So it's my job to talk about what it means to recover a multi-generational vision. And my perspective on this whole proposition of having a multi-generational vision for life really means that we learn how to think differently about everything. And what does that mean? It means that we start thinking like God. And what God is thinking about is the rescue of His bride across the generations.

The purpose of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, really the purpose of everything that ever happened in history is to rescue a bride for the glory of God. And so in order to think like God about your life and your placement in history, it means that you have a multi-generational vision of that. But what is that vision all about? It's really about the power of God through the Gospel communicated from one generation to the next. That's a multi-generational vision for me.

And so it begins with understanding the way that God has ordered history. And He's ordered history in such a way that every person who's ever born has a role in proclaiming the gospel from one generation to the next. Now, of course, you know, many fail in that responsibility for various reasons. But to have a multi-generational vision for life means that you love the gospel of Jesus Christ so much that you would care for its propagation from one generation to the next. That you would first look back into the generation that you exist in, you see what is broken there and how God through his glorious word would recover the things that were lost.

And then you proclaim that good news to the next generation. And you pray and you work toward their Communicating it to the next generation so that they would communicate it to the next generation That's a multi vision. That's a multi-generational vision for life the heart of it all is The message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ Now I was I was I was reading in my Bible this morning in Isaiah chapter 61. I'd like you to open there. There are two texts I want to deal with today.

Isaiah 61, just very briefly, because there are some things that I read this morning that were very helpful to me. And then also put your finger in Psalms 78. Those are the two places that we're going to land here this morning in this introductory message. In Isaiah 61 He speaks of the power of the gospel that will come upon the earth in verse 1. He says, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor.

He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound." The Lord Jesus Christ quotes this in Luke chapter 4, and He says, I am a fulfillment of this. So this is a prophecy of the coming of the Gospel through the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he says, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified. And when the Lord Jesus Christ does this kind of work in your heart, it begins to spread in your family and you begin to see what it means to have beauty for ashes. And I know there are many people here who've experienced this in their own lives as they've turned to the Lord Jesus and they've turned toward his word to order their family life and he's given them beauty for ashes you know I know that happened in my family I'm I am so amazed at what god did in my family to rescue my daughters to rescue my son and my wife and I'm so grateful now you know after many years of God working with us as a family three of my children are almost all married and they're and they're going on in there I can see the beauty coming out of the ashes even more and I'm so grateful but verse four is is something that I that really struck me in this text.

And they shall rebuild the old ruins. They shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations." So this passage looks back at the desolations of many generations. That's what every generation has to do. It has to assess the desolations that have come upon them, the things that are broken, the things that are lost. I want to say that a multi-generational vision of life is one of those things that's been lost and recovering it is part of rebuilding the broken cities and the broken streets that are upon us.

So, you know, the recovery of things that are broken is one of the great blessings that God has given the people of God, and He's given it to us, that we would find what is broken and then rebuild. Now, here's a problem with things that are broken. Here, He speaks of raising up the former generation desolations and rebuilding the old ruins. You know, it's easier to build something brand new than it is to go through the wrecked rubble and then rebuild from that. But that's what God's people do.

They come to him as broken people with a history, with a bunch of baggage. We all come that way and we're all being rebuilt and we are all rebuilding. And everybody in this room is rebuilding something in their life. Nobody has it together. We come to the Lord, you know, so broken, so harmed by the work of the devil in our lives and the culture that we live in.

But what do we do? We start one piece of rubble at a time and we clear out one area and then we clear out another area and then we begin to rebuild. And part of that rebuilding includes establishing a whole new way of thinking about life. And it is captured in this phrase, a multi-generational vision that you see life the way that God sees it, that you see yourself in a context of the stream of history. And the stream of history is about one single thing, the rescue of a bride for the Lord Jesus Christ.

That is the meaning of history. And that's really the meaning of your life and my life. Life doesn't have much meaning beyond that. The eternal work of the power of the Spirit of God is the essence of what it means to have a multi-generational vision. That you think like he thinks about your life and you see your life and its purpose in the way that he sees it as well.

And what is that purpose? To proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and to be used of Him to see that it's proclaimed from one generation to the next. So there you have it. That's the proposition that we have here and all the different speakers will speak of different aspects of that. Now, we're talking about the recovery of something lost.

