In this sermon, Kevin Swanson covers the topic of the Sufficiency of Scripture and Family Integration. He argues that the family integrated movement is about revitalizing and re-relentizing the family and church in the 21st century. Swanson states that they believe in the centrality of God and the sufficiency of Scripture for every aspect of life. He provides a historical perspective on the growth of the state and its impact on the church and family. He emphasizes the importance of God's law in determining the boundaries for power in the spheres of family, church and state. Swanson also discusses the concept of 'regular principle of life,' arguing that the Bible regulates all aspects of life.

The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Kevin Swanson with the message, The Sufficiency of Scripture and Family Integration. Well here I am to give the final word on the family integrated movement. So, now, you know, as we started a church nine years ago, we had no label for it. We just said, hey, let's do church. And then later on Scott Brown told us we had a family integrated church.

So, we're just going to go with that. And as we begin to think about the family integrated movement, I'd like to encourage you to think about who we really are and what we're really trying to do. Labels are sort of helpful, but I want to get down to what the Bible says about family integration because that's the topic of this morning's presentation. Now, we are more than family integration. It's important to bore down into the foundations of what we're really all about because you understand there could be a homosexual family integrated church too.

So one day you might find somebody saying, hey, we believe in the Nicene Creed, we believe in the Chalcedonian Creed, we sing Amazing Grace and by the way, these homosexual churches do sing Amazing grace. You know that? They come together in their big conferences and they sing Amazing Grace just like we do. And they may have their own family integrated church. So it's important for us that we establish the foundation of what we really are.

And one of the ways to do that is to bring out a more bottom line principle like the sufficiency of Scripture and say, okay, we believe Scripture is sufficient for every aspect of life. Now it's important not just to develop a foundation for it, but you got incarnated as well. Sufficient for what? Even homosexuals could say, yeah, I believe the Scriptures are sufficient and then in the process, the sufficiency of Scripture in the area of ethics dies the death of a thousand qualifications. Yes, it's not sufficient in this area, it's not sufficient in that area.

We don't really apply that text to this, we don't really apply this text to that, We have a way to explain this. We have a way to explain that. And before you know it, the authority of the God who speaks is dissipated by a thousand qualifications. That happens all the time. And I really believe that what we are trying to reform in the 21st century is the centrality of God in the area of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics.

That is, our worldview, the way we look at the world around us, has become increasingly humanistic. We stepped forward throughout the last 200 years in the church, and we said, yes, we believe in God, but he's not entirely sovereign over reality. OK, birds and bees, maybe even hurricanes, maybe even the kings of the earth, but not my salvation. He's not sovereign over my salvation. I'm going to retain a little bit of man-centricness.

Man will be the hinge point of salvation in this area of life, but I'll allow God to be sovereign over other areas. But over time, he really wasn't all that sovereign. He lost his sovereignty in the area of reality. Then he lost his sovereignty in the area of truth. When the scientists – the really smart ones – came out of the laboratory with the white lab coats on and said, I found a rock, four billion years old.

Trust me on this one. I did the radioactive dating. I got it. It's four billion years old. And then God comes to us in Exodus chapter 20 and says, four and six days I made the heaven and the earth and all that in them is.

We said, there's a conflict here in 1960, two brave men. They were scientists. This was important because we had been bowing in the temples of epistemological scientism for 120 years. It was important they be scientists. They came out of the laboratory and they said, we are Christians.

If God said it, we're going to believe it. And they wrote a book called The Genesis Flood and the rest is history. You are here today largely because of Henry Morris and John C. Whitcomb in the 1960s. So, again, is God going to be the one who tells you what to believe about origins, about psychology, about all these other things?

Is God going to tell you what to do in the area of ethics and politics, economics, education, and so forth? So, is God the authority? Does God speak with authority? Are you going to listen or is all of that going to die the deaths of a thousand qualifications? Well, that's who we are.

We believe in the centrality of God. We're bringing it back. We bring it back in the area of sphere sovereignty. And when Doug Phillips says, this whole family integrated movement is just trying to emphasize the importance of the spheres as defined ethically in the Word of God, he's dead on. I believe this is a sphere sovereignty movement.

And what we're saying, let's back it up one more step. What we're saying is that God is the one who determines who does what and what power they have to do the things that they do. God is in control of these things. Let me give you a history lesson just for a moment. We're going to go back into history and talk about severe sovereignty.

Five hundred years ago, and this, by the way, the way I came to this conclusion was by reading our brother Scott Brown's book, Family Reformation, on Calvin's influence in the area of the family. Excellent book, by the way. And he spurred me on to bring out this particular little morsel that I hope will be helpful to you as you understand what happened in history. You start out in the 1500s, and the civil magistrate economically consumed about 5% of the people's income. Less than 5%.

In fact, most governments have never exceeded 10% of the people's income. The Roman government never took more than 7% of its people as income. Now today you understand we are far beyond that. But prior to the Reformation, the state had a problem. The king could not aggrandize himself and could not fight wars because he was always running into the problem of the Lord's.

We had a massively decentralized system in most of Europe for a long time. That's what Christian government and Christian ways of thinking do. And until we got the Holy Roman Empire, until the church and the state ganged up against the family and began to tax people, And then prior to the Reformation, about 5% of people's income consumed by the state. But the church consumed some 35% of the people's income because the church had the right of inheritance to many, many of the celibates. 25% to 35% of the young ladies were not getting married.

And so the church took full advantage of this. And because a lot of the monks weren't getting married either, family inheritance rolled over into the church. And the church was aggrandized. The church became very powerful in the lives of families. Of course, they used other means by which to bind the consciences of men as well.

