God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, modeling an inherent principle of work and rest that we’re to follow (Exod. 20:8-11). The family economy is an important context in which such work, rest, and discipleship is to occur—a theme Kevin Swanson will explore in this message. His focus: While the family economy has been greatly undermined since the Industrial Revolution, it can be primed to flourish by returning to God’s Word. 

And by the grace of God, the Holy Spirit shows up and does the work. Amen? That's the way it works. I'm so thankful to be able to minister with my brother, Scott Brown, around the world. It's been a blessing being in ministry together over these many, many years.

We are living in perilous times. I think that's obvious to us all. The world is shaking. But what I'd like to say is whatever happens in the future, as we face the judgments of God upon the nations, as God shakes the world so that that which cannot be shaken may remain, Whatever happens in the future, stay on mission. Stay on mission.

What is that? The mission Jesus gave to us. We disciple the nations. We stay on it. We do it in our homes.

We disciple our children as we sit in the house, as we walk by the way, as we rise up, as we lie down. So, amen to what we're doing this weekend, amen, Scott. We want to continue to do this work, have more children. Marriages for our children, plant the gardens, seek the peace of the city, and preserve the worship of God. Amen.

That's what we are going to do. Amen? I need more than just this guy. But the one thing I was going to say is that, I don't know if Scott's still here, but Scott, the one thing that we don't do well is plant gardens in our family. We don't get much.

We try strawberries every year. We've gotten six strawberries over about six years. We do have a rhubarb plant that yields every year. We don't do anything. It just shows up every year.

So if we can live on rhubarb, we're okay. But yes, plant the gardens, seek the peace of the city, raise your children, have children, preserve the worship of God. And so, plant the gardens in the ashes. Yes, we plant the gardens in Babylon, but we're also planting gardens in the ashes. And somebody told me that actually you yield better crops sometimes if you can plant gardens in the ashes of what used to be Western civilization.

And here's the other caveat that I want to share with you this morning, is that is Babylon's not doing well. Babylon's not doing well. What are we talking about as we think of Babylon? What is Babylon? Babylon is the world.

And the world is what? It's not necessarily the world of beagles and civil governments and marriage and these sorts of things. Babylon is the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And so as much as the world that we see out there is the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, that's Babylon. But here's the good news.

The world passes away with the lust thereof, But he who does the will of the Father abides forever." So we see this passing away, this judgment that comes down upon Babylon successively throughout the ages, whether that be the old decrepit Rome or whether that be the old decrepit Roman Empire or whatever it was, but successively we see this happening and we're seeing it happening in our world today. That's why I wrote the book Epoch, The Rise and Fall of the West, because we are living, I think, in the most significant time since 84-76 in the fall of Rome. So we're seeing the breakdown of everything, the socio-economic systems, the cultural systems. All of these things are coming apart at the seams. 2011 was an interesting year because it was the year that 80 million baby boomers started to retire.

It's also the year in which the Social Security Fund went into the red for the first time. And now we're looking at a virtual bankruptcy in the next 10 years or so, but don't worry about it. The government's, the federal government's in good shape, except for the fact that they're in a hundred trillion dollars of debt. And well sadly what happened was we have a worker to retire ratio that will be one-third of what it was 40 years ago because the 80 million baby boomers killed 80 million babies and imploded the birth rate. So that wasn't a good idea either.

So what we're seeing is that the world cannot sustain, It won't sustain. What's out there is not going to work. The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money. So we know these things. So Babylon is not doing well at all.

The nuclear family has been nuked, and I think we all know that. The indices are ten times worse than they were in the 1960s and 70s. Divorce, feminism, the dry rot of feminism has just destroyed marriage. It's destroying the family. It's effectively the zeitgeist of the year, of the age in which the universities, our entire media, even the conservative media, the entire economic system, the whole political system is all wrapped up in feminism, and now men are disenfranchised.

There's some good news involved there. Men are coming back to church for the very first time. But as we think about these things, what's going on in the breakdown of family? And there's not a single church not affected by these things, the divorce rates, the pornography issue as well, the abortion issue, abortifacients, the IUD, which is killing as many as 12 to 14 million babies a year. Forget about surgical abortions, taking away 500, 000.