And I continue to be convinced that the revival of biblical family life is one of the most pressing needs of our era. And the recovery of biblical family life is nothing less than a recovery of the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ from one generation to another. You know, God has designed the family to be the first place where the gospel is heard by human ears. Now, of course, we know it doesn't always work out that way. Now, because often people don't hear the gospel until they enter into adulthood.

But but God actually designed your family such that you're the next generation would hear the gospel for the very first time. That's the way that God designed the world. And the trouble happens when the family is in disarray. And the primary issue of family disarray is really what the head of the household does and thinks and the condition of his soul. Because if you have the head of household who doesn't know the gospel of Jesus Christ and he doesn't love the gospel of Jesus Christ, he's incapable of talking about it.

He has no energy in it. He has no joy in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so because of that, he has no ability to speak of it. And so when you have a family that is in disarray because the gospel has not been embraced by the head of the family, and particularly the fathers and the mothers and families, then what you have is you have a breakdown in this multi-generational vision of the proclamation of the gospel from one generation to the next. And so really the very first question that needs to be asked in a gathering like this, it needs to be asked of fathers and mothers.

And here's the question. Do you love Jesus Christ? Have you embraced the gospel? Have you seen the power of the gospel and the changes that have taken place in your life. Or did you just walk an aisle or utter a prayer sometime when you were nine years old?

Did you get baptized but your life never changed? You have to ask yourself, have I been truly converted? Have I embraced the true Gospel or did I just pray a prayer when I was a kid sometime? And have I seen the power of the Gospel work in my life? What does that mean?

It means that you have a love in your heart for the word of God. It usually means you have a love for the people of God. It means that you have a desire in your heart to obey his word. So the big question is, have you embraced the gospel? Later on, we'll speak of this, or Jason Young will speak of this more clearly.

But here's the issue. When a family is in disarray, then the power of the gospel is nullified because the communication of the gospel has been compromised. There's been a break in the stream that God has designed to be working in a family. And so the truth is, in this world and in many, many people, in many, many churches, the gospel may never be heard in families until adulthood. And it's such a tragedy that a living human soul would be deprived of the sweetest, most wonderful message ever.

The salvation that exists in Jesus Christ and the proclamation of the whole council of God in a family. Now, every period of history has its crises, and the breakdown of the family is one of the greatest crises that ever comes upon a people. And the truth of the matter is that in our era, it's almost impossible for people to even understand biblical family life because it's been destroyed in our culture. And so one of the most important things a family can ever do is recover the doctrine of family life. And one of the critical matters of family life is to have a whole change of thinking in the way that you view your place in the stream of history and the purpose of your life, because the purpose of your life is to proclaim the gospel and to see to it that it is proclaimed from one generation to the next, to order everything in your life around eternal treasure to be communicated from one generation to another.

So here's here's here's what I've been trying to communicate. And I want to try to drive it home here. Everything that we're talking about at this conference about a multi-generational vision has to do with an expansion of the proclamation of the gospel in our generation. And I pray that the legacy of this conference will be that and that What this conference really is about is about the method of the expansion of gospel communication. And in many ways, what we are really saying is let's take the gospel to the place it's never been preached.

How about in family life? So our concern is that the Gospel be preached more comprehensively in this society, that the Gospel be better understood, that the Gospel be known and felt, that the whole counsel of God is reviewed in family life. That is the essence of the establishment of a multi-generational vision for life And so here's what happens when when the whole Council of God is preached in a family It gives children a context for their life. It shows them where they exist in history. It shows them what happened before.

It tells them what is going to happen in the future. It gives them a whole context of life. And they begin to see wisdom from heaven about every part of life, because the Bible speaks about every part of life. So when you have a family that has been saturated by the word of God, because the shepherds of that family are preaching the word of God in that family, what you get is a generation that knows the Lord. They understand who God is.

It's not that they understand the four points on a gospel tract. They understand God. They've gone from Genesis to Revelation over and over again. So they understand God. There's nothing more important and helpful for a child than to understand God.

And so when they understand that, what happens? They go into the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you have children who go into the church of Jesus Christ, and they understand God, and they understand the Gospel, and they understand history, and they understand their purpose in life, you have a different church than you had before. You have a gospel saturated church. You have a church that knows the will of God and the nature of God, you have a strong church.