But the fact of the matter is, the church was huge. It was 35%. People were made up about 65%. The average, the families consumed about 65 percent of the people's income. And then after the Reformation, it was, the Reformation itself, granted it provided a lot of good things.

The truth got out. The Word of God was being translated and brought into the languages And we've got some precision on many, many doctrines. There are some good things that happened within the Protestant church. But one of the things that benefited the state was the fact that they confiscated church lands, especially in England. And the state was incredibly aggrandized to the point where the state, after the Reformation by about 1650, consumed some 15 to 20 percent of the people's income.

Now, the church was back down to the right size, at least in the Protestant nations, of roughly 10% of the people's income. And the families were somewhere around 70%. Okay, now, fast forward to where we are today. Where are we today? The state is everything.

The state appreciated the Reformation. Henry VIII loved it. They used the Reformation in order to aggrandize itself. And at the same time, remember, Francis Schaeffer talks about this in many of his writings. I would recommend his writings on the history and the development of the modern state.

But what happens is you have two lines that are moving through history, the Reformation line and the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. And the Renaissance and the Enlightenment won out through Rousseau and Voltaire and others and the right wing Enlightenment in Scotland. They won the universities. The battle was in education. They won the universities.

The universities were started 1100, 1200, and this was the growth of the humanist renaissance. This is why the humanists won. They captured the colleges and the university. That's why the recent presentation I gave on education is the key presentation. That's the strategy.

That's how the bad guys win. They get control of the university's method and content. They do not use a discipleship method you find in the word of God. And then they develop their huge centralized empires. And now some 60% to 70% of the gross national income in America is consumed by government spending.

Sixty to 70 percent of our lives. Our lives are constructed by statism. Our social structure is statist. People are encouraged to worship the government and to trust in the government because of its vast control over the resources of the nation. And the church makes up about 2 percent of the people's income.

That is those who attend church in America, which right now is at about 40 percent. But in America, we only tithe 2 percent of our income, which is the lowest level that anybody has tied that since the Great Depression Americans care about their church none at all the church is irrelevant to the average American So if the church is 2% and the civil magistrate is 60% to 70%, the family makes up about 25% to 30% of life, what does the word of God have to say about fierce sovereignty? Personally, I think 1 Samuel 8 is authoritative. I have always taken it as authoritative It speaks speaks worlds to the what government what the civil government is bound by the word of God to do you say yes There are exceptions Joseph is an exception Joseph is an exception God can make an exception anytime he wants to by divine revelation But the standard He has given us, the eternal standards you're going to find in His Word, that is the standard we need to hold our governments to, our civil governments to is 1 Samuel chapter 8. And there Samuel says, any king that taxes its people more than a tenth of the people's income is a tyranny and people are pressed to cry out to God for deliverance from such an evil, evil state.

And that is precisely the situation we're in today and have been since 1913. In the American government, I have all this in my second Mayflower, American governments did not tax its people more than 10 percent of the people's income until roughly 1913, which was the establishment of the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service. Prior to that, it was well within biblical guidelines, but ever since 1913, the last 90 years or so, the state has become all of life for us. And of course, it has a great deal to do with Benjamin Franklin's statement, either you'll be governed by God or by God you'll be governed. That is, either you'll be governed by God's laws and God's morality, either you'll live by the laws of God or God by His sovereignty will see that you are tyrannized.

You will be tyrannized. This is pretty much what has happened in your country for the last 200 years. It's the only thing your children really need to know about American history over the last 200 years. Americans have become immoral and so they have been terrorized. They refuse to submit themselves to the laws of God.

OK, so this is the sphere sovereignty issue. And our effort, I think our mission, I think what Scott Brown is doing, what this is all about, what the family integrated movement is all about is to revitalize, re-relentize the family and the church in the 21st century. We are up against 500 years of the growth of the state. The church is nothing. The church is irrelevant.

The church is 2% of life. And you look at the mega churches. You say, well, those mega churches, wow, they still look relevant. Big buildings, they're irrelevant to the average person. Irrelevant, irrelevant to the social systems of our world.

A church is nothing. What we have been commissioned to do I believe by God is to get out there and re relevant eyes the church and the family now our detractors have come to us and said you are emphasizing the fathers the family in your family integrated church and in consequence you are are degrading the value of the church. And I disagree with that. But, strategically in history, this is where we are. Please understand, the state did incredible things to try to persecute and to control the church throughout the 1500s and 1600s.

Do you know why John Bunyan was in prison? Do you know why this nation was founded? Pilgrim's and Puritans came over here 400 years ago. Anybody have a clue as to why they came here liberty liberty from what liberty for the church from the state the state was trying to control the sphere of the church not by means of the laws of God they The state abandoned the idea that God is going to determine the law. They denied Lex Rex, that is the law is king, God's law is king, and they asserted Rex Lex, that is the king is law.

And the king believed that he was all things and he could decide all things in relation to what he could do on earth meantime God says 10% God says my church will not be controlled by the king Old Testament as well as New Testament you know that the king in the Old Testament Uriah tried to get involved in the church. He went into the temple, tried to do some sacrifice. God struck him with leprosy. You have no business in the church. You are king.

These things are to be separated. There is a strong sense of separation between church and state throughout the scriptures, Old and New Testament. Don't get the idea, it's just a New Testament concept. It goes all the way through the Word of God. But their battle was right there.

