it. Here's what the Bible says. God is the head of Christ, 1 Corinthians 11.

Christ is the head of man and man is the head of woman. That's the creation order. Now it would be absurd to take a man and say, no, Let's move man and put him over Christ. Does that work? No, that doesn't work at all.

We know to put Christ over God doesn't work because the Lord Jesus Christ says that he came to submit to his Father. And so if you take a woman and put him over a man, That is equally noxious in the sight of God. It's equally wicked to put a woman over a man as it is to put a man over Jesus Christ. This is the creation order. God is the head of Christ, Christ is the head of man, and man is the head of woman.

This is fixed in heaven. And that is the beginning of this whole matter of the shared mission with world distinction. You know the Apostle Paul said that the man is not made for woman, but the woman for man. That makes a lot of people mad. But you know, that's what God said.

We should learn to love that with all of our hearts to say, oh Lord this is wise, this is so good, this is exactly what I need, this is help from heaven to rescue me from my own bankrupt view of the world. You know I've known many women who really understand this. They're the happiest women I've ever seen. They trust God. And their fears, their tensions just seem to be relieved when they say, ah, I'm gonna submit to my husband.

I'm gonna be his helper. I'm gonna order my life around him. I'm going to just trust God that this is the best. And then there is the bond of marriage. The bond of marriage is a vow.

A marriage vow is what connects heaven and earth. It connects God and a couple. It connects the idea that what God has joined together, let no man separate. I love to be involved in weddings. It's such a joy to me.

And weddings are all very different. People are very creative with them. But there is one thing you cannot mess with in a wedding ceremony. There's one thing that makes it a real wedding. You know what it is?

It's the vow. I don't, you know, whatever happens before and after that vow, you know, are way down on the priority scale for me, but that vow is what makes a marriage. And the marriage vow just inextricably links the daily earthly purpose of a man and a woman, and the overall purpose of God. And it unites a couple. And it makes them a husband and a wife.

I just pray as we depart from this place that we recognize how important it is to have a new kind of family, to pay attention to the kind of family that we have, and to go to the Bible and to take that desert island challenge and say, If all I had was the Bible, how would my fatherhood look? If all I had was the Bible, how would my motherhood look? If all I had was the Bible, what would my childhood look like if this is all I had? You know, that's really the heart of everything we've hoped to say today, that we would trust God and His Word alone. Now God is so kind that He would deliver such good ordinances and commands to us.

He does so desire to reform our families according to his pattern. And what happens when a family is reformed is the earth shakes and you will see a new kind of father and a new kind of family and a new kind of boy and a new kind of girl. And my prayer is God is going to raise up those kinds of things in this generation right here. Now when you have a new kind of father and a new kind of mother and a new kind of boy, what else do you get? You get a new kind of church.

Because the family is a fountain of blessing into the church. As the church receives all of her members from a family. And you who are fathers and mothers recognize the great role that you have to cleanse the church, to be a blessing to the church of Jesus Christ. You're not just doing this for yourself, you're doing this for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Build a mighty family that you would fill the ranks of the churches all across the globe with happy and holy saints.

Those who know what their roles are in this world. Those who take their cues from God and God alone. And this would create a holy church, a mighty weapon in the hands of God. To establish communities all over the world, communities of holiness and happiness, communities of love, communities that look just like that community in heaven, where the Father loves the Son, and the Son delights to do the will of the Father, and the Spirit of God glorifies the Father and glorifies the Son. This is the kingdom of love that the Lord Jesus Christ has designed for us.

Let's lift our eyes under the hills from whence our help comes.