And so when when the family begins to embrace this multigenerational vision, it comes around to strengthen the church. One of the reasons the churches are so weak today and why the church members don't know hardly anything about the Bible today is because the family did not have a multigenerational vision and they didn't understand that that the gospel would be proclaimed in their family and then in the church and the church would be saturated with a sense of the beauty and the power of the Gospel. And that's what would be on the people's minds in the church. And then what would happen? It would be proclaimed in the community.

Because the church is sent into the community. And you don't have the gospel just being hidden away in homes or in churches. But it's spread out in the community because the families are spread out in the community. And they have neighbors and jobs and customers, and they travel and they go places and they eat in restaurants, and they're out and about in the community. Why?

For a multi-generational vision that the gospel would be proclaimed from one generation to another in every place. Think of how brilliant God is, how he takes all ages of a family. He takes all the various occupations that families have to sustain themselves and he scatters them out in a community. It's really brilliant and remarkable that God would give a certain kind of life that would cause the spread of his glory in every part of the community, in every business niche. I dare say there are very, very, very few business categories and industries that you don't find Christians.

You ever think of why? Why did God do that? It's because of a multi-generational vision. It's to proclaim the gospel from one generation to the next in every place where people are. And that's the purpose of this whole thing.

So, you know, if the gospel is preached in family life, it will be better preached in church life, and then it is better preached in civic life. So, Can you see how critical it is that we regain an understanding that we somehow clear out the rubble of our own thinking about the purpose of our own lives? We begin to rebuild out of the rubble, out of the ruins by taking one stone of a fence after another out of our lives as best we know how as the Lord reveals those things to us. We clean our houses and we begin to refill our houses with the glory of God by the word of God. And I think this is the greatest evangelistic opportunity before the modern church today is to preach the gospel in families.

I think families are the most unreached people groups in the world. The children and families are the most unreached people groups. At least in America. So it's such a marvelous evangelistic opportunity. Think about what the Bible describes, that families gather together to read Holy Scripture and there they are being saturated by the goodness of God.

They're hearing the gospel over and over and over again. And what you have is parents who are preaching the gospel to themselves and then turning around and bringing it to their own children. There's nothing better to do with your life than that absolutely nothing So this is perhaps one of the great evangelistic opportunities that exists Before us now. I'd like to there's so many texts that we could go to, but I want to take us to Psalm 78, which is one of the seminal texts that speaks of this matter of the declaration of the glory of God from one generation to another. And what what Asaph is doing in Psalm 78 must be understood, first of all.

The purpose of Asaph in Psalm 78, which is, which is, you know, the longest Psalm outside of Psalm 119, is to explain how you break the patterns of your father's. That's his purpose. His call is to break the patterns of your father's. In other words, rebuild the old waste places, clear out the rubble, build new, build completely new, push out the bad patterns that you learned from your father, from your own brain, from your society, push out those bad patterns and re-establish according to the word of God. And he's really calling us to to comprehend the sinful patterns of our fathers, and if you read Psalm 78, you'll see that it's implied in a number of verses that you should comprehend the bad patterns.

And most of the psalm really explains the bad patterns, the idolatry, the self-indulgence of the fathers of the past. He exposes those things to help fathers in a new generation comprehend the sinful patterns of their own fathers. And he goes further than that. He gives you the cause of the sinful patterns. And then he even goes farther than that.

And he calls us to actually dismantle that work and bring it to ruins to crush those patterns and to build new. So that's the essence of it. Now, let's read. We're just going to take this, we won't read the entire psalm unless it would take us until after lunch to do an exposition of it, but we'll do the we'll focus on the first part. Give ear, O my people, to my law.

Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. So he's he's calling to the fathers of Israel to incline their ear, to turn their ear to something that perhaps they need to be reminded of in order to rebuild the waste places. And what is he calling them to turn their ear to? His law. And this is the law of God.

You know, the law of God has fallen on hard times today. It's despised, but we have to recognize that God in His word uses Asaph to be an example for all who had come after him to say, turn your ear to my law. The Bible says that those who despise the law, their prayers are an abomination before God. So here It's a call to be calibrated by the Word of God, to reset your life according to God's Word and the things that He has said. And so The first thing that he does is he says, give ear to my law.