Their battle was liberty for the church. And they gave their lives for that. Now in the modern age, I don't believe we're fighting for the liberty of the church as much because the state destroyed the church. It was successful in what it was doing in the 1600s and 1700s, especially in England and in Europe. That's why the church is nothing as far as its influence on people's lives.

I believe it was the state's responsibility for the demise of the church. Same thing happened in Germany. The church in Germany, nothing. It has no influence on people's lives. Why?

It was under the auspices of the states. States controlled the church in the process destroyed the church in Europe. In America over the last 150 years the battle has shifted from the church to the family. The state has done everything it can to take more and more of the income that should be funding and controlling the aspects of the family and welfare and education, and in the process has destroyed the family. It's interesting.

Let me give you one illustration to help you understand the battle we're up against. In Colorado, and this has happened in a number of states around America over the last 20, 30 years, in Colorado, we had a battle for the compulsory attendance law. In the past, it's been seven to 16 years of age, where the government has come to us and says, we will control the family. We will tell you what your children are going to go through. We're going to force a little five, six, seven-year-old boy to be pulled into a chair for four to five hours a day to do our curriculum.

Because we know what's best for that little boy, whether or not he's got ADD, ADHD, American Boy Disease, ABD, whatever it is, we will control that boy. We will be sure that he will be tyrannized. He will be in that chair nonstop, four hours a day, seven to 16. The government knows best. The government loves your children.

The government will tell you what your children ought to go through. Now, that's reprehensible to people like me. So when they tried to broaden that from 7 to 16, they did it two years in a row, to 6 to 17 in our state, we were down there. We as home schoolers are writing our letters saying, do not, do not, tyrannize the compulsory attendance law in our state. We sent our faxes.

We shut down the phone systems. We all crowded into the hearing down in the legislature, and the guy, the sponsor of the bill, takes a look at the crowds and says, you home schoolers are driving me nuts. What I did was I cut out an exception for you. We will exempt the homeschoolers in the state of Colorado from the 6 to 17, We'll keep it at 7 to 16 because you guys are such a pain. So there.

So after he got up and spoke, I got up. And I said, I'm speaking in opposition to this bill. And the chairwoman says, and you're a homeschooler, aren't you? We already took care of you. Sit down.

I said, I'm here for the rest of the parents in the state of Colorado I understand I understand that the public school parents many of the Christian parents the Christian school parents not one is here I know that I know they're not in the battle. I know they think we're stupid. I know they say what's this tiny little issue bugging you about? Well that's the same thing they said to the people in those churches in England that went to the gallows, went to the flames, because they didn't want a candle in their worship service. And people said, why did they give their lives for liberty?

The battle for liberty is fought and won on these issues, on these issues. And these people understood something. If the state controls the church and the family, it will destroy it. It will destroy it. We are fighting for the life of the family in the 21st century.

The life of it. And every battle is important. And by God's grace, we'll win these battles. Because I'll tell you what, There's a lot of little boys that shouldn't be bolted to that chair at six seven years of age, and there are some dads and moms who know that They take them out to the fields they work with them And they read them at night, and then when they're about 14 15 16 years of age teach them how to read And I say praise God, they can do whatever they want. As long as they love those children and teach them to read and understand and love the Word of God.

Alright my friends, this is the battle for liberty. Some people say God doesn't really care. Government consumes 60% of the geni- see I ran for Governor of Colorado in 1994. Mark, you remember that? Mark Abbatoy was I think one of the three people who voted for me.

No, I got about 40, 000 votes. But, I went all over the state of Colorado saying, We're tyrannized 47%. I remember saying, 47% of the GNI taken up in government taxation spending that's a problem that's up from 10% of 1913 and the average person just went so what's wrong with that I could never understand it number one people love tyranny. They don't want to be free. Number two, God says 10%.

They say, who cares? It's really what it boils down to. That incenses me and it causes me as a 30 year old boy to run around Colorado trying to run for governor and pretend like I knew what I was doing. God's word counts for something and God tells us the restrictions of what the family, the church and the state may do. Now see what I'm saying is I believe in the regular principle of life.

You've heard of the regular principle of worship. And again, this is where many of my brothers part ways with me. I believe the Bible regulates all of life. All of life. Every decision.

The boundaries for power for family fathers church and state and And unless unless you say that Then you have no business whatsoever guys nobody here has any business whatsoever going up against a social services department that walks into your house saying, you bruised the kid on the buns. You gave him a little owie. It looks like it's a little red right here. I'm taking your children now. God's law calls that tyranny.

Why? Because of the lex talionis. And if nobody here knows the lex talionis That's a problem I think everybody needs to know the lex talionis because it is the law of God that establishes our liberty as parents. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, lasting harm, civil magistrate gets involved, lasting harm, permanent damage, that's the line in stone, laid down by the finger of God and that is the line over which that civil magistrate can walk into your family sphere we got to know this we got to know this otherwise we're subject to tyranny and make no mistake about it they will come after your children. Getting more aggressive all the time, all the time, All the time.

Okay, what can we say about the church family? Which is more important? Which is more basic? Well, we have this question about household voting. What's important in terms of household voting?

Let me read to you from the Word of God. But we, well first of all before I do that, let me read to you from the internet. This is a man who writes for World Magazine, he's a Presbyterian. And he argues against patriarchy and household voting. He says, in the transition from Moses to Christ.

We have a transition from tribalism to cosmopolitanism. The New Testament language describes the church as a real family, indeed the most important family, and would demand that we cease treating the church as a collection of households. Now, again, you have got to get down this idea of Old Testament, New Testament, discontinuity, continuity. And this plays into this question. And I have studied this, and I continue to study it.