Think about all the pills and all the day after pills and the IUDs and all these other means that are killing another 14 million babies a year, not counted for by most of our denominations. But what is all of this? Well, it is, I believe, the world. This is the world. This is the worldly influence that has so destroyed the family, destroyed sexuality, destroyed our social systems, undermined our entire civilization.

We can't continue without this. Over a thousand years we built out a Christian foundation upon which the Western world was established, but now over the last hundred years we're standing in a building a hundred stories high, and we're taking a wrecking ball and ruining the foundations of the building. Now what happens, of course, the building comes down, and every child in this room should understand that if you stand inside of a building, take a wrecking ball to the foundations, the building will fall down upon you. And that's exactly what's going on with destroying the foundations and the building itself, and that's happening in the entire Western world today. So this is where we're headed, but what is it?

What is the fundamental sin that we are dealing with as we consider divorce, feminism, abortion, pornography, etc., etc. And the answer is the idol of self. It's the worship of self. The worship of self has been so institutionalized, unlike any other time that I know of in all of human history, it's institutionalized. It's allowed.

It's encouraged. It's given as much leash as possible by our institutions today. That's why the funding of abortion, that's why the funding of the IUD without the copay via Obamacare. Completely obliterating the possibility of somebody giving up their lives for children. And of course pornography is the ultimate selfish expression, the ultimate crawling within oneself and dying sexually, and that is affecting about 80 percent of our young men, including many in the church as well.

The church isn't dealing with that. That's a huge, huge problem. But all of this destruction comes about by the worship of self, the worship of man, which has been institutionalized by our institutions today. You think about how much government funding has gone into the encouragement of the worship of man through the universities, the educational programs, and all the rest. It's not a God-centered educational program out there.

It's man-centered. We all know that. It's against the law. According to the dictate of the Supreme Court of the United States, as of 1964, the year I was born, that prayer is disallowed, worship of God is disallowed, no acknowledgement of the glory of God and the worthiness of our God for worship in the science classroom, that's been obliterated from our world today. And of course it's not just the trillions of trillions of dollars that have been put into government-sponsored transgenderism, government-sponsored humanism, evolution, abortion, abortifacients without the copay, et cetera.

There's trillions of dollars. You've got to understand the force of what is transforming our world today. It's incredibly powerful, but it's also pop media. I think even more powerful than the trillions of dollars influencing our children today. My wife commented on this just on the way out here.

She just said sort of offhand, isn't it incredible how powerful The world is in our families, in our churches, influencing, influencing, pressing in with a hundred megatons of force upon the minds and the hearts of our children, our peoples today. It's almost impossible to stand up against the sheer size and the power of these giants in the land. Have you seen the giants in the land? Have you come into contact with the giant of pornography? I mean the force that these forms of sexual temptation have upon a young man, the force of abortive patience.

Evangelical birth rate is about 1.8 according to Christianity today. It's about 1.8, just a notch ahead of the world at 1.7. So obviously, we're obviously seeing that the force of the world, the Margaret Sanger worldview has incredible power on the minds and the hearts of guys attending seminary, pastors, the evangelical church at large, the Reformed church at large, think about the force of these powers that weigh upon the church of Jesus Christ in the present day, the force of Disney, the force of self of the devil. Carlton, you're right. Wherever you are, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principles and powers.

I mean, just think about not just the institutionalization of transgender in the bathrooms and kindergartens around America, but think about how quickly a large percentage of Americans embraced homosexual mirage, and how quickly they embraced transgender. It seems odd to me that, you know, it probably was six years, eight years. How does that happen? It's not just Lady Gaga. It's not just Taylor Swift.

It's not just the Supreme Court in the United States and the trillions of dollars the Biden administration puts into it. Friends, it's more than that. It's got to be what Carlton said. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principles, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age. There's something demonic, there's something big.

