In this sermon titled 'Family Life and the Church,' Scott Brown discusses the importance of family life and its relationship to the church. He emphasizes the need for families to be governed by the Word of God and to prioritize holiness. Brown explores the complementary roles of the church and the family, highlighting the overlap and unique responsibilities of each institution. He emphasizes the significance of family worship, marriage, fatherhood, motherhood, and family discipleship. The sermon encourages families to have a strong presence in church life and to prioritize the teachings and practices of the church.

Okay, so we're gonna switch gears now, you know, we're doing our series called joined and knit together That's a phrase that comes out of Ephesians chapter 4 Describing the church as being joined and knit together, you know with one another by the Lord Jesus Christ and As as you are well aware, this has been a long series. We've started talking about the doctrine of the church, the activities of the church, and how the church spreads the gospel. We talked about the government of the church, elders and deacons, and things like that. We've talked about our church covenant, what the relational fabric of the church is designed to be, what we're actually committing ourselves to. We've talked about the missionary outreach of the church.

And by the way, just to get another plug for our missions conference in a couple weeks when we get back from Turkey. And we talked last week about the government of the tongue. Today we're going to talk about family life and particularly family life inside the church and family life outside the church to examine ourselves. We want to just continue to urge one another to have families that are governed by the Word of God, families that are saturated and filled with the glory of God, because parents are reading and praying, and they're gathering their children around the things of the kingdom of heaven, that our family lives are conformed to scripture, not our culture. Don't go to our culture to build a family.

Don't do that. It's the wrong place to go. You want to go to the Bible. And so in today's session, I want to cover a number of things that speak of how church life and family life operate together. They are two separate, but they are complementary institutions.

The church is one institution with particular roles and responsibilities. The family is a particular separate institution under the headship of parents that perform particular responsibilities. But interestingly enough, there's a lot of overlap of those institutions. I'd like you to open up your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 6. There's so many passages of Scripture to read that I won't be able to get to.

Before we read it, I want to just give you a sense of where we're going with this. And there will be a slide put up here that I take to give you the points that I'm going to cover. And as you can tell, I'm going to have to cover them briefly. But what we want to do is really cast a vision for family life in our church. We want our church members to have a particular kind of family life that really reflects the Word of God.

And as it turns out, what is consistent with the Word of God is almost entirely inconsistent with what you find in the world. So God creates this community called the church to have a particular kind of life together corporately as a body, but also the families, They live in a particular way. They're like aliens in a strange land. And we just want to call everybody in this church to live like aliens in a strange land, the way that God describes. So these points here up on the screen are, I want to, first of all, I want to begin with three propositions about family life and then I want to speak of the complementary roles of church and family life I want to explain that I want to speak about how families need the church and I want to talk about family worship.

Fifth, I want to talk about marriage. Sixth, fatherhood. Seventh, motherhood. Eighth, family discipleship. And then ninth, family affections.

So that's where I'm going in this session. Let me read Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 1 through 9. This is really the flagship passage of Scripture about family life in the Old Testament. It sums up everything that the New Testament says about family life, and it sums up really almost everything the Old Testament does. So I'm going to read this one passage as a representative.

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 in 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, you, your son and your grandson, all the days of your life and that your days may be prolonged. Now just stop there for a moment. Moses is speaking in the very last month of his life and he's gathered the children of Israel together. They're getting ready to go into the promised land. Moses is not going to be able to go with them.

And he's telling them how to survive. He's telling them how to build spiritual life in this land. They're going into the land of Canaan. They're going into the land of paganism, they're going into the land which has destroyed family life and everything else. And so he's telling them how they should operate when they go into the land.

And then he says this, Therefore, hear, O 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 notice how he starts with parents and their hearts. It's their hearts that he wants and the next verse Verse 6 and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and 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.

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." A couple of general comments about this passage. Why is it that the most famous confessional passage of Scripture for the Hebrews was about family life and fatherhood and teaching children? Why? It's because this is where the faith is preserved.