And I have differences with my brothers in this movement on this issue. And let me say this again. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of this, I love my brothers who are trying to bring back the relevance of the church. I love my brothers who are trying to bring back the relevance of the family. But intermurally, we're having these discussions and disagreements, and they get a little hot sometimes on the internet, in our presbyteries, in our church organizations, and that's a problem.

But as I read the Bible, I do not find that the New Testament is more individualistic or less tribal than the Old Testament. That's my conclusion. Now again, if some of you can find some areas where it's more individualistic in this area, in that area, in the area of baptism, in the area of the Lord's Supper, in the area of this. I mean, generally if someone's going to draw the line somewhere. And you've got to be careful where you draw that line.

It's difficult. It's difficult. But as I read the New Testament, I find individual faith and corporate faith in both Old Testament New Testament in the Old Testament there are we Psalms and I Psalms this is why it's important in your worship service to be singing we Psalms we hymns and I hymns I Psalms a lot of times American personal individualistic pietism is me me me me me you know amazing grace how sweet the sound the saved a wretch like me like me me me a lot of your hymns tend to be a it's all about me all about me instead of the corporate body coming together and singing the songs together well in the Old Testament has we Psalms and I Psalms both of them and so again I'm emphasizing the individuality and the corporate aspects. We find in the New Testament we are in Christ, we are in Christ. As we sing, as we recognize our brothers around us, we say, we are in Christ.

We also say, I am in Christ. There's one we for every three me's. There's one we Psalm for every five me Psalms, roughly. That's the ratio I find in the Word of God. I find individual judgment, household judgment, and corporate church judgment in both Old Testament and New Testament.

Both. Again, household judgment. Anybody can think of an Ananias and Sapphira. Household judge together. I see entire local churches ripped out of their candle stands in Revelation 2 and 3.

Local churches treated as a corporate body ripped out. And then of course Jesus turns to individuals and says, if any man from this church will hear my voice, I will come in and sup with him. So there's individuality, there's corporatism in Old and New Testaments. You find households fearing God, Cornelius. Lydia's heart was opened, she was baptized, and her household.

Philippian jailer was baptized, he and all his. Crispus believed on the Lord with all his house. The house of Narcissus which is in the Lord. Romans 16 and 11. I talked on that on a previous presentation.

2 Timothy 1 16, the Lord give mercy to the house of Onesiphorus who refreshed me. You know the house of Stephanas. They have been themselves, they've given themselves to the ministry of the Saints. Households Together as blobs. You find heads of households all over the place.

Household of Stephanus. Household of Narcissus. Household of Kevin. Household of Bob. Household of John.

I find that throughout the New Testament. Honestly, I'm having a really hard time finding much discontinuity. If someone can point out some discontinuity, that'll be helpful for me. But I see that the household is still considered in Scripture as being a unit. And it's interesting to me, I just think it's interesting, that somehow the idea of households and household voting went away as soon as the liberal feminists brought suffrage to America.

I just think that's interesting. That Suddenly, you know, we found a whole new way to look at the Word of God. Wow! Incredible! No, I think the Word of God still expresses the importance of households.

More of our families are basic building blocks for the church. And you find that throughout the word. Actually, there's an interesting story. The Gazette, Colorado Springs Gazette newspaper did a story on the divorce rate in Colorado. Found the highest divorce rate in the most conservative Christian county, perhaps the most conservative Christian county in all of America, El Paso's County, which is where Colorado Springs is.

Focus on the family and all these ministries. OK, so we work our way to the Mecca of evangelical Christianity. OK, we take our voyage, And we wind up on the shores of America and we wander all the way up to El Paso County and we're finally here at Evangelical Mecca and we find the highest divorce rate in the state of Colorado. So the pagan newspaper said, what's up with that? So he interviewed all these church pastors, these mega church pastors in Colorado Springs.

And one of my friends is a guy who pastors a mega church down in the Springs, had a really interesting comment that just stood out to me in the newspaper. He said, man, I feel like I am rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, trying to shepherd these 3, 000 people. Guys, understand, you get three, four, five, six paid pastors running after three, four, 5, 000 people. This is called an exercise in futility. The Church of Jesus Christ suffers today big time because we have dysfunctional families and in 1st Timothy chapter 3 we get the basic and I think the most important verse for the establishment of social systems or a social theory in Christendom now again I'm asking you for a moment to set aside everything you've learned from Rousseau and Marx and everything you've learned universities about social systems set them aside go to the Word of God what does first Timothy chapter 3 shout out to you when Paul says, if a man cannot rule his own household well, neither should he rule in the household of God?

This is Huge. This is the defining principle. And as what Paul is saying is, there is a building block for the family. There's a mini flock that's there in our homes. It is our households.

And a man needs to rule his household well first before he can rule in the household of God. Elders are assumed to have their own many flocks. I would say it ought to be very exceptional that a man without a family, a man without children, should be an elder in the church of Christ. Exceptional. Now, it's very interesting that the exception often becomes the rule.

This was true with celibacy in the church, right? This is true with the rise of the modern state. This is true with singleness today. Paul says, I would let young women be married in 1 Timothy chapter 5. And yet, there are 51% of women, marriage-age women, living by themselves in the modern age.

And that number is almost no different among evangelical Christians. Now, why is that? Because the exception of celibacy and singleness has become the norm. The predominant position of Scripture puts discipleship of children in the hands of parents. And again, this is where we run up against our brothers.

