The sermon explores the first five chapters of the book 'The Family at Church' and focuses on the role of parents as tour guides for their families. It highlights the importance of parents in shaping their children's first thoughts and the need for parents to take their role as spiritual tour guides seriously. The sermon emphasizes the value of the local church in training children and the symbiotic relationship between the family and the church. It emphasizes the significance of establishing sound doctrine in the family and the role of parents in preparing future elders. The sermon concludes by encouraging parents to show their children the treasures of the church and to instill a love for the church in their hearts.

Well, good afternoon, church. I will have to deny Nate's optimism that this will only be 10 minutes. It will probably be, without question, the shortest time I've been up here. Granted, that probably doesn't mean a whole lot considering some of the messages I've given. So, and Scott's just over here, what is wrong with you?

So, as you all know, we're going through this book, The Family at Church, and my task today has been to help us look at and glean from the first five chapters of the book so this is much more in the vein of teaching this afternoon, not preaching, not exegesis, but this is teaching from this book. My goal here is not simply to rehash what you've already read, although repetition is, of course, the mother of memory, so that's good to have it rehearsed to you. But rather to selectively draw out bits and to condense these ideas to help you get a handle on them, to take hold of them, to take them to heart, and hopefully, God willing, cause you to be inspired to live by these principles and live out the conclusions that we see in this book. So with that being said, let's go through these first couple of chapters. Chapter one is titled Tour Guides for Everlasting Joy.

This chapter is the foundation for the whole book. This chapter presents to us the thesis, the mental picture of parents as tour guides for everlasting joy. Now this metaphor guides everything that follows throughout the rest of the book, this picture of parents as tour guides. Now Merriam-Webster defines a tour guide as, quote, a person who takes people on trips through an area and explains the interesting details about it, end quote. This is a helpful, concise definition of a tour guide.

Parents do this for their families. Parents take their children places, literally as on vacation or to church every week, and metaphorically they take them from infancy to maturity. And they explain the details as they go. They explain the details that their children need to learn. Understand this, your children will form their first thoughts about the world, about what the family is, about work, about God, about everything that they encounter.

They will form their first thoughts on everything from the words, actions, and examples of their parents. This is why parents are so key in the lives of their children. Last year, our family went to Williamsburg, Virginia for a couple days. And Andrea and I served as tour guides for our children at Historic Williamsburg. For the most part, the children had little to no idea to expect or to put all this into context.

Everything they were seeing, so much of it was new and unfamiliar and they needed help understanding it and contextualizing it and growing from it. And as best we could, we served as tour guides. We helped to explain to them what they were seeing and why things were the way they were. Sometimes we were able to explain more. We got to the cabinet maker's shop, that was my opportunity to shine.

But there were other parts where, such as in the gardens or the apothecary, that was Andrea's turn to lecture us all about everything. It was marvelous. Other times, we didn't, Andrea and I were at a loss. We weren't familiar, such as when we went to the gunsmith. There we turned to the reenactors.

They are the real tour guides at that place, so to speak, and we turned to them for help in explaining what was going on to our children. We wanted them to have fun in this place, but we also wanted it to be educational. We wanted them to learn. We wanted it to be an opportunity for them to grow and to be educated. And so in the same way, parents must be tour guides spiritually for their children.

They must take this role seriously. Parents are to train their children in godliness and as much as it depends on you, parents, you are to bring your children to God. You cannot regenerate them, no, but you can take the means that God has given you to the best of your ability to cause them to come near to God. Good parents as good tour guides will use every tool in their arsenal to accomplish this great task. And now one of the greatest assets to assist parents in this great goal is the local church.

The local church. It is here in the local church that the gospel is regularly and faithfully proclaimed. Is there in the local church that they will be a part of a larger family, a family of believers to see how the gospel affects other people and how it has changed them, how Christ is at work among his people. It's there that they will learn from their parents how to worship God, how to be reverent, and how to sit under the instruction of his word. And it's there where the parents, in times where they don't know what to do, or they don't know how to train their children, like when Andrea and I were at the Gunsmith in Williamsburg, where they can turn to those who may know better to help them train their children.

