This chapter is a summary statement, I believe, of really all the things that the Bible says about a kind of family life that brings everything together. A full picture of discipleship. One that encompasses every part of life. It's so comprehensive in its nature that it calls fathers to be speaking to their children, really every moment of life. And so if we could just stand in honor of the reading of the Word of God.

Let's do that now. God is speaking whenever the word of God is being read, so let's hear the voice of the Lord. Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess that you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command you today you your son and your grandson all the days of your life and that your days may be prolonged Therefore here Oh Israel and be careful to observe it that it may be well with you and that you may multiply Greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear O Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart you shall teach them to your children when you sit in your house when you walk by the way when you lie down and when you rise up You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.

You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this towering and beautiful and practical testimony from your own heart and mind for your creatures, for us Lord, for we who are made in your image to do your will to to bring the kingdom of heaven down. Oh Lord, I pray that you would help us with these things. Amen.

Please be seated. This passage of scripture speaks of a well-integrated life, the truth of God impinging on every part of your life, from the rising of the sun until the time that it goes down. It really is a picture of a unified vision of life, where there are principles from heaven that guide every part of family life. And they flow really from the top. They begin in heaven.

They are the words that were commanded for the people of God to carry out. And then they are delivered out of the mouth of a father when he sits in his house, when he walks by the way, when he lies down and when he rises up. And it really is a picture of a unified life, of a vision that's really the opposite of fragmentation. My job here in this message is to speak of this transition from fragmentation to unification. And we're talking about the fragmentation of the family and the reunification of the family and how that happens.

And I'd like to give you five things that must be considered for that. But here's one reality. Once you've had a fragmented lifestyle, it's difficult to find your way back to something that more clearly fits the biblical testimony. How do you make your way back out of a fragmented society? How do you make your way back in a society where every institution in the culture is determined to fragment your family?

How do you make your way back when everyone around you has a completely fragmented family and every member of the family is going in a different direction. How do you make your way back where even in the Church of Jesus Christ, the family is institutionally, proactively and comprehensively fragmented? And the church finds itself really as one puzzle of fragmentation where every age group and every life stage is separated into its own individual segment where it's target marketing gone berserk and everybody is in their own little niche. How do you how do you possibly make your way back when you live in a society like that? How do you make your way back when everybody around you, all your friends have fragmented families?

What are you supposed to do in an environment like that? And, You know, how do you make your make your way back when everyone in your family is actually already going in a completely different direction, where everyone has their own interests? You know, Johnny's life is wrapped up in soccer. Susie's life is all wrapped up in ballet and dad's life is wrapped up, wrapped up in this or that thing. And and mom has her own ministry and ever and everybody's going in a different direction.

And the truth is they hardly ever see each other. They might show up just before bedtime. If they eat together, it's a miracle. How do you How do you grapple with a society like that? How do you make your way back?

You know, every everyone is to their own institution, you know, the people in this society, almost every all the all the the young people in our society, if they're in elementary school, they're isolated to their institution and they go to schools that provide breakfast and lunch and they pick them up and they drop them off. And The churches just keep children with people who are like them. And even even today, if you go to places like Florida, the cutting edge of senior citizen care, you find adult daycare. And it's for people who are too busy to take care of their parents. Their lives are so fragmented, they have no capacity even to take care of their parents.

So these people who who have no capacity to take care of their parents. Guess what? They had they had no no capacity to even take care of their own children. And now they're putting their own parents in daycare. And their children that they put in daycare someday are going to put them in daycare as well.

It's a picture of a fragmented society. And it's a tragedy that's been gripping our land, you know, for probably two or three generations. And every everyone is in their own, you know, self-imposed rat race. The houses, the boats, the cars, these are these are the kinds of things that keep families fragmenting. And it's and it's an absolute rat race and every rat is running in whatever direction they might somehow be called to run.

You know, you've heard that, you know, the results of the rat race are in the rats won. And that's the society that we live in today. How do you make your way back? Well, I want to give you at least my understanding of how you make your way back. A roadmap.