I remember having a discussion with a number of pastors one time. I'm in the unique position where I get to run into pastors who don't hang out with us. And I'm surrounded by these pastors. They have the light on my face asking me the questions about family integrated. You don't have any Sunday schools.

You don't have any youth groups. What's wrong with you? And so, you know, I got the big lights in my eyes and I'm trying to defend what we're doing. I say, well, I went into the Word of God. I looked up the word children in the back of the concordance and I found Ephesians 6, 4.

Fathers, bring your children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I found Deuteronomy 6, 7. I found Deuteronomy 4. I found Exodus chapter 12. I found the book of Proverbs chapter 1 chapter 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Well 22 20 25 26 30 time 20 21 I found first Thessalonians 2 11 I found I found all these verses and it says fathers fathers fathers fathers fathers fathers fathers fathers fathers fathers So I thought maybe we ought to go with it.

And the guy comes back to me, And one of the pastors comes back to me and says, yeah, but what about Acts 22 13? Where Paul learned how to be a good Pharisee at the feet of Gamaliel. There's a Sunday skill for you. Proved it. I didn't know what to say.

What do you say to that? Why do they go to Samuel, who was adopted by Eli into his little shepherd's center? Why do they go to the exception? Again, because they're driven by the exception. And they will ignore the normative.

Well, 1 Thessalonians 2-11 is probably the most important verse outside of 1 Timothy 3-17. But 1 Thessalonians 2-11, very important verse, very important verse, Very important verse. And here's why. Paul says, I exhorted you. I comforted you.

I charged you. As a father does his children. Now, Paul uses the Father in the family as the normative for his seminary. Let me say that one more time. Paul uses the Father in his home, discipling his sons as the normative for what Jesus and Paul and Kevin Swanson need to do in their Shepherd Centers.

And if you have pastors that did not understand that the basic, basic building block of discipleship happens in the home, and many of these pastors were never discipled in their homes by their own fathers. Many of them have never had a tender father comforting, emotionally comforting that child, exhorting, rebuking, loving that child, coming into that child's life as the Father does in the book of Proverbs, saying, my son, I love you. My son, don't go the way of the whore. My son, you're going to hell now. Come back.

My son, I love you. My son, come close to me. Observe my ways. My son, give me your heart. Give me your heart.

And that father wraps his arms around his son and loves his son. And sometimes, sometimes he's, the relationship is strained and the relationship is recovered and we learn the process of discipleship in the home. I'm just telling you guys this has happened to me in my own home with my own son for seven years. And now with Chad Roach for three. I'm understanding a little bit about the pattern.

And we've got to bring this into the church as well. Well, let me close here with some of the implications. And these are just practical things that we have learned in our family integrated church. And if you don't get these lessons down right, your family integrated churches are just going to fail. So I've just made a list of the mistakes we've made and the things that God has taught us.

And make no mistake about it, we're going to fail. We're going to see a lot of failures in our family-grade movements. It just happens. But here are some lessons we've learned. And I just want to share these with you.

Number one, pride. Pride. Pride will kill us every time. See, once you've got something, once you've got a little sanctification going on in your own life, your family's life. It's just something about pride that shows up with the party hats for the celebration.

And it's such an insidious thing. We have this impression, this happens by the way in the public schools, it happens in liberal churches, it happens in our own churches, we have our little set of expectations that if you can bring somebody into your church, get them homeschooling, get them dressed modestly, and get them doing family worship, you're there. Move on to the next one. You know, it's just you've achieved it. Now as I preach in my church service each Sunday I tell my congregation I am coming to a congregation who ought to be made up as the sinner woman at the feet of Jesus.

Or the Pharisee says, Jesus, do you know who's here touching your feet? You know this woman's a sinner? Jesus says, yes, I know she's a sinner. But I've been here for hours and you never washed my feet. She has been embracing me.

She's been washing my feet. She's been taking care of me. She loves me. She's been loving me since she got here. Those who have sinned much are forgiven much.

And those who have been forgiven much love much. And to the extent that your people come into your church services and do not hear that they are sinning, sinner, the sinningist, sinningist, sinningist, sinningist sinners that have ever walked into that church. You need to have the law of God preached with power. You need to slice into the hearts of those people every single Sunday. Look at you.

Look at you. You are the sin-iest people ever, but you are the forgivingest people ever. There is nobody who has been so forgiven as you. Therefore, love. Love be the lovingest people that ever showed up in a church service.

And if you love Him, you'll keep His commandments. Which commandments? The commandments you broke before you came into the service. So, every message that is brought to your services must present the people for who they are. The sinningest people, the forgivingest people, The lovingest people, the most obedient people in the first use of the Law, in the third use of the Law meet there at the cross of Christ and needs to, needs to, needs to every Sunday.

If you haven't, if you don't do that, your people will become hypocritical Pharisees. The Law of God must be preached, brothers. Every Sunday people say, oh we just preached grace here. You preach nothing. You preach trash.

Grace is trashy without law. Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us that in his book on cheap grace. No, you preach law. You preach law hard. Preach grace hard.

And they will love. They will love and they will keep His commandments. This is the Gospel. This is the gospel. You'll find it at the feet of Christ.

Secondly, a lot of times our churches become all structure and no implementation. In other words, We bring everybody together. We say, we've got a family integrated church. We believe in fathers discipling their children. That's so much better than Sunday schools and youth groups and these other people, all the publicans and everything that they're doing.

But we're here. You have arrived. Now it's time to be a family integrated church. Brothers, so often the implementation isn't there. We've got the labels.

Oh, we've got the labels. People go home. They don't do it. They don't do it. And I tell my congregation all the time, if you go home and you don't do family worship, go somewhere else.