And he's calling people back to hearken unto the word of God, to build their life out of the word of God. And there are really only two ways to build your life. You can build it out of the Word of God or you can build it out of something else. Your own thinking, your own wisdom, the wisdom of your father, the wisdom of your society, the wisdom of all your friends. There really are only two categories.

It's either God's way or somebody else's way. And so Asaph, first of all, says, give ear to my law. And then he says, I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings of old. By the way, the Lord Jesus Christ quotes this very phrase in Matthew 13.

The Lord Jesus Christ is he stands and he says this, what I'm saying now is that the Lord Jesus Christ stands and he repeats these words that Asaph has spoken in Matthew 13. And he's saying he's saying to he's saying that that that there are things that he is telling his disciples that they do not understand. And he's speaking in parables, there are things that they did not understand, they are still dark to them, they are the dark sayings of old. But he's saying you should pass them on anyway, pass on everything from the word of God, pass it on, even if even if they are spoken in parables and they're not understood, keep passing them on. You may not understand everything completely in the Word of God, but keep passing on the dark sayings of old.

Because the Word of God doesn't ever return void. So he's really saying, teach them to your children. Perhaps someday they will understand them. And if you do not pass them on, you're hiding them from your children, he says, I will utter dark sayings of old. Verse three, which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us.

Here again we see this multi-generational vision. The fathers have told things of value, the dark sayings of old, the beautiful things from the Word of God. And he's saying, Asaph is saying, we are going to say these things to our children. That's that multigenerational vision. You have the fathers of the past who utter dark sayings of old, and those things will be repeated again and repeated again and again.

He says, we have, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. The Bible assumes that fathers are going to tell their children. And that's what we should be doing. And Asaph is standing an example and he's saying this is how life ought to be. That fathers tell their children.

And then in verse four he says, we will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done. It says, we will not hide them from their children. Now, how is it that the things of God are hidden from children. How is that? How does that happen?

Ungodly priorities. Placing priority on everything else except for the communication of the power of the Gospel to the children. Life is pretty busy, isn't it? There are so many things in this world that capture your time. And yet there is really only one eternally pivotal matter.

And that's this. And that is to utter the dark sayings of old, to join with the Lord and preach the Gospel from one generation to the next. It takes an enormous amount of upheaval in a person's life to do this in his family. He has to set aside so many things. You know, I remember when I started doing this in my own life, I just had to stop doing certain things.

I had to stop. Some of those things had to do with some of the sports that I loved and my friends that I love to do them with. And I just didn't have time. I couldn't figure out how to fit it in unless I got rid of something. Something had to die in order for this to live.

And that's a reality that we all face. If you're going to do this, you have to kill something. You will not be able to do this unless something dies in your life that you like, and usually usually it's some lawful thing, some interesting thing, not necessarily bad. But yet it's a thief from something greater. And so what happens to us is we have all these things going on that are good, but they actually turn out to be thieves and they break in and steal.

What do they steal? They actually steal the only true treasure that you have in your house. And so he says, we will not hide them from their children. And then it says, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord. Now, I want you to notice the things that he speaks of here.

That are to be passed on. The first thing that he mentions is the praises of the Lord. The praises of the Lord. That's it. This is a picture of happiness.

This is a picture of rising in the morning and giving thanks, of greeting the day with the joy of the Lord, with the happiness of His kingdom, knowing that He is the King, that He rules heaven and earth. He rules the wind and the waves. He rules everything. He is sovereign. He is good.

He is bringing history to conclusion It's a picture of a happy father and mother It's not a picture of a father and mother that are overburdened with the things of this world and they wake up with a sour look on their face. They wake up with praises of the Lord because they know God is good. This is what a multi-generational vision for life is. It's a happy vision. You know, when I was a young father, my number one objective in everything I did was to try to tell my children how beautiful Jesus was and what a good kingdom he has and how sweet his water of life is how good that bread is, how good the light is I wanted them, I just wanted them to know that the Lord was good.

I wanted them to know the happiness of the kingdom of heaven. You know, over and over again, I tell them that Jesus was the happiest of all the disciples. Hebrews 1 9 says, says, Thou has loved righteousness and hated lawlessness, for God thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above your companions. In other words, He had the oil of gladness upon him. He had the praises of the Lord.