The parents in the local church can turn to older saints or they can turn to the elders especially for help in raising and training and educating their children in the faith. So make the most of this opportunity. Understand your role, understand your duty, and make the most of it. The time you have with your children is very short, So make the most of it while you have the opportunity to be those tour guides. That is the essential message of chapter one.

Chapter two, your golden opportunity. This chapter is very short, but it is almost equally as foundational as chapter one. If parents are going to be these kind of tour guides, these effective leaders and educators for the joy for their children, what should be their attitude toward the church? Consider the metaphors that are used in this chapter to describe the church. Quote, your family is sitting on a gold mine that is the local church.

Another quote, a church is like a diamond. And another quote, a local church is a wonderful gift. These descriptions are all intended to show us the value of the gathered local church. These aren't just things that our pastor has come up with out of his mind, just words he just picked and chose for no apparent reason to try and elevate the importance of the church. No, this reflects the Scriptures teaching on the importance of the gathered people of God and how much God values the gathered local church.

To prove this, consider just one statement by the Apostle Paul when he was meeting with the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. He said, the Church of God which he purchased with his own blood. And he's talking about a local church there, not just the universal church. The local church was purchased by God with his own blood. How much more valuable can something be than to be bought with the blood of Christ?

Every local church, not just the Ephesian Church, Hope Baptist Church, purchased with the blood of Christ. So how much ought you to value this church and see every gathering as your golden opportunity to shepherd your children into seeing the glory and beauty of the gospel? So we must take full advantage of this glorious and precious gift that we've been given. Don't squander it with half-hearted and shallow commitments. If we really see the value of the gift that has been given to us in the local church, we will prioritize the church and we will lead our children to love her and prioritize her as well.

Chapter 3, the church needs strong families. The high view of the church presented in the first two chapters does not mean that the church stands alone. The church is not an immovable object unaffected by the world around it or the members in it. Rather, the relationship between the family and the church is in a way symbiotic. They affect one another and are affected by each other.

The relationship of the family and church are intimately interrelated. The church blesses and aids the family, but the family feeds and strengthens the church. At least that's the goal. Richard Baxter quoted in this chapter said, A holy, well-governed family is the preparation to a holy and well-governed church. The two go hand in hand.

The church, as vital as it is, only gathers for a relative handful of hours each week. The rest of the week is going to be dominated by what happens in the family. And so what happens in the church ultimately will reflect what's happening in the family. So the soundness of the church relies on what is happening in the home throughout the week. The family is meant to be a picture of the gospel and of God's relationship to the church.

So the question is, what do your children see in your home? Do they see that picture portrayed? Because what you do at home matters. It matters for your life, for your children's lives. It matters for the life of the church.

And what you do at home will affect what happens in the local church. This chapter ends with what I felt were very helpful points, 11 ways that the family ought to be a nursery for the church, and I want to call attention to two of them, the first and the last one. First, it says, quote, first it ought to be the place where sound doctrine is established, end quote. This is very key for you parents, especially parents with little children or lots of children, which describes most parents here to be honest. Doctrine is not just for the church.

Doctrine is for your family. Doctrine is for you and it is for your children. It is not just for the church, it's not just for your pastors, and it's certainly not just for the academics who write books. Everything you do is shaped by what you believe. And so what you believe matters.

And so you cannot simply live with a shallow doctrine and a shallow understanding of God and what He has done in the world and expect that your children will grow beyond superficial Christianity. Shallow doctrine is passed on to your children and it creates shallow and superficial Christians. And it also creates a superficial and ineffective church. So doctrine matters in the home. The family is where that doctrine really takes root and bears fruit.

And last, the 11th of those points, 11th it says, it ought to be the place where elders are prepared to be qualified. And I felt this was a very fitting bookend for these 11 points of application, as this really parallels and completes the first point where doctrine is established. Good doctrine leads to good practice and mature Christians. And when we think of what an elder's qualifications are in Scripture, really they're not that extravagant in the sense that the qualifications to be an elder are really the marks of a mature Christian man. This is what every mature Christian man ought to look like.