There are churches that will teach your children. They might even teach your children every day because that's the requirement. Go find a church or adopt your children out. If you don't have time, go find a church or adopt your children out to other parents who will obey Hebrews 3 13. Exhort one another daily, every day.

Lest any of you be hardened with the deceitfulness of sin. That's a command. And by the way, I've experimented with this so you don't need to. You go for more than 24 hours, without exhorting, somebody gets hardened. Their hearts get calcified.

They start opposing the faith. They start dishonoring mom. It happens. I've tried it. 24 hours, somebody doesn't do family worship and exhorts their children in their area of sin and righteousness and the love of God, you're going to see some hardening.

So again, if they're not going to do it, tell them to leave. Please Leave. Adopt your children out. Send them to a Christian school. Whatever.

And whatever you do, do not castigate the Christian schools and the Sunday schools and the youth groups and things If you're not where you need to be, praise God for those guys. At least they're doing something. We could neglect to teach the fear of God in our home schools as well as anybody can in the public schools. We can do that too. We have the technology.

We could fail to discipline and be accountable. And this is essential for our churches. We don't believe in mega churches. The Bible says we're to shepherd the souls of those in our congregation to whom we will give account in the day of judgment. So church membership is essential.

People just can't wander in and wander out and I have no idea who's, I'm going to give account for in the day of judgment. That's why we have membership. Now, you can do your membership different ways. We have four basic questions. You believe the Bible, You believe that Jesus saves you from your sin.

You're going to walk with the Lord as your Lord and repent of your sin, et cetera, et cetera. Will you be accountable to this church? So we have our questions. Now, you can do a wink. You can do a handshake, a secret handshake, a secret hand sign, whatever.

But something's got to happen where that person says, tag, I'm it. Tag, you're it. I'm accountable to you. And we have to be accountable, brothers, as elders and pastors in these churches. And it is my commitment in our church that we not have a divorce in our church.

And I preach against it, and I guarantee there will be discipline. And I say I tell our elders, and I tell the congregation, that if we sense there's a little marital tension in some marriage in our congregation, we're going to crawl over six pews to get at you. We're going to wait in your life, and there is no, no business for any pastor or elder to back away from any perceived problem at all. No! Under God, under Jesus Christ, the Shepherd of the sheep, we're responsible for these people.

Now, I will say that there have been divorces, people who have attended our church, but the average is they get divorced 3.4 years after leaving our church. I've seen it many times. I can't count them all, but I've seen many times. People come, we preach, we shepherd, they say, I'm out of here, baby. So a godly shepherding church, I mean a real church, a disciplining church, should not have many divorces.

I mean, there will be one occasionally. I believe that. But it won't be the dysfunctional chaos that you find in American Christendom. Guys, I think there are way, way more candles pulled out of those sticks than we think. Jesus yanks a lot of local churches because they're just not doing it.

So how are you doing with this? How are you doing with this? Thirdly, we've got to integrate the generations. We've got to integrate the generations. We're struggling with this, but Titus chapter 2 is pretty clear here.

The older women teach the younger women. The older men teach the younger men. Titus is instructed to teach the younger men. The older women are instructed to teach the younger women. This has got to happen.

It will happen in an integrated church. We try not to over-program the idea of women's studies, even men's studies. We try not to do that too much. We really work for a more relational model. It's very difficult to do, and this is by far the most difficult project that we're setting out to do.

Because we are a fairly slotted church. All of America is slotted. We're all programmed. We've all gone to public schools. Most of us, with all my exception to that rule, but most people have been to this slotted thing.

And when you get your family integrated charge, typically, again, the 35 to 45-year-olds who've attended this conference, I don't see many gray hairs, for example, in this congregation. And so we get the 35 to 45-year-olds. They got 4.7 children, plus or minus 0.7 on the sigma, on the standard deviation for those of you who like statistics. And that's our slot. And we have found when families graduate their homeschooled children, we have the first two to three families do so, one or two of them left the church pretty quickly.

The other two are barely hanging on right now. Why is this? Because our church doesn't represent their slot anymore. Now it's going to take you a while to overcome this. I've talked to a lot of family integrated churches, been doing this for 6, 8, 10 years.

And remember, the mega church is just a bunch of individual slots. Our little family integrated church tends to be another slot. And until we can cross the boundaries, Until we can begin to bring in the kind of relationships that God wants us to bring into the church, we're going to be in trouble in this area. And I think principally it has to do with understanding the importance of relationships. Now you've heard the Emergent Church say, we're about relationships, we're not about rules.

In fact, the shack, you ever heard of the shack? The shack has that comment. God the Father, she says, I'm about relationships, not rules. Well, what does the Word of God have to say about this? Okay.

Joshua 22 5. God commands you to cleave unto Him, to serve Him with all your heart, with all your soul, and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments." Deuteronomy 7 9, the Lord thy God, He is God faithful God keeping covenant mercy with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations. Anybody getting a theme here? Therefore you shall love the Lord your God. Have a relationship with Him.