There's something forceful, there's something huge, something bigger than us that is against us. It's got to be something bigger. But I want to introduce you to God today, God's Word. Just a simple word here this morning. Exodus 20 verse 2, here it is.

As we face these giants in the land, these powers, God steps in, what does He say? Exodus 20, on Sinai, in the midst of the fire, the earthquake, the mountains, rocks splitting all over the place. What does God say? Listen, listen, Exodus 20 verse 2, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Praise God.

He's here and He's come to set the captives free. He's come to break the chains of bondage. You realize how forceful that pornography, that self-centered abortifacient, got to have my abortifacients in order to avoid putting my life on the altar for five children, or whatever it might be. Can you imagine the force of the self-idol? People fall down in front of that idol, they worship it.

They serve it with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength. They worship the self-god, the self-god. But God has come to set us free from that idolatry, that powerful, powerful force of the world of flesh and the devil, what does he say? He says, I am the Lord your God, and I am the one who's delivered you out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage. I did it.

I brought you out of here. And I give this to you again, Isaiah 35. I mean, these are simple verses. I just want you this morning to get these verses down. Just this.

That's it. Make it simple this morning. Isaiah 35, 4, behold your God. Behold your God. He will come with a vengeance and he will come and save you.

I don't think there's any other hope. I know there's no hope. There's no hope in anything out there or anywhere else, but that God must come down here. God has gotta rend the heavens. God has gotta do it.

God is gonna have to save us. There's no other solution, my friends. He has come down. You're facing the earthquakes, the disasters, the devastation all around you. Perhaps you're on the edge of committing suicide as the Philippian jailer.

What's the word? The word is this, Acts 16 31. What are we going to do for ourselves? What are we going to do for our families? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and your family and your family.

All that we want ourselves saved, we want our children saved, we want our family saved. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved and your family. Understand the monumental challenge we're up against my friends restoring faith in a faithless age. The churches are so broken down. Can you see it?

It's hardly one stone upon another. We can pretend to have decent theology and act as if somehow we like a heritage of the Puritans 500 years ago, but This is now. We need a reviving now. We need a reforming now. We need our churches alive now.

We need to restore faith, generational faith. There's too much of our children abandoning the faith. 20%, 30%, 40%, 60%, 80%. I asked a group out in the area of Portugal last week, how many of our children do we want to lose? I have five, is 20% too much?

Yeah, I don't want to lose any of them. This is a challenge for us. This is our heart. This is our passion. This is what we desire.

We want our children in the faith, restored to the faith. These are the things, these are monumental challenges to restore marriage. If you know what it looks like to have a broken down marriage or overcoming pornography or overcoming anger issues, bitterness, the things that destroy marriage and overcoming the problems of relationships in the home and restoring the father-daughter relationship such that we can trust each other in courtship. How in the world are we going to do this? These are monumental challenges beyond anything you could ever imagine.

It's impossible, but that God would come down and save us from this present evil age. This present evil age. We need salvation. We need to be saved from this present evil age. As much as they did in the first century, absolutely selfish husbands who can't love their wives as Christ loved the church, proud feminists who are raised in a proud feminism out in the universities and yet they must come to the point at which they will lovingly submit to their husbands in the Lord.

I mean you understand the miracles we're talking about here? Do you understand what we're after? We want a miracle. We need God to rend the heavens. Come down, do His work, save us from this untoward generation.

And that God would release us from the bondage of worshipping ourselves, serving Satan, and conforming to this world. So much bondage, so much bondage. Brothers and sisters, they kiss the chains that bind them. Bondage to sin, bondage to self, just worshiping and serving self. You understand what it takes to break that?

God must do it. Jesus comes, He says, if the Son will make you free, you will be free indeed. Thinking of the layers upon layers upon layers of bondage with which man is confined in sin and slavery to sin. That hallelujah, if the Son will make us free, we will be free indeed. Hallelujah.

He will do it and He will save us to the uttermost as we come to Him by faith. We have to start here. My friends, we can't go on unless we get through the first verse. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of land of Egypt out of the house of bondage. You've got to believe that first.