If the Lord Jesus Christ were to walk in here in bodily form, he'd be absolutely the happiest person in the room. There's no question about it. A lot of the trouble that families have is that they're not happy families. And how come they're not happy families? Because the praises of the Lord have been dampened, most likely because they've not been nourished on the word of God.

The souls of the families and the heads of families weren't nourished on the beauty of the kingdom of heaven. And so when they woke up in the morning, all they had were burdens. Burdens and demands and, You know, all they had were rules and there was no joy. Well, I'm all for rules. I really am.

But rules without joy is a disaster. That's actually what the kingdom of heaven is. It is the truth and it's love. Both at the same time. There is the law of God and there is the love of God and they exist perfectly harmoniously together and you cannot separate them.

Every law of God is a law of love. That's what the Bible says. And the law, the whole law is summed up by the word love. Well, that's why Asaph says, give ear to my law, turn your ear to my law. It's a law of love.

Let it be something that would bring praise out of your mouth. He says the praises of the Lord. So you tell the generation to come the praises of the Lord. Let's stop for just one second. You parents, have you been communicating the hundreds and thousands of ways that God should be praised?

And when you rise in the morning, you rise like the Lord Jesus Christ, happier than all the companions. I think the Lord Jesus Christ is a good pattern for fathers. Fathers should be the happiest guys in the room in a family. They should be the happiness machines. Singing the praises of the Lord.

You know What do you sing in your family? Is it just is it all get her done? Or is it how good God is? The praises of the Lord, that's the first thing second. And his strength, So you're telling the generation to come the praises of the Lord number one and secondly his strength So you're talking about his his might he is the Lord of hosts in our church I'm preaching through I to the book of Isaiah and and that the term the Lord of hosts appears all over the book.

He's the Lord of the heavenly armies. The hundreds of thousands or millions or maybe billions of the armies of heaven. God commands all the armies of heaven and he does a lot of stuff with them we just we just passed through a section where probably probably the most remarkable battle in all of history is that Sennacherib brings his army to the gates of Jerusalem and 185, 000 of them just die on the ground. Absolutely astonishing. No explanation.

They just die there on the ground. He's the Lord of hosts. He has his armies. He does whatever he wants in heaven and on earth. Daniel said nothing can stay his hand.

That's his strength. So you fill your family with the strength of God you tell them how strong he is You tell them that nothing can touch you unless God has ordained it that He is going to complete his work. He is going to finish this work. And everything that happens, every downfall, every disappointment, every difficulty will all be summed up in the victory of Jesus Christ. Everything.

Everything that you think is going wrong in your life? It isn't really going wrong. It's going right. God is glorifying Himself in your sufferings. He's driving you to His cross.

He's driving you to trust in Him and not in man. He's driving you to care only for his glory and not your own glory before men. And he does a lot of things to dampen your glory and destroy your pride, doesn't he? He wants to destroy your pride so that you can be happy in him, so that you can declare his strength. You know, I don't know what's going wrong in your family life, but my guess is something's going wrong in every family here.

There's some broken relationship, there's some difficulty, there's some financial threat. What is it? I mean, do you know the purpose of it? Well, what is the purpose of trials? To strengthen you?

In what? In the glorification of God. And what happens to people who glorify God? They sing His praises and His strength. There's nothing better than a heavy dose of the sovereignty of God in family life.

Please don't let your children leave without it. Do not let your children leave your house without understanding the might of God and the plan of God. So that they can see where they are in this historical moment that they live in, but they can see the end, and they can see who will carry them to the end. Moses says, I carry you through the wilderness like a father carries his children. And then later on, he talks about the everlasting arms.

The everlasting arms. Well, this is his strength. Communicate his strength. Make sure your children don't leave your house without knowing the strength of God. That they hear about the strength of God from a happy father singing his praises.

And then the wonderful works that he has done, in other words, if you're going to have a multi generational vision, you've got to communicate the wonderful works that God has done. Tell them what he did. Well, that's what that's what Psalm 78 is all about. If you read on, it just goes on and on and on and on and on about what God did. And how good he was to his people, even when they were idolatrous.

So that's what that's what this vision is all about. It's not hiding, it's telling the generation the praises, the strength and the wonderful works that he has done. Then he says in verse five that there's a particular aspect of the content of the communication to the next generation. Read it with me. Verse five.