And people are astonished that the Jews have survived without a nation for so long. They became a nation in 1948, but they had no, they were driven out in 70 AD, and their temple was destroyed. But they survived as a people. They really, as far as I understand it, they're the only people that survived without a nation state for almost 2, 000 years. It's amazing.

But part of it is because this was in their DNA as a people. They taught their children. So it's a significant passage of Scripture. So I want to begin with three propositions. The first is churches are strong when families are strong.

Churches are holy as families are holy. Please make your family a place of the holiness of God. Second proposition, families are strong when churches are strong families are holy as churches are holy it really matters what kind of church life your children are experiencing and holy churches are the very best and sweetest places for children to be raised. Let this be a holy church, you know, focused on the Word of God and everything that is holy. And let's be a people that set aside every unholy thing.

Let's expunge it from every part of our hearts and every part of our lives. The third proposition is this, the fountainhead of holiness in the church and family is God. God says, you shall be holy for I am holy. And the only hope for Holiness in a family and holiness in the Church is God. To have your eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of your faith.

And so those three propositions I just want to make as foundational to the kind of culture that we want to build in this church regarding family life. This is what we're aiming for. If you're here and you're not a member of our church and you want to become a member, just recognize the elders of this church want to lead this flock into these, into the fulfillment of the things that we're talking about here. Now, the second thing I'd like to cover is the complementary roles of church and family life. The church and the family are separate institutions, And they are both places where the scriptures are honored and taught.

In the family, when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up, in the church, where the church gathers, the Word of God is central to everything. When you come to this church, we are going to always be opening up our Bibles. That's what we do. It should be the central matter of church life. God and the Word of His grace is the central matter.

We do that out of obedience and and also we do it because we understand that God blesses it, and He bears fruit as a result. And so the Church and the family are to be equipped to make disciples of Jesus Christ, And disciples are made and equipped through the teaching of the Church. But also there's a particular equipping. It's a daily 24-7 equipping that God has designed the family to be engaged in. And it's interesting, you know, the church doesn't gather every day, but the family gathers every day.

And for some reason God has prioritized this matter of family life, and then the family comes into the church to do the very same thing. I think we should make it very clear, though, that the family isn't the end-all. The Bible makes it very clear that the church is eternal and the family is temporal. These families are just temporal. Our marriages are temporal.

You know, the Bible says that there's neither marriage nor being given in marriage in heaven. So the family is actually a temporal institution to declare the glory of God. It is, you know, it's a home, it's a place where God dwells. If you look at the imagery in the Bible about home, what is a home, You find the imagery all over. The home is a place where God dwells.

The temple is called God's house. The tabernacle was God's house, the place that God dwelt. And the family is the very thing. God created a family as a dwelling place for God. Your family is really a parable of heaven.

Your family's going to go away, but heaven isn't going to go away. And, you know, God, here's what I'm confident in. Whatever it means that there's no marriage in heaven, it's a thousand billion times more glorious than marriage is, because God is perfecting everything. You know, It's hard for me to understand that. When you experience love and marriage and things like that, you think, oh, I don't want to ever let that go.

But there's something even more, something far beyond what we've ever dreamed. But the church is eternal, but the family is temporal, and it's designed to perform temporal functions in the world for the caring of children and the teaching of children and the sending of children out into the world and into the church. Here's another issue about family life. Families might be divided by the gospel. The Lord Jesus made it clear that the gospel can set a man at variance with his father, and that he that loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." And sometimes obedience to God in a family breaks that family apart.

And it's always heartbreaking when that happens, But this is a reality that the Lord Jesus Christ made very clear, that the gospel may divide your family. It may reveal that you have a believer and an unbeliever who are at odds with one another. And the Bible gives various ways for husbands and wives to live together if it is a divided home. Another critical matter is that the church and the family are complementary in role and they are complementary in function. The family is commanded to raise godly seed for the next generation.