You've got to know that God has come to save His people from the bondage such that we can just say, my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee. Just to experience that, to know it, and perhaps even to experience it again and again and to see the chains falling cracking disappearing from your arms and legs and enabling you to praise to worship to dance to run to praise God in the temple grounds. Hallelujah, amen. Amen and amen. So as God has set us free, as we have been delivered from the house of bondage now, Friends, what do we do?

Well, we're now free from sin and therefore we keep His commandments. So again, we've got to make it through the second verse. We can't go on to the other verses in this passage until we are sure that we have been set free by the grace of God, by the work of Jesus Christ at Calvary. And then we're on to obeying His commandments. And so we're going to look at the fourth commandment.

I'll say the fourth and fifth commandments, our family commandments, teaches honor, rest, work, these very important commands, but please understand the fourth commandment begins with remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days, Thou shalt labor, work and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work. Thou nor the son nor thy daughter, nor thy maidservant nor manservant." Okay, so it begins with that word, You shall work six days. You in the male singular. So this begins with a father. This is a command to a father who is overseeing his home, who has a responsibility to be sure that his children are working and resting.

This is where it begins. So I want to address the fathers and mothers, I believe that mothers as well, but primarily fathers are responsible for directing their household in the day-to-day exercise that God intends for His people. So we begin with this. Now, in the big picture, I want to ask this question, what kind of family does God call you to be? What kind of family does God call you to be?

That's the question I really want to focus in on this morning. I'll get to a little family economy, some other things, but I want to look at the big picture. And let me say this, that the kind of family they're going to be, the kind of person you're going to be, has everything to do with your heart and what you love, that you love God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That you begin with love, that your loves will direct your priorities. They will set your values, direct your priorities, and then eventually that will work out in the daily schedule.

So it has to begin with Deuteronomy 6 verses 4 through 7. Now oftentimes we cut straight to Deuteronomy 6, 7, and we begin with, you need to teach your children God's word as you sit in the house, as you walk by the way, as you rise up, as you lie down. But there's so many that won't do that. There is an obligation here that in our work, in our day-to-day work and the rest, that we are integrating the discipleship of our children into the Word of God. It's an integrated kind of thing.

We do it throughout the day. Now, again, a family-based discipleship program is family-integrated. It's parent-integrated. It's word-integrated. It's life-integrated.

It's integrated like that, much different than what we see in the world where there's so much segregation of Sunday teaching for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and so much segregation of parents from the process, et cetera, et cetera. But if we're like really serious about this, what does God's Word have to say about our daily life and raising children, what we find, it's got to be parent integrated, and it's got to be daily integrated. It's got to be life integrated. It's got to be word integrated day by day as we do this work. But so many do not do this.

And it comes to my mind that George Barna did something of a study on this. We asked him this in a leadership meeting a number of years ago. He attended a homeschool leadership meeting and we asked him, does anybody do family worship among Christian households in America? And George Barnum responded, we've studied that and we found that only one in 20 or 5% of American born again parents will teach their children or have ever tried doing family worship at all. Only 1 in 20, only 5%.

And you ask yourself, why is this? And I believe the reason is really couched in verse 4 of Deuteronomy chapter 6 because we have to begin in verse 4. And that's where God instructs us to love Him, that we are to love Him with our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That our love for God is so evident in our lives that it manifests itself in the quintessential application of applying God's Word, teaching God's Word to our children, applying it, integrating it into every aspect of our children's raising. And so again, it begins with the love of God.

And when you come down to it, you have to say there's a reason why There isn't any passion for family worship or to teach the Word of God. It has to be that American moms and dads who are born again don't love God. And the reason they don't love God, I believe, is because they don't know the love of God for them. Because if they knew the love of God, if they knew that God sent his only begotten son to the cross, and they really knew that, they've heard of it perhaps, but I mean they knew it, they believed it, that indeed God sent the son whom he loved, his only son, the son whom he loved, to the cross. At some point you would think that they would understand that and they would understand the love of God.