For he established a testimony in Jacob and he appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children. Now he's talking about Deuteronomy six, that there was a law in Israel that he commanded fathers. This is when Moses gathered the fathers of Israel, and he said, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart and You shall teach them diligently to your children and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house When you walk by the way when you lie down and when you rise up that's what he's talking about in verses five and six he's saying asaph is saying we were given a law was given in israel it was given in deuteronomy six Moses gave it and it's and it is it is this law it's the law that you should teach your children for this multi-generational vision of life why verse six why That the generation to come might know them.

So you have the generation to come, like, for me it would be my children. So that they would know them. In other words, they have to be didactically instructed in the law of God. They need to know the history. They need to know the personalities and the details, the commands and the principles and everything that's there.

Don't let your children leave home without them. Tell them so that they know in other words that it resides in their brains The problem with the human brain is it's it has holes in it's like a sieve we lose it all the time We have to repeat it all the time. This is why things are repeated in the Bible all the time. We need it. We need repetition.

Because our minds are weak and we forget things. Keep teaching it so that they know it. Don't think you can just teach it once and say you're done. Absolutely not. God doesn't do that.

And neither should you teach it over and over and over again. Yes, you should say things over and over again, even where your children might even roll their eyes and say, there he goes again. Say it again. Keep saying it. So that they might know it.

And then the children who would be born, in other words, the children born after them. So, again, you have three generations. You have the mouthpiece, and then the one, and then the children, and then the one to be born and then you also have the previous generation there are four generations implied right here in in these first verses it's this transgenerational vision of life why to proclaim the gospel that's what it's about it has really only one purpose To proclaim the gospel for one generation to the next. Why? Verse seven.

That they may set their hope in God. Oh, I'm sorry, I've got to go back into verse six. I skipped it. That they may arise and declare them to their children. OK.

So you speak them to your children who speak them to their children, who speak them to their children. That's the deal. So, you know, you're not just training your children, you're training your children to train other children. You're teaching teachers, right? You got that?

So you have to be a teacher. Of teachers. Of teachers. Of teachers. Of teachers.

That means that men have to rise up and say stuff. We have to open up our mouths. We have to organize our thoughts. We have to catalog them. Hey, when I was a young father, I wrote down the plans really detailed.

I encourage you to do the same thing. Write down plans for every child. Write down the specific scriptures your children must know. What I did, my family's reread through the Bible every year for years, for over a decade we did that. We'd sit down in our house and our couch and each person would read five verses and we'd read through the Bible every year for years.

You know what? I have one daughter left at home. We're doing it again, right? We're still doing it. She's 19 years old.

We're still doing it. We're going to keep doing it. You know, I was going to a conference one time last year. There's a father-daughter retreat, and I asked my daughters what was the most helpful thing I did as a dad for daughters. I said, what can I tell the dads at this conference?

And they all said the same thing. They said Papa, the thing that we loved the most was sitting down on the couch in the mornings and just reading and just read. You know, when they were really little, maybe they could only read one word or two words, or maybe we have to tell them that word, and they would do it their rotation, you know, in the reading. But, you know, as I was going to that father-daughter retreat, it really struck me that this was the most important thing my daughters thought of about what I did as a dad. Why?

Verse seven, that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments. In other words, so that there's a generation that has hope. In what? In God, in his multigenerational vision, that he will complete everything in Jesus Christ, that he came to save sinners, that he came to rescue a bride. Everything is about the rescue of a bride.

Everything is about the power of the gospel. There's nothing about your life that's not connected to it. That's a multigenerational vision. Here's what it's not. It's not having a really neat family where everything runs great.

It's not about you and your generation and your vision. It's really about establishing a kind of life that casts into the future, into the next generation. That is what we're talking about when we say we are praying for a multi-generational vision. That God, as a result of his work by the Holy Spirit in fathers and mothers, that there would be households in this world that would communicate his strength, his praises, his wonderful works that he has done. Let's take the gospel to the most unreached people group in America, the children in the houses.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, I pray that you would pour your grace out upon this gathering here that you would help us to care nothing except for the beauty of your kingdom. Oh Lord to love your kingdom, to love your church, to love your ways. I pray oh Lord that if there would be one thing coming from our investment here, that it would be that we would be so happy in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we would speak of him when we sit in our house when we walk by the way when we lie down and when we rise up maybe so amen Thank you.