I want to give you a road map and several several points on that road for making your way back and the very first thing that you must do in order to make your way back is to go back to scripture to recognize that scripture is sufficient for these things. Scripture will show you the way back. Don't try to figure it out on your own. Don't come up with your own new hot jag of life that you're going to create, you know, really out of the dust of your own brain. Don't go out and get a white sheet of paper and start over again, you know, with your own creative ideas.

Well, that's really kind of how we got where we are today, is every man was doing what was right in his own eyes, and Everybody was so creative to create some vision of this, you know, utopian super society. And look what it's done. It's destroyed the family. And a lot of other stuff along the way. So you go back to scripture, you go back to the eternal word of God, you go back to what is pure and lovely.

You go back to the thing that converts the soul, it changes the direction of the soul, you wash yourself in the water of the word of God. When I was a young father and I realized that that our family was so fragmented and everyone else around me was too, and I didn't want to know what to do. I went back to scripture and I, I decided that I needed to somehow find the scriptures that spoke to these issues. And somehow to cry out to God that he would show me what these scriptures meant for me. And so I'm going to give you a number of those passages of scripture.

I went back to scripture and that's really our only hope is to go back to the word of God. I went back to Deuteronomy 6, the text that I read at the beginning, where we learn that God has appointed fathers to teach their children. And it's a task that takes everything out of him. With a life like that of teaching, do you have time or energy for almost anything else? It means your whole life has to be restructured in order to walk with your children, to walk with them and talk with them when you sit in the house, when you walk, by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up.

How do you possibly have a life that looks like that? Well, here's the reality, brothers and sisters. If you don't have a life that looks like that, you better go figure out how to have a life that looks like that, because this is the Word of God. This is the Spirit of Holiness speaking to us to show us how to live in the midst of a world that has really set aside the Word of God for the sake of its own traditions and as you live in a society that's just awash in its traditions You also live in a society that needs to be washed in the knowledge of God. And so you go back and you figure out how to live life like that.

Interestingly enough, it starts with the father, doesn't it? It starts with what a father does. The greatest leverage point in the culture is what a father does with his life. You know, I went back to Psalm 78, where where where Asaph is appealing to the children of Israel to break the ungodly patterns of their fathers. In other words, to live differently, to do really what Gideon did.

Tear down your father's idols and whatever comes, let it come. Well, what happened to him is he was put on the run when he tore down his father's idols that night, Because you always get in trouble when you tear down idols, always. You know, you don't obey God without some kind of reaction. But you tear down your Father's idols and guess what? There are going to be people chasing you around.

You can count on it. But it's a beautiful thing as well because God bears fruit when idols are torn down. To Psalm 78 where you have a Father, He's a happy Father who sings the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wondrous works that he has done, a father that is so confident in God, nothing sets his heart to fear. He's a happy father. We need happy fathers.

You go back to Numbers 30, where you have a picture of what authority looks like in a home, particularly for a wife and a daughter. And there's this picture in Numbers 30 of a wife who makes a decision and a daughter who makes a decision, but there's also a father who has authority. And it speaks of this scenario in home life where actually the husband is the head of the wife and also the father is the head of the daughter and he has authority. And he, number 30, makes it clear that a father can can reverse a decision of a wife and a daughter But he has to do it in the day that he hears it, you know what it does It makes it makes a father and his daughter close to where they're talking. He knows what she's thinking She's telling him and they're thinking about what's going on and he can reverse the decision of his daughter on the day that he hears it, but he can't hang her out.

He's got to have a real-time relationship with his daughter. He's got to understand what's going on in her life. It presumes a father knowing what's going on with his daughter. He knows what she's thinking. He knows what's bothering her and what her plans are.

It's a beautiful picture of, on the one hand, relationship and understanding, conversation with a father and daughter and a husband and a wife. But at the same time, it establishes the authority of a father over his daughter and over his wife. It's really a beautiful picture. Or, you know, you could go to to Genesis chapter 18, where God tells the purpose of Abraham's life. And what what happens in Genesis 18 is you learn that that fatherhood and the gospel become intertwined, that that Abraham's fatherhood and his life mission to proclaim the gospel in the world so that all the families of the earth would be blessed.