They would understand that God loves me, that God loves you man, that God has given his Son for you, and he gave up the ultimate gift for you. That's how much He loved you. God so loves you. Yes, God so loves the world, but God so loves you that He gave up His eternally beloved Son for you. How many of us would give up our Son on a cross to be crucified, cruelly maligned and tormented, tortured, and then to suffer the wrath of God.

How many of us would do that with our own son? God did it for us. It's God's love manifested for us, the ultimate manifestation of God's love for us, giving us son up as a propitiation for our sins. So again, the magnitude of the love of God for us should overwhelm us to the point that we just respond in love for God. And then we love God so much We teach our children who we love about the God we love and it's just a passion.

It's an everyday thing. It doesn't result from Pastor Beeke and Pastor Swanson up here going, you better be doing it. Shame on you if you're not. No, no, no. Brothers, sisters, God loves you.

You love God. You want to talk about the God you love. You talk about the things you love, don't you? Got something you love, you're gonna talk about the things you love. You're gonna love God.

You're gonna talk about God as you sit in your house, as you walk by the way, as you rise up, as you lie down. So again, I want to back off again and say what kind of a family, what's the vision here? Without a vision the people perish. Yeah, we know this, but what is the vision? Be a visionary dad.

What does that mean? It just means have a reason for the things you're doing. What's important about you? What are your values? Your priorities?

Has everything to do with what you love, as I said. So what is it? What's the big thing about your life? What's the big thing for your family? What is it?

What kind of family do we want to be? Do we want to be a proud academic family? A really smart family? By the way, all this will drive your curriculum. It will drive the kind of school you send your kids to.

It will drive everything. So what is it? You want to be smart? Want to be smarter than everybody else? Want to be a proud academic?

Is that the goal? Proud academic kids, that's what I want. You want to be a hardworking, successful family. Is that it? What's the vision here?

Brothers, sisters, what are we after? You want to be a hardworking family? You want to be a hardplaying family, a fun family, focused on leisure and entertaining yourselves to death? You know, it's all about the next vacation. Is this what we're all about?

Is that what you're all about? Or are we God loving, God worshiping families? God worshiping families. Is that the pinnacle, is that the focal point of our lives? Is that what we're after more than anything else?

When we're on our deathbed or when our kids gather for our funeral, we get to hear our children say, one thing I know about Dad, he loved God. He loved Jesus. And he talked of Jesus. He gave his life up for Jesus, his life was on the sacrament, on the altar for Jesus. Is that what your children are going to say?

My dad loved worship. Man, he'd show up to church on time. No, no, ten minutes before he wanted to get a good seat. Is that what you are all about? Is it about loving God, worshiping God, being grateful to God?

Is that it, my friends? You have 110 waking hours, roughly 110 waking hours every week. So again, priorities. What is it? What are we doing?

Our loves, our priorities will drive our schedule. So what's the balance here? And I want you to think carefully as parents, what do we do? How much rest? How much work?

The Bible gives you a one to seven ratio, no question about it. Fourth commandment, it's right there. But think in terms of other things. Work versus entertainment. Reading versus TV.

A lot of homeschooling parents, I just want kids that just read and they'll read everything. They'll read fiction, fantasy, but just constantly like bookwormy. And that's so much better than fantasy on television or YouTubes or something like that. What's the balance between reading and TV or fiction or nonfiction, the books or just reading the books, hitting the books or doing the productive labor in any given day? Is it six days thou shalt engage in schoolwork?

Is it an academic focus? Is that really the focus? Is that the thing that matters more than anything else? Or is there a balance here? Or the entertainment versus worship?

I mean, you give an obvious example. How many of you are okay with giving your children a 98% diet of candy? You're probably thinking that's just not good for them, right? And I'm guessing most parents would say, we don't allow that. We don't allow that in our home.

Our children want it, but we don't give it to them, right? So we make choices relating to the physical situation. What about their spiritual situation? What is the balance? Are you as caring about their spiritual condition as you are their physical condition?