That godly seed is the proving ground, or that family life is the proving ground for church leaders. Because the Bible says if a man cannot manage his family, how can he manage the church of God? So what happens in a family is pivotal for the church and really for the creation of church leaders. If you have messed up families, you're going to have messed up church leaders and probably unqualified church leaders. It's really, you know, all you parents here, you know, please set your hearts on raising the next generation of elders and deacons for the church and church members so that they come into the church and they know how to conduct themselves in the household of God.

You need to be very visionary as parents. You are training the next generation of church members. Be very careful with it. Help them to love the church. Help them to find the sweetness in the songs and the preaching and the relationships and, you know, the meals together and the things that you do together.

Let these be the most precious things to you, and help your children to love the Church of Jesus. The church and the family provide overlapping jurisdictions. It is true that the husband is the head of a wife. But a wife also has another authority in her life, and that has to do with the church, church leaders particularly. In other words, wives are not left alone.

If a wife is being abused by her husband, she can go to the elders of the church. There are sort of multiple levels of jurisdictions. You have the civil magistrate as a jurisdiction, and you have the church, and you have the family. In the family, the father is ahead of that family. In churches, you have elders who are overseers of those churches who rule the Church of God, and then you have the civil government.

If a wife is being abused by her husband, it might be appropriate to call the civil magistrate to take care of a man who's abusing his wife or his children. Elders have particular responsibilities as well, and then so do husbands. What I'm saying is that there are overlapping jurisdictions that exist. They're not exclusive, but they are overlapping jurisdictions. So those are some critical things, I think, to help us understand the complementary role of church and family life.

Another way to understand the complementary role as well, a father teaches his children, also his children have the opportunity to be taught by elders and other godly people in the church. You know, in the Bible, the older women teach the younger women. You know, that means that, you know, the older women should be sitting down with the girls and helping them to understand what's going on and working through the difficulties of growing up and things like that. God gives children more than just their families. He gives them their families, but that's not the only thing He gives them.

I've heard people say, well, the church doesn't have anything to say to my children. Well, That's not really the way that God has ordained it. He has ordained that your children will get something more than just you as a father. They need something more than just from you as a father. And, you know, as I saw my children growing up, I recognized that.

You know, I was so delighted that my children heard the preaching and the instruction and had relationships with other men and women in the church. They're very blessed. So all that to speak about the complimentary roles of church and family life. Now, I want to also, this next point, number three, families need church life. You know, I've spent the greater part of my life as a Christian leader really urging families to make the church the center of their life, to make it the place where they go for feeding, relationship, and that they are involved in the worship services of the church, the meetings of the church, the preaching that they participate in, the ordinances of the church, the evangelism of the church, the prayers of the church, the instruction of the church, the singing of the church.

It's occurring to me, my favorite sound in the whole world is to hear a church sing. It's my favorite sound. I love that sound. You know, just make sure your children grow up hearing that sound of the people gathering together. You know, we like to gather, you know, all the generations together, the old and the young and the rich and the poor and the wise and the foolish and everybody together like that.

That's the body of Christ. And, you know, it can be a challenge, you know, to have little children in the church. You know, sometimes your communion trays might be threatened, you know, things like that. And You might hear some surface noise from time to time. But it's good that the children hear the prayers and they hear the preaching, and they're involved in all of that.

You know, there's a story that I can't get out of my mind, out of our family. You know, we started a family in a great church here 17 years ago. One of the families had a little girl, and they had a bunch of children, and so Deborah held that little girl really pretty much from the time she was born until she was two years old. And she just held her in church and stuff like that. And I think it was a few years ago, she was just turning 13 or something, and I went over to their house And I said, hey, so what did you remember the most from those days when your Aunt Deborah was holding you?

Was it two years, Deborah, or was it two years? She said, oh, she didn't even stop. She didn't even, not, it just, she immediately said, oh, what I remember the most is when we would sing a song that she loved, she would say, mmm, amen. Or if the preacher said something that really moved her heart, She would say, mmm, amen. And then she said to me, I do the same thing today.