Fatherhood and the Great Commission are put together. Two weighty things are actually mingled together in Genesis Chapter 18. And God says this of Abraham. He says, For I have known him, God is speaking, I have known Abraham, in order that he might command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him." So, you know, if you ever want to make your way back from this fragmented society, If you're a father, you have to know what the purpose of your life is. It's the purpose of your life is like the purpose of Abraham's life, that God has known you, that you might command your children so that what was promised to Abraham might be fulfilled.

And what was promised to Abraham? That as a result of the spreading of the Gospel, the sons and daughters of Jesus Christ would be as the stars of the sky and the sand of the seashore. And all the families of the earth would be blessed. And there would be a day when millions would be before the throne of God from every tongue and tribe and nation who'd been rescued from darkness. That's the purpose of Abraham's life.

And guess what? That's the purpose of every father's life. You have to know why you were born. You were born to command your children so that they might walk in the ways of the Lord so that there would be people before the throne of God praising God. That in every generation there would be people in the world who would be singing the praises of God.

And everywhere you'd go in the world, there'd be somebody walking down the street with a song in their heart, set free from sin, knowing that God is sovereign, singing the praises of the Lord and His strength and His deeds that He has done. What a wonderful thing. That's really the calling of a father. Or you could go to Genesis 24 and see how a father works for the marriage of his son. How Abraham goes to great lengths to bring him out of marriage for his son, Isaac.

He spends an enormous amount of resources and deploys his very best and most trusted servant for that task. And it shows the ways that, and the heart behind a father who's caring for the marriages of his sons and daughters, how important marriages are. Marriages really are kingdom enterprises. They're designed to be pictures of Christ's love for the church. And they really are the means to put mouths that praise God from one generation to another because everyone comes out of a marriage.

And how important the marriages of our sons and daughters are so important. And like Abraham's servant and like Abraham, they should be given much prayer, much attention and trust in God. And it's so critical. You know, it's a wonderful time when a child comes to the age of marriage. It's a beautiful time.

It can be one of the hardest times in their lives as well. As they find themselves really at a crossroads, Will they really trust and honor their father and mother or not in the matter? Will they trust God that He will provide in His own time? Or will they think that there's some self-appointed time that they must be married or do they really trust that God is in control that he rules everything in the world that if someone would be interested in you it would really only be for one reason. Because God Almighty put it into the mind.

So it becomes such a crossroads of trust. In God, that God really is in control. It's easy to say that when you're younger, but when you reach the age of marriage, you find yourself at a crossroads. Do you really believe that? You know, you could go to Ephesians chapter five to understand how to make your way back from this fragmented world.

Go Ephesians five where the where the picture of marriage is and how God has designed marriage to proclaim the glory of Christ's love for his church. And how God has established marriage for this purpose. You know, how do you make your way back from this fragmented society? Well, you realize that the two are one and they're in the midst of this unity is authority and submission. And there's enormous attention and care and sacrifice on the part of the husband for the wife.

And there's a tremendous challenge of the wife to honor and to obey and to respect a husband who's imperfect and has many flaws. But it's a picture of the Kingdom of Heaven. How do you make your way back? You leave and you cleave and you make a marriage. And you have a unified vision of life that comes from a unified marriage where you have a husband and wife mingling their energies together for the glory of God to take everything that they are and have and lay it before the Lord.

And a husband and wife plan for the future and make a way for their children and make a life and to create a kingdom, to create a culture in their family. But not just any culture. Culture of heaven, culture of love, the culture that you see with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. It's a culture of love and delight, submission and authority, Obedience and glorification and unity. Individual persons who are united, a picture of the Holy Trinity.

That's how you make your way back. You make your way back by looking to God and looking to heaven to understand how you would break this cycle of fragmentation that exists in the world today. You would go to Ephesians chapter 6 and speak of this picture of parents training their children. Instead of letting the state bring your children up in their training and their admonition, parents bring up their children in the training and the admonition of the Lord. Instead of pagan teachers, fathers, instead of pagan subject matter, the training and the admonition of the Lord, the praises of God to fulfill what Jeremiah the prophet said, do not learn the way of the Gentiles.

How do you break the fragmentation? You have to understand the who, what, where, when and why of of how to break that fragmentation. It really begins with the father. He's really the ice breaker in the entire enterprise. And then he carries his family along and he becomes the teacher of his children.