You're gonna give them lots of fantasy, lots of television, lots of escapism, kind of entertaining literature, et cetera, et cetera? Is this the kind of life that you want your children to live? What's the balance? I just encourage parents to be thoughtful and prayerful and intentional. I mean, at the very least, would you please ask yourselves as husband's wives tonight or this weekend, the question, what are our values and what do we wanna do?

What is the balance? Let's work the percentages. I mean, let's at least think through this. Don't just allow things to happen in your family accidentally. They just kinda grow up according to the way the culture or the way the local classical school does it or whatever.

No, no. You need to be sure that you are making those decisions for yourselves. Give your children 20 minutes of worship, you say we're going to watch a movie after family worship, two, three hours, and you give them that ratio, two, three hours of entertainment versus 20 minutes of family worship. What do you think they're going to be wanting to do? They're going to be, you know, we hardly wait till family worship is over because we get to watch a movie, right?

I mean, you begin to nurture their tastes in that context. But let me also just summarize this with a focal point, you know, what are we looking towards? What is the main pinnacle activity in the day, in the week? In the week, it's got to be the family gathering for church worship on the Sabbath day. It's got to be.

That's the pinnacle, that's where we're headed. That's where we're planning on that on a Saturday. We're praying about it Friday night and Saturday night that the Holy Spirit would be here and we would respond and worship and praise and true heartfelt love for God and thanksgiving to God on a Sunday morning. That's the pinnacle of the week. That's where we're going.

I can hardly wait to get there. Focal point for the day is that 30 to 60 minutes in family worship. Together we get to praise God. We get to read His Word. We need to be praying together as a family, singing hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs together.

But all of this means that if we are a God-loving, God-worshipping family that glorify God and enjoys Him forever. And that's what we're talking about, that our lives are about glorifying God, enjoying God. That's what we're so excited, that's what gets us going. That's our focal point in life. We are overwhelmed by God, by the awesomeness of God.

We study to learn more of God's providential sovereign works in history and God's amazing providential works in creation and his sustenance of his creation. And we see our eyes open to the power of God and the glory of God and the wisdom of God and the amazing goodness of God. We open our eyes and we begin to penetrate into the world and we see in science and history and business life the goodness of God in providing for us. And that's the thing, that's the key issue we want to see and testify of the wonderful works of God, and respond in gratefulness such that we are overwhelmed by His goodness, overwhelmed by God, overwhelmed in the sense of awesomeness of God's great works that we see all around us, what He's done in the past and what He is doing today and what he will do tomorrow. That's the thing that I think needs to govern us and control us, is that we are stunned, we're taken back, we're blown away by how good God has been to send his only begotten son to save us.

How good God is to send his kingdom work around the world in the transformation of peoples and tribes and nations all over the world and to read of these great things we give it in our curriculum. It just it sends the chills up and down my back to read what God is doing to bring down the strongholds that introduce His gospel into Europe and Asia and Africa. We need to know all the stories by heart. There's hundreds of stories, thousands of stories to see how The Church of Jesus Christ is spread around the world over 2, 000 years. And we're overwhelmed by how God has been so good to us, to me, to my family.

I still look at my family, yes, we've been through incredible trials, but I see my children, they love God. They're all there in church, even though they're grown up, and some of them are married and all the rest, but they're still there, and they're raising their hands in the worship of God. And I see their love for Jesus. I think to myself, I don't deserve any of this. I look at them and say, I didn't do that.

I've done a lot of things. I yelled at them a few times for sure. I disciplined them in the wrong attitude a number of times, but I know one thing, I didn't do that. What I'm seeing in them right now. That's so beautiful Praise God for this so our lives overwhelmed by a sense of God's goodness to me to us and then and then overwhelmed by a sense of Expectation for what God is going to do in the future for us because we know that eye has not seen nor ear heard nor has it entered into my mind the things that God has prepared for me as I trust and wait upon him somebody else say amen amen so whatever it is our children see us overwhelmed by God's goodness and graciousness in our lives.

Let's get back to the verse. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son nor your daughter, nor a man servant nor a maid servant, nor your ox nor your donkey, nor the stranger that is within your gates visiting your home on that day." So I don't have much time left. You got to be kidding me. That clock is way too big.