And I've heard that sound, for sure. But who knows what children actually get out of being in the worship of God, my view is they get a lot more than you think they do. And so families need church life, and they need to be together in the meetings of the church. Now, they need it for a lot of reasons. They need it for broadening, because the church is filled with all kinds of different people, right?

Different personalities, different philosophies. Everybody comes from somewhere. And sometimes that somewhere can be weird. Your children need to be with weird people. They do.

They need to be with people who are immature. They need to be with people who don't treat them right. They actually need someone to walk by them and not even say hello. They need that. Don't ever despise that.

They need that. They need to understand how to live with real people who maybe are preoccupied or maybe they're just not very nice people. Sometimes you actually jump into, you bump into, you know, not very nice people in the church. It actually happens, you know, and they're not very nice to you. But you need them.

You need them so that you'd grow in grace. Well, remember what the Bible says? A man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. And your children need to have that broadening. They need to be in a place where, you know, Everybody doesn't think the same thing about everything.

Even doctrinally, that they can live with people who have different nuances of doctrine. They can actually live with Christians and find Jesus as their central matter of unity. And they can work through some of their differences and they can talk through them without killing each other. They need the sanctifying opportunities. They need to grow in patience.

They need to understand the beauty of longevity in relationships that we don't just burn down our bridges with one another, that we stick it out with one another. Children need to see that. If you just go from one church to the next because the doctrine isn't just perfect, or somebody offended you or something like that, you know, it's not going to be very good for your children. You're actually raising really uptight children that just have to have everything perfect. And guess what?

This world isn't perfect. So God gives families churches so that they can experience imperfection. And so it's critical to state that families need church life. And let's next talk about family worship. This is a particular element of family life.

We just want to encourage you to make your family a place where the Word of God is read and where you pray. You know, we meet on Monday mornings as men to discuss the passage of Scripture that we're going to preach on. We really, you know what, we're very jealous. We want every man who can possibly be there. We want them to study that passage.

We want them to think about it and bring the atmosphere of that passage into their home during the week and talk about it. And then when they come and on Sunday morning those children have already heard the words. They've had some kind of review of it, and it'll go deeper, it'll be better for them. The Word of God will be better understood the more it's repeated. We were just talking a few minutes ago about how often we need God to repeat things to us.

You know, we were talking about, I was talking about the sovereignty of God, how many times I just need to come back to the fact that a man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. I don't know how many times I had to come back to that. You know, Deborah doesn't even know how many times she's had to bring me back to that. But you know, we need that repetition, and so we want you to repeat the word of God in your families. Let's talk about marriage and the impact of a marriage in a church.

Marriage is really this fundamental relationship from which everything else in the world flows. All of society flows out of a marriage. And we just want to encourage you husbands and wives to love one another the way that God has designed. You know, the Bible says, husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word. He wants wives to trust their husbands and to follow them.

And he says, you know, wives submit to your own husbands, ask to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, has also Christ as the head of the church. You know, that husbands honor their wives, like Peter said in 1 Peter 3, that wives help their husbands and follow them. Every imperfect man needs a wife who will follow him. And God has created that marriage relationship.

Is it possible if you know, children often reflect the kind of love that they see with their father and their mother. It's such a formational relationship. Are you loving each other? And are your children learning how to love because of the way you love each other? So marriage, let's talk about fatherhood.

The impact of fatherhood in church life is massive. What fathers do with their time, what fathers do with the intellectual pursuits of their family and the things that they do in their family life has enormous impact. You know, I've been preaching about fatherhood for many, many years. I've been preaching through the passages of Scripture that address it, and I'm convinced more and more that a father—that everything that the Bible says a father should do, Jesus did. Jesus fulfills every fatherhood command.

If you want to be a father like Jesus, then look at Jesus and obey the commands of God for fathers. Let's talk about motherhood. We live in a world that hates motherhood, that we live in a world that wants to take mothers and lock them up in cubicles, and We're saying that mothers should be keepers at home, and they should raise their children. The churches that we're connected with around the United States, there are about 500 of them. In almost all these churches, And it might be all these churches actually, because I haven't really found any contradiction to this.