And he recognizes that the greatest danger to his children is dishonor. And so He finds himself fulfilling the command that children should honor their father and mother and obey their parents in the Lord, for this is right. That it's His duty in life to secure honor and obedience in His children, and to recognize that the world is coming apart when dishonor and disobedience rule and reign in the family. God has placed Him in the life of His children. He's placed a man and a woman, a father and a mother, between a child and the gates of hell to deliver them from the dishonor and the disobedience that would lead to their final destruction.

To teach them that there is a God in heaven, there is an authority, and to use the means of discipline that God has defined. To stand in the gap, to stand, to hold back the droves of people rushing into perdition their own children. And to be there. To be there, to stand there while they're sitting in their house, while they're walking by the way, while they're lying down, and while they're rising up. And teaching these things, being careful not to exasperate their children.

You go to Judges, chapters 6 through 8, and you can find fathers like Gideon who tear down their father's idols, who are courageous enough to break new ground. Courageous men who don't fear man. Not perfect men, as Gideon was not a perfect man. You could go to Psalm 127. And and find this picture of happy home life, the creating of this world where the children are like all the plants in the house.

And the wife is in the very heart of the home. The very center of the home is this mother as she's there raising up her children. I'm so grateful for my own wife who's dedicated all the years of her life to be in the center of her home, to create such a wonderful home, a beautiful place for her children. She's dedicated her whole life to her husband and to her children. She has.

She's given up her whole life for that. What a blessing it is, and you know, I'm seeing God bless her so much, right? You know, her daughters are her very, very best friends in the world. She used to pray that that would happen. And it happened, but She was in the very heart of her home.

She was a happy mother. She was a strong mother, let me tell you that. But she was one who was constantly making peace. She was in the very heart of her home. So She does have that picture in Psalm 127, where all the olive plants are around the table and it's happiness.

Happiness central. How do you break the fragmentation? You recover that family table that you see in Psalm 127. Or you go to the next Psalm in Psalm 128. And you see, you see one of the most critical ways that that is necessary to put in place in order to make your way back.

You can't make your way back without this one thing that's mentioned in Psalm 128. It's the fear of the Lord. It's the fear of the Lord. It's really the beginning of every renewal. Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways.

When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy and it shall be well with you. You could go to Hebrews 12 to figure out how to make your way back in Hebrews chapter 12, you learn about the perfect father. The perfect father who disciplines his children. And he's the author says, yes, we had earthly fathers that disciplined us for a time. But if you're going to make your way back, you have to restore the discipline of the Lord back into your family life and to recognize that there must be discipline.

He who loves disciplines. No sons were ever sons without discipline. And you know you're a son if you're disciplined. You know that your father loves you when you're disciplined. Don't raise your hands, but how many of your children have been disciplined by your parents?

It's the way you know that they love you. And it's the same way with your Father in Heaven. You know that He loves you because He disciplines you. And you don't despise his disciplines because he has sent them there to show you in a tangible way that he loves you. Yes, it does hurt.

No discipline seems pleasant for the moment. But after a while, It brings forth the peaceful fruit of righteousness. But you restore love in your family by restoring discipline. Well, I've just given you 11 passages of scripture for how you make your way back. How do you make your way back?

Scripture, Scripture, Scripture alone. Find yourself a living picture of what God has commanded. Go to the Scriptures. Find out what is pleasing to the Lord. And go do that.

And pray that God would give you a heart that says, I want to do that. Lord, that's beautiful. I want to be a living picture of that. Lord, help me. If you want to make your way back, your only hope is scripture.

Scripture is sufficient for it all. Now, don't be like Eli who would not restrain his sons and do not be like Lot who would not protect his daughters. So the very first thing that you must do if you want to make your way back is you go back to Scripture. The second thing you must do is you must repent specifically. You must identify the poisons.

You must identify the ways that you've departed from the beauties of the will of God. And you have to ask, what are the things that have been fragmenting my family? What are the things that are fragmenting your family from the biblical coordinates of family life? Those are two kinds of fragmentations, aren't they? Fragmenting your family from itself and fragmenting your family from biblical coordinates.