Keep His charge, His statutes, His judgments, His commandments forever. And it shall come to pass, Deuteronomy 11 13, if you shall harken diligently to my commandments which I command you to say, to love the Lord your God, to serve him with all your heart with all your soul 1122 for if you don't they keep all these commandments which I command you to do them, to love the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways. Do it on me in 19.9, if you shall keep all these commandments to do them which I command you to stay, to love the Lord your God, to walk after his ways. Do it on me 30.15, in that I command you to stay, to love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, to keep his commandments, his statutes, his judgments. And I said, I beseech you, O Lord God of heaven, Nehemiah 1.5, the great terrible God that keeps covenant mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments John 14 21 he that hath my commandments and keeps them he is it loves me John 15 10 if you keep my commandments you shall abide in my love 1st John 5 2 by this we know that we love the children of God and we love God and keep his commandments now for the rest of your life which is it rules or relationships everybody say yes yes everybody say yes yes it's about rules and relationships And we have problems with the immersion church, but I think we have equal problems with our reformed theonomy preachy, preachy, preachy, law, law, law kind of church.

Yes, we have a problem with both churches. We have those that don't understand there is a vital importance in this area of Relationships and both need to be emphasized in our own churches The rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says what must I do to be saved Jesus according to the text says Jesus loved him Jesus agape the man. He loved the man He had got paid the man. This is a problem for some of us more Calvinistic people. He loved the man and then he told him the most difficult thing he could ever tell him.

He applied the law of God to him. And there's a lot of people who say, yeah, but that law doesn't apply to every single person, every kind of situation. But how did Jesus know to take that 10th commandment and apply it Directly to that man in that counseling situation because he loved him The relationship was important Jesus loved that man, and then he told him the most difficult difficult difficult thing you could ever tell him I want you to sell all your goods give all your money to the pool, go find a good walking stick, and come follow me. And the guy couldn't do it. In our churches, we must have relationships.

We can't just be preachers. We can't just throw church discipline around. We have to love these people. You know what? This is difficult to do.

A conservative seminary back on the West Coast, a practical theology professor stood up One day, and I heard this one of the guys that was in the audience, and he said, these people that come to your churches, they're not your friends. They will leave you, they will abandon you, they'll say nasty things about you, they're not your friends. If you want a friend, get a dog. Well, I'll tell you what, Jesus called his disciples his friends. And they left him and they despised him and they denied him and they walked away from him on the most difficult day of his life.

So he went and died for them. That's love. These are the relationships that are important within our congregations. And I'll tell you what, they're difficult. They're difficult.

One morning, in the middle of winter, this is just an illustration. The heater wasn't working in our house, so we had to get the fireplace going. So I went out and started splitting woods. I got a bad back and I look up and my son, my strapping 14 year old son is upstairs drinking hot chocolate in the kitchen. I'm sitting there trying to split the wood and he's just, he's got his feet up on the table, he's enjoying himself.

I said, come on down here and help dear old dad. Son, come on down, I'm having a hard time here. My son came on down. He says, dad, why do I have to do this? Do I have to split logs in order to be your son?

I say, no Son, you're already my son. This is what sons do. He says, Dad, what do I have to do to merit your sonship? How many logs do I have to split before I merit your sonship? I say, son, dads don't count logs.

And I have people when I preach, sometimes they've come up to me and they've said, man you preach the law of God. I can't believe how much I have to do for this Jesus. I say, this what? I say, what can I do for this Jesus? He's my Lord.

This is my Father. I love my God. It's a relationship. It has to begin with a relationship. Otherwise people are going to be counting logs.

This applies to so many different areas of life. I have people come up to me and ask me, I have a son who is not sitting still in church or Bible time. I got a two-year-old son. He won't sit still. He's got ants in his pants.

How long does my little two-year-old have to sit there with ants in his pants in Bible time? Come on, pastor. Give me, give me the law here. Give me, give me, give me what the other guy has to say about this. I say I have no idea.

That depends on how much you know him, how much you love him, how much he loves you, how long he was sitting there yesterday, how many ants in his pants were there yesterday versus today. It depends on your relationship with him. Your relationship is what is important. You cannot do rules. You cannot interpret the law of God you cannot bring the regulative principle of worship to bear without relationships and whether you have candles in the service the pastor wears a purple tie whether there's a plant up front whether there's this decor that decor everything is symbolic this is where the regular principle breaks down everything is symbolic I pick a tie it means something people receive messages from everything they always do And in order for us to know whether somebody is turning something into some form of idolatry, You've got to know them.

Now the reason you have such strict systems that were put in place in the Reformation is because the king, the centralized governments were trying to dictate what a hundred million people did in their worship services and that's bogus. You can never, and I'm not sure you've heard this yet in this conference, but I think it's important. You can never interpret the rules in the area of worship without knowing your people, whether they are turning a plant, sitting up front into some aid in worship and they're breaking the second commandment in the process. Relationships! They're vitally important!

And This idea of separating them has been devastating to the Church of Jesus Christ. Supplies to birth control. Somebody uses birth control in the congregation, you better have a relationship with that family before you stand up and say, Oh, and Mrs. Jones, she's using birth control. Or somebody in the church says, I am not adopting an orphan.

I will not give a cent to the widow an orphan until I'm out of debt. How do you shepherd these people? You better have relationships with them. Vitally important. This is how we make the church relevant in the 21st century.

We bring back this notion of relationships. And let me tell you this, I come from a Reformed background and the Reformed church tends to be the most proud, unloving bunch you've ever met. Tends to be. Not everybody. But we've got our truth down, man.

We've got our rules. We've got our theonomic structures. We've got our counseling manuals where you can go to page 475 and look up what you need to say to this person when But without a gop a it's nothing right nothing nothing We want truth, and I preach it strong in our church. Believe it or not, I get the truth out as best as I can. But we need love.

Oh, we need love. And there are so many brothers out there willing to die for the truth. They will put their lives on the line for the truth. I mean, right down to the amount of water you'd be using a baptism man, they'll split a church on that one if they can. They'll die for the truth, but they won't die for love of brother.