In these churches, the mothers are at home. They're raising their children. I praise God for that. I praise God for that. And they're giving the best years of their lives.

You know, being a mother is really hard, you know, it's easy for me to say, isn't it? But I have a special compassion for mothers with children, especially a lot of children. My heart really goes out to them. They go through the day and they wonder, did I get anything done? You know?

And I just want to say, you know, the kingdom of heaven operates in every moment of your life. It's that moment of life where you glorify God when your three-year-old just threw up. You're glorifying God when you take care of that child. And then a moment later, number two son waxed number three daughter on the head. And you go to that, and you help them glorify God there.

And you get to the end of the day and you say, did I get anything done today? There are the laundries sitting there. But the truth is you were glorifying God all day long. In every moment, your heart was there. But you look around and you say, man, I'm exhausted.

How am I going to even get through another day? And I see young mothers. My heart really goes out to them. And I'm pretty confident their only hope is that in each moment of the day, they say, Lord Jesus Christ, show me your glory so I can show it to my children. And all these 500 things that happen every day, they seem like distractions, but they're not.

They're appointments for the glory of God. So motherhood is so critical. And then family discipleship. This really speaks to the matter of biblical discipline in the home, teaching children to honor and obey their parents, you know, finding ourselves being shaped by the Word of God the way we raise their children, raise our children in terms of building a culture of honor and obedience in our homes. It's critical that you do that.

If Children cannot learn to honor and obey. It will not go well with them. You must secure that while they're in your home. You must secure it. It won't go well with them.

The consequences are gigantic. And so, you know, The use of the rod, the use of proper correction, the use of the various means that God has given is really important. Make sure you really understand those. In our church, over the years we've done a child raising conference, you know, regularly. We did it yearly for a while.

I think it's been a couple years since we've done one. But learning how to raise your children and the training and admonition of the Lord is really important. You know, your children are only with you for a short time, And then all of a sudden, you know, they're grandchildren, and your children are gone. What did you leave behind? The only thing you really leave behind are your convictions in your children's hearts.

It's the only thing of value, your convictions for the glory of God that's in Jesus Christ. So family discipleship is really critical. Consistent discipline, confronting sin, and bringing reconciliation. Those are the critical matters in raising children. And then finally, you know, family affections.

You know, I've said this in different ways throughout this time here, but it's really important that you create your family's affections toward the local church and that you would engage your families in church life and make it the biggest thing in your life. My advice to parents is singular and it's the same to every parent and it's this. Fit your life around the life of the church and if you have time for other stuff, then do that. But prioritize the local church. Prioritize preaching.

Prioritize prayer. Prioritize the study of the Word of God. You know, prioritize the things that God has called the church to do. And then if you have time for anything else, awesome. But don't de-prioritize the church.

Make it the thing that you do first and then fit the rest of your life around it. So, so life, family life inside and outside the church, I pray that we would really join hands as a church to perpetuate biblical family life and biblical church life, that we would take our cues not from the world but from the Word of God, and that we would be a people who are distinct because we listen to God and to God alone. So there you have it. Three propositions. Number two, the complementary roles of church and family.

Number three, the reality that families need church life. Number four, the importance of family worship. Number five, the importance of marriage. Number six, the importance of biblical fatherhood, number seven, the importance of motherhood, number eight, family discipleship, and nine, family affections. I pray that God would work all these things through our church life.

God glorifies himself through a unique people that live differently. They live according to the word of God, And as a result, God blesses them. And so I pray that God would, we would find all of God's blessings that He's actually promised for those that would follow Him. So let's pray. Lord, We thank you for giving us instructions.

We thank you that you have placed us in these institutions that are designed to sanctify us, to help us. Lord, we thank you that you created a family, And then you created the church as a family. And we're so thankful that in your house are many dwelling places for all of these families of the earth. Lord, that you have made your people a family. And we pray now that you would glorify yourself through this family life in the home and family life in the church.

In Jesus' name, amen.