You see, you know, a father should ask, what am I doing that perpetuates the fragmentation of this family to where It's really not a picture at all of the Holy Scriptures. Or what is a mother doing to fragment the family? You know, it's a tough time for women today in so many areas. The pressures are really significant on women. You know, the Christian world says, go girl, find your ministry, you can do anything you want to do.

And So you have women all over the Christian churches who are dissatisfied and frustrated because they want to have a ministry. But they don't realize how fragmenting that can be. And they haven't really considered it carefully. They've just thought that somehow they need to go make their independent way in this life. Which is really different than the Proverbs 31 woman.

I mean, she's a very busy woman. She has a lot going on, but everything is focused on the prosperity of her home. Everything. Everything she does is to build the kingdom of heaven in her house and actually to build sort of the kingdom of her husband. And she works happily along with him.

She gives him authority and she's a very smart person. Of course, the woman in Proverbs 31 is the king's wife she has enormous resources probably not like hardly any of us here so it's different applications are a little bit different but the principles are the same you know what are your what are the children doing that are fragmenting the family? You have to ask that. You know, I know there are a lot of children here. Probably a majority of people in this room are children.

So what are you doing that's fragmenting your family that actually is working against what the Scriptures say? Because you see how it takes everyone to be involved in this. The husband, the wife, and the children all have to work together if they're going to have a biblically unified vision of family life. And you all have to look to the Scriptures and honor the Word of God. Honor the Word of God above all of your personal passions, all of your individualistic inclinations.

Look to God. Look to God alone. You know, this is what elders of churches have to do. They have to look at what the Bible says the church should be like and not create a church in their own image to resist all of their creative juices and and to be found faithful doing what God has said the church should do and be satisfied with God. You know, people today aren't content enough with God.

They want something cooler than God. They want something more interesting than God. So They want to create a life apart from God. That's why the Tower of Babel was built. They wanted to make a name for themselves, right?

That's really the beginning of this fragmentation that we see. People want to make a name for themselves. And they really do want something better and cooler, more interesting, more exciting, more engaging, more wonderful, more popular than God. And so every man does what's right in his own eyes like they did in the days of the judges. You ever read about the days of the judges?

You want to know where it leads? Kevin was talking about it in his last message. The kind of horrible things that happen when every man does what's right in his own eyes. And you know what? It's all about the direction and the path.

When you set yourself up as the God to do what's right in his own eyes, you'll reap what you sow and you won't like what you reap. So repent specifically. That's the second thing. Repent specifically of the things that are contradicting what the Word of God has said specifically to you about your family life. And I just gave you an 11th passage of Scripture that at least gives some coordinates to that.

And I think each family should read those over and pray. Cry out to God and say, Lord, how do we put these things into practice in our little family? It's a blessing when a family does that. The third thing, in order to reorient your family to a unified vision, is to reorder your life according to three major spheres. Reordering your life, acknowledging the things that God has said about these three spheres, and that is family life, church life, and work life.

You know, we're confused about so many things in life. You know, the world, the flesh, and the devil really messes with us. And so, church life, family life, and work life is often out of sync because we haven't carefully understood what God has said about how each one of those is ordered. And so, family life must be reordered according to scripture. And that means that a family is dedicated to worship.

The family is dedicated to industry. The family is dedicated to instruction. The family is dedicated to being a blessing in the community. The family is dedicated to the prosperity of the Church of Jesus Christ. A family has to sort of recalibrate itself.

And so a church as well. A family's got to begin to relate to the church in an appropriate way. You know, today people minimize the importance of the church. You know, how did that happen? You know, somehow the churches have just become such design centers that everybody sort of looks at the church as some interesting creation of man.

And So they think of it wrong. They think of the church from a designer standpoint, and they think, well, I like that design. No, I like that design. No, there's that design over there. Let me go taste the wine of the church, rather than to be a person who dedicates their life to a local church.

You have to reorient your family life to be a member of a local church in the way that God has designed. And then work life as well. God really has called men and women to work. To work six days and rest one. And that's men and women and animals.

Everybody. Everybody works six days and rests one. That's God's design. You know, God does want to control your schedule. Did you know that?

God wants to control your week. And He's commanded that you would work six and rest one. Well, that's what He did. And so He presents an eternal principle. But guess who has the responsibility to make sure that happens in a family?