And Jesus calls us to both at the same time. If you've got a church and those brothers aren't willing to die for each other as much as they're willing to die for the truth, and I mean truthfully, really, really gutful, right down at the bottom of their heart, they are gonna die for that brother. They are willing to die. They have demonstrated it 10 or 15 times already in conflicts they've gone through. They are willing to lay down their lives for that brother.

They're willing to go to his house, camp on his lawn for two weeks to plead with that brother, to restore a relationship with that brother. They had proven that they would die for their brother. Now you've got a church. But this truth-love relationship is incredibly vital if you dare to do a church in the age in which we live. Because the mega church is a great option, guys.

You water down the truth to the point where nobody disagrees with anybody at all. And you don't get any in-depth discussions. But you start a family integrated church, you get together with six, seven families in a pretty small congregation, you take the Word of God seriously, there's going to be some heavy-duty discussions on predestination and election and sovereignty and all these other things. You better love. Otherwise, don't do it.

Go back to the megachurch. Please go back to the megachurch. The only way you're going to survive is if you love. Love to the point of sweating it out. We had a very uncomfortable situation the other day in our church.

Conflict, huge conflict. Can't give you an idea of what it's about because I don't want to give anything away. There was a conflict in our church. And it was brewing. It was the worst we've had in eight, nine years in our church.

And I was afraid this was going to be a nuclear meltdown. I always tell people, we're a nuclear power plant. Keep the rods immersed in love, joy, peace, long suffering or we're going to be in trouble. So this whole thing was coming down on a Sunday morning. We have Lord's Supper every single Sunday because we like to keep our accounts short and we want to confess our sins every Sunday and we want to renew relationships constantly.

We want a vital church constantly feeding spiritually upon the Lord and communing with our Lord Jesus Christ. And we want to be a one body, one bread as we do so. And so there we were about ready to have the Lord's Supper and I saw both families walk into this congregation I grabbed the men and I brought them back and it was about 1045 it was time to start but I said forget the the whole service we will put it off for two hours if necessary I said guys we're gonna sit down here we're gonna have a Lord's Supper together this is the most awkward moment I've ever experienced. Because you just don't wade into things like that and jump in head first like this. I said, let's talk.

Is this guy your brother? Is this guy your brother? Let's start confessing sins now. Big silence. I just waited.

Tears started to flow and these guys started saying to me that we didn't fix the whole thing overnight but by God's grace it's coming through we're gonna make it we are it's possible and if we have a church environment that's purged the opportunity for conflicts for offenses and forgiveness to be functioning constantly you have no church there is no church expect the offenses That's why it made it into the Lord's Prayer. I mean boil it down to five propositions. That's it. Jesus expects you to be a forgiving church all the time. This is what we are.

This is what we are. I have so much more to say. Hospitality. We have a twenty-something program in our church. A 27-28 year old lady walked into the church says, I just want to know more about this.

So we started a 20-something program. She started living with one of the elders families and then with another elders family. And we just taught her the Word of God. We taught her the principles of godly parenting and a godly wife. She had her master's degree.

She had just completed her master's degree. She's all ready to go to work And get a nice little career thing and she said you know I just want to be a godly wife Can I just come to your church and be part of your 20-something club? We said absolutely come on in so she lived with a family it was our 20-something program And she lived there for a year or two years And Then we had nobody for her to get married to right then and there, but one of the elders started going around looking for the right guy and sending letters around to similar minded churches and we found a young man. Then we put hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours into the courtship. He needs some work as well.

And the hearts of these elders just poured out upon this man because they wanted him to be in a position where they could marry their daughter. I mean, the daughter in the Lord that was in their homes, living in their homes for a year or two. And so they put thousands and thousands of hours into our twenty-something program. And eventually she got married. Now she has three children.

They live in Wisconsin. And they don't attend our church. So that was the end of our twenty-something program. It's relationships. It's really, really, really stinking inefficient.

But I love it. God's doing stuff with this. Guys, I think it's a quality-quantity trade-off. And I'll just end here because I don't weigh over time. But it's a quality-quantity trade-off.

People wanted the mega-church. They wanted to go be big. And they wanted to get all these people saved with their little conversion experience and on and on. Forget that. Jesus didn't call us to conversion experiences.

He said, go and disciple the nations. Teaching them to observe, to do, to walk in everything I've commanded you. And the Bible is filled with commands. So our goal is to go out there and say, you broke this law. You need to repent of this.

Jesus forgave you. Tears running down your face, good. You're loving Him. Now, keep His commandments. Okay, that's the first command.

Now, let's go to the second one. Now let's go to the third. Now let's go to the fourth. And that takes years and years and years and years and we're willing to put that kind of time into people. Build those kind of Relationships and tell them the hardest things you've ever told them because we love them That my friends is how we're going to bring a relevant church back into The 21st century and by the way at the same time we're going to be working with widows and orphans a lot I have any time for this.

I wanted to spend 10 minutes on this. But here, let me tell you this. Come to our economics conference March 5th and 6th of 2010. Let me just put a plug in. Oh good, we got a little graphic there.

Guys, family economics, church economics, we're doing a church leadership track on economics, on the diaconate. 25% of your church's income, I believe, needs to go to the orphan and widow. Very, very, very important part of the church. 1 Timothy chapter 5 deals with all of that. I don't have time to go into any of it, but we've got to bring back the church and the family as intensely relevant economic institutions.

The way to do it is to bring the first Timothy Chapter 5 back into practice. Again, out of time. God bless you. Hopefully some of you