Every parent should have the goal in their mind that they are raising their sons too if God calls them. They're raising their sons to be elders and their daughters to be the potential wives of elders. You're not raising boys and girls, you're raising future men and future women, and by God's grace you may be raising future elders and future elders' wives. Have that in mind. Chapter 4, Love the Church.

If God has made the church for all these purposes that we've looked at and has equipped it to be both fed by the family and to feed and to train the family, how then should we approach it? What should be our thoughts toward the church? In a word we should love the church. The Father called it, the Son died for it, and the Spirit is at work sanctifying it, and so we as part of it ought to love it. The church is the center point of God's great story of redemption, is the centerpiece of history, and it will endure forever, and so we ought to love it and we ought to make it the center of our families and the center of our routines We should not come to church if we have time.

We should determine ahead of time we will go to church and if we have time for other things in the week we will fit those in. But our greatest priority on our schedule should be the local church and the gathering of God's people. Christ loves his church. It is his bride and he has been building it and will continue to build it. He has been building it for 2, 000 years and he has not let it fall yet and he never will.

It will endure forever. And if you've been brought redeemed by his cross and you've been brought into the church you should love it too. You were made for the local church. And again I said the local church. You were made for the local church when we talk about the church It's easy to just have in mind the ethereal or sometimes even theoretical idea of the universal church Now we affirm the existence of the universal church.

All believers have a real spiritual connection to one another because we are Christ's. But it's really easy to love someone on the other side of the world that you'll never meet in this life. It's a lot harder to love those that you will see week in and week out for years on end in your local church, but that's who God specifically calls you to love and to build up. The members of your local church, you were made for it. You were made for face-to- face communication and fellowship.

You were made and remade in conversion to love and to be loved by other believers and to build them up and to be built up by them. You were even made and remade in your regeneration to be offended and to offend other believers in the church. You need it all because God intends it all for your good and for his glory. So love the church. It's vital to your walk with Christ and you need to teach your children to love her as well.

Chapter 5, Show Them the Treasures. If all the things covered in those first four chapters are true, what should we do? What should parents do? They should strive to show their children the importance of the church. Like the temple of old, the church is God's house filled with treasure, Though the treasures now are far more valuable than the utensils of brass and gold, this is a temple filled with the treasure of the ordinances, the means of grace, and sinners bought with the blood of Christ.

God has always met with his people, as we heard this morning, he has always met with his people in gathered bodies, and Christ himself meets with us and makes those treasures effective to our souls. So parent tour guides must lead their children through into the treasury of the church and show them the beautiful and marvelous riches of God's church. Inspire your children to love the Lord's day. Teach them and believe it yourself that it is the best day of the week, That Sunday is the high point of the week. It is the market day for the soul as the Puritans said, you don't have to go to church, you get to go to church.

You get to see God's people. You get to hear the preaching. You get to meet with God with His people. What a marvelous privilege and treasure has been given to you in this gathering right here. So love it, enjoy it, rejoice in this treasure that you've been given and instruct your children to love and rejoice in it as well.

That's the first five chapters. Let's use these insights and this teaching to lay a foundation for our lives and the lives of our children a Foundation of valuing and loving what God loves and values the local church Let us be those tour guides for eternal joy, for those souls that God has put into our homes. Do not forget your responsibility and this great privilege. God has entrusted you. What you do matters.

What you value matters. So love the church and train your children to love the church. Let's pray. Father we thank you for this time. Thank you for these words and the wisdom of our pastor to write this book and Lord I pray that you would use it to cause us to grow in our love for one another, our love for your church, and ultimately God our love for you.

May you be glorified as we gather together each week, and Lord may you be pleased to continue to use this church for the proclamation of your truth and Lord may you bless these families equip the parents to do this great work And give them strength and the times when it's hard and give them joy in the midst of it or that they would see that this is a place to come for refreshment and for edification, that the gathering of the church is not a drudgery or a awful burden, but it is a delight and a joy and a means to be built up and it's the means that you've given to your people to encourage and to love one another. Help us Lord to have this mindset about your people, about your church. May you