That's like six feet. Remember Australia? Okay, never mind. It's the clocks that throw me off. But brothers and sisters, the family is involved in an economy.

The family is to work together. The family is to be reintegrated. And this is our first point. We've got to reintegrate Family life we have to Now yes, it's been our institutions Just give you one example Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto the most important document of the 20 19th century 20th century 21st century He wrote these words abolish the family. That's the commitment of Marxism, socialism.

Abolish the family. And right in the center of the Communist Manifesto are these words, replace home education with social. So that's the heart of communism. The very heart of communism is to destroy the family, yes, and to be sure that the individual sees himself belonging to the socialist state by way of compulsory attendance laws, by way of institutionalized status education, by way of state controlled everything in their lives. That's the goal of modern humanistic socialism all the way back to Platonic ethics.

But no, no, no, the Christian has a different social system in which we believe the family is absolutely relevant, absolutely important. You destroy it, you destroy humanity. Don't do that. So the first thing is, yes, we have to see the family as a unit. And the Bible presents the family that way.

The household is saved together, Noah. The household is judged together, Achan. The household is sometimes joins the church together. The household works together. The household is dedicated to the service of the church, as in the case of the household of Narcissus and Stephanus in the New Testament.

The household is integrated. And we live in such an individualized age, in which we have been individualized, in order that we be separated from each other to be incorporated into the state and that's the socialist theory that is destroying us it's destroying our families it's destroying our churches and we've got to find a way to come back to a biblical theology of the family. Gotta do it. Household integration, absolutely essential. And the family economy is basic.

It's the most basic economic unit. The word economy comes from oikonomia, which is oikos, family, nomia is law. Economics is the law, the vision of the family, the basic economic unit. It's not the individual, the basic economic units, not the individual, it is the family. And the heart of that wife, her husband, safely trusts in her so that he shall have no need to spoil.

It doesn't say the heart of her corporate boss safely trusts in her so that he shall have no need to spoil. It doesn't say the heart of her corporate boss safely trusts in her so that he shall have no need to spoil. It doesn't say the heart of the corporate structures in the government hospital bureaucracy trusts in her so that they shall have no need to spoil. What does it say? Proverbs 31 give us.

Will we trust the wisdom of God over the socialism and the anti-family economy world view of the day? Who are you gonna trust on this? The husband, the wife, They are an economic team. She is a helper for her husband in the economic task. These are the basics.

The axe head on the axe handle, we use this all the time. In fact, I disciple young men. I've been doing this for about 20 years. I've discipled about 34 young men. One of the things I've learned is that these young men will trip all over themselves and they're not very impressive until they get married and something happens.

I mean something, have you ever seen this brother? Something happens. They get married. Suddenly they're the most functional, amazing, emotionally stabilized, focused, visionary men you've ever seen in your life. I've seen this so many times, it's kind of neat, and that's one reason why, amen to Scott Brown, get married, be prepared, and then get married.

Be prepared, critical, then get married. But it's amazing. How many trees can you cut down with an axe head? Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding. How long will it take me to cut down a tree with an axe head?

About a year. How about with an axe handle? Take the axe handle to that tree. Just bang on that tree as hard as you can for like 10 years. Put the head on the handle.

Get married. Does that make sense? I need a few amen's from the young men. Not you. You're already married, brother.

So brothers and sisters, we're pretty much out of time, but The family economy is so important. And do something, do everything. We have family economics conferences, 50 talks on the MP3 we've been talking about this weekend. We did about six or seven, one out here. But so many ideas.

We do hospitality ministries, a candleinthewindo.com has been beautiful. So many opportunities with a candle in the window dot com. We've had as many as a thousand folks into our home in any given year. Our son Daniel's been doing ministry in an elderly home for the last seven years. Every Sunday morning at 9 a.m.

Now they're even members of our church, they're taking communion with our church, but in a different location. Just amazing things, just all part of our family economy. Breeding dogs, they spend a thousand to $2, 000 per dog out there, you might as well get involved in some of that business. Amen somebody? So many other ideas for this.

And taking care of our parents in their old age. Don't turn it over to the state. We had a great opportunity to do this. By the way, I signed off Social Security myself as a pastor many years ago. Don't really need it.

I have five Social Security programs, and they're all willing to take care of us in our old age. And so let's just get rid of the Socialist system. Amen? How many of you love the Socialist system? I just love the government.

They take good care of me and will from womb to tomb. And euthanasia will not happen. They've only aborted 80 million babies. The elderly will be totally safe in the year 2045. Is that what you're thinking?

Is that what you're thinking? No, no, abandon the state and the socialist systems. Let's bring this back into our home. We had a great opportunity. Brenda's mother came down with a terrible stroke and she was bedridden.

She could not speak. She couldn't really think very well. She was just laying there. She had a trach. She had a feeding tube.

She had it all. And her insurance money ran out. And the state says, hey, we'll take care of her for $270, 000 a year. She was out in Las Vegas. But they weren't turning her every four hours.

So we were thinking, $270, 000 for bed sores, that's expensive for bed sores. So we said, forget the state. We don't need the state. And we went to Las Vegas and big motorhome brought her over the mountains in the middle of winter And put her into one of our rooms and our daughters took a four six hour shifts 24 hours seven days a week Until she died his most beautiful thing what an opportunity talk to my wife about it It's just that one of the greatest experiences in her life. We don't need the state, and yes, 724 care, we can do this.

That's what I'm saying. Bring the family economy back into relevance in the 21st century, and we do it because we're not selfish. We have abandoned the self-idol. Amen? Who wants the self-idol?

Jesus has cleansed us from it. He set the captives free from this and we are free We are free indeed to serve to love and to reintegrate the family in the 21st century I've so much more I was gonna say I was gonna talk about family culture and family rest. I don't have time, but Scott's going to talk about rest in a little bit, so stay tuned for that. But culture is a major impediment. We need family culture.

That's one reason why I wrote The Tattoo Jesus, very important book, I think, for culture, and to reincorporate not pop culture, but a family-based biblical culture in your home. It's called The Tattoo Jesus. And as far as some of the books that we have, just throw these up. We have that MP3 series. I encourage you to grab a hold of that, 50 talks, 50 hours on family economy just to find ways in which you can bring family economy back in the 21st century.

We've done a ton of conferences on that, none in the last six years or so. And then how the world runs is basic economy for your 14-year-olds. It's the whole economic, a whole chapter on family economy, but there's everything on quantitative easing, everything the government does wrong. We have a big list of it, but everything that they can do right. About 90% of it is micro economy, very practical stuff, mentorship, how to be a good employee in the workplace like Joseph, how to get your first job, how to pay off your first house by 26 years of age, et cetera, et cetera, very, very practical.

In fact, if I was gonna do only one book for high school, I just didn't have time for anything else, I would just do this. I would just do this book and skip math. Some of your kids are going, amen. Oh man, that's so good. Dad, get that book.

Okay, and then there's family life, which basically covers the gamut of these topics we've been talking about at the conference. We have a deal if you want any of this. And also the Book of Proverbs, as I see it, is core, core, core curriculum for your children. If you're on a desert island or you're just shipwrecked and you gotta grab some kind of curriculum and this is all you can grab, if you give them the Book of Proverbs, things will turn out right in the next 20, 30 years for them. Just God's wisdom, amen, God's wisdom is pretty much the best stuff.

Let's start there. You know, every one of our homeschools or whatever you're doing in the education of your children, thank you very much. God bless you all. Let's just pray for a moment. Father, we thank You.

We thank You so much for Jesus who sets the captives free. Thank You, Jesus, for Your amazing salvation. Thank You for splitting that Red Sea, dividing the oceans, and delivering Your people from those powerful force on planet earth. And God, you've done that again, but in a thousand times more effective and powerful way through the death and the resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ, we embrace Jesus. Jesus save us, we pray today, and save our families, and save our families.

In Jesus name, amen.