The sermon titled 'The Purpose of the Family' by Jason Dohm underscores the role of the family in God's plan, emphasizing that families are created for God's glory. It highlights the need for Christ to have preeminence in all things, including the family. The sermon outlines four key points: God creates families for His glory, children are a focus of the Great Commission, children are 'weapons of war' meant to expand God's kingdom, and children should be discipled from a deep well of personal devotion and love for God. The sermon stresses the importance of seeing the bigger picture beyond daily routines, recognizing that parenting is part of a grander scheme to raise godly offspring. The family is integral to God's redemptive plan, with the aim of spreading worship and expanding His kingdom. Parents are encouraged to embody the gospel drama in their homes, serve as examples of Christ's love and sacrifice, and diligently teach their children, drawing from their own experiences and devotion to God.

I'll be reading verses 13 through 18. Redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our sins of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers all things were created through him and for him and he is before all things and in him all things consist and he is the head of the body the church who is the beginning the firstborn from the dead that in all things he may have the preeminence. Let's pray.

Oh, Father, we thank you again for bringing us together as your people, for calling us out of darkness into light, for conveying us, carrying us along into the kingdom of your Son. Oh help us Lord, give us ears to hear and eyes to see and give power to your preacher. Change us and conform us into the image of Christ through this time together that in all things the Lord Jesus Christ may have the preeminence we pray in Jesus name amen. The title of the message this morning is the purpose of the family And we started in Colossians 1 which speaks of Christ and what He's done on behalf of the world. They can be as white as snow, though their sins were like scarlet.

They can be clean, clean before God. And then In Colossians 1 it proceeds to talk about all of creation being by Him and through him and for him. And then it ends in this phrase that in all things he may have the preeminence. This is why the creation, that in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he could have the place of honor in all things. And So that's the short answer to why the family.

Why did God make husbands and wives and give them children, as in everything else, that Christ might have the place of honor. You're very familiar with the saying, you can't see the forest for the trees. That just speaks to something that's common in all of our experience. You get so up close to the situations that life brings to you that it's very easy to lose perspective. And so when you're six inches away from the oak tree, there is no seeing the forest, right?

It's just like tree bark. And maybe a 12 inch by 12 inch section of tree bark is all that you can see. And When that happens, you have to back up. This is what Scripture helps us to do. Scripture helps us to back away from the one foot square tree bark section that is really all that we can see at some moments in life.

And to back up and to see the big picture, right, to come up 10, 000 feet and say, oh, there's a forest down there. There's not just one tree, there's millions of trees and it's beautiful and it extends in every direction. This definitely happens in the life of parents. Sometimes it's hard to remember that we're doing more than teaching our children not to bite each other. You stop biting her!

Parenting is more than that, but when you're really up close to it, you can very much lose sight of the forest because another four loads of laundry needs to be done. Life becomes an endless chain of laundry and meals and work to provide and a series of trees that you stand up close to. Hopefully this morning we zoom out and We come up above the individual trees to say, wait a minute, there's a forest down there. God has something bigger in mind than one child not biting another. There's actually a grand scheme here that God has designed.

The forest is beautiful. I hope we can do that today. I'd like to try to do that through giving you four points about the purpose of family, and hopefully get right to the heart of the matter. None of them are new, especially among us. It was more new last week.

Last week I was at Antioch Baptist Preaching, this same sermon, and I started by saying, how many of you are married, and just a very few hands go up. How many of you have children yet?" Some of those hands go down and you're left with just a very sprinkling of hands. Then I said, how many of you could possibly one day be married? A lot of hands go up and say, we're all in the right place. This sermon is actually for you.

The time to hear this sermon is really now for you. When you're preaching to people who are still in school or just out of school and not married yet, it's a good time to begin hearing these things. Many of us who got married maybe 25 years ago or something like that wish we had heard these things more thoroughly during those years, would have saved us a lot of bumps and bruises and scar tissue along the way if we had had these things more firmly in our minds. So I just want to encourage teenagers, young people, This is not the time to check out and say, I'm years away from having a family. No, no, no.

This is exactly the time to listen. This is exactly the time to listen, to begin to get a grip on these things, so that you're ahead of where we were when we got married and started having families. As we go to these four points, let's ask the Lord for help. The Lord Jesus Christ deserves to have the place of honor in all things. The shedding of his blood should give him that place in our hearts.

I thank you for him, his glory, and his complete worthiness to receive the place of honor in every category. I thank you that you have designed an eternity past. You have decided to make earthly families, to join men and women together, and then to give so many of those couples children for a grand purpose. I pray that this purpose would be well established among us and that Christ may have the place of honor. I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Okay, four points to establish the purpose of family. Number one, God creates families for His glory. Right out of Colossians 1, when we were teaching through the 1689 Confession, there are 32 chapters, and I said at least 32 times once per chapter. This category is for the glory of God, and this is for the glory of God, and this is for the glory of God, And this is for the glory of God, and this is for the glory of God, and this is for the glory of God. And when we study the Bible, this is what we find.

Everything is for His glory. God made things to put Himself on display in all His goodness and all His beauty. And the family is no different than that. Family is God's idea, it's not man's idea, and it's his idea in order to bring honor to himself. So point number one is God creates family for his glory.

God has a plan to fill the earth with worshippers and to spread His government. In other words, He is the King of kings. All earthly kings report to a great king, and God is that king. The Lord Jesus Christ is that King, and he has a plan to spread his government where it isn't today. So he's not content with the size of his kingdom, he's expanding it.

Praise the Lord for that. All Gentiles should be really happy about that. He wants to expand his kingdom and he has mobilized his people to expand his kingdom. This is good news for mankind. Why is that?

Because wherever Jesus is embraced as King, happiness goes there. There is nothing more miserable than to be without God and to be without hope in the world. That also is Ephesians 2. And that is the state of all those who are not in Christ. They find themselves going from one level of misery to another.

And Wherever Jesus grabs a person and brings them out of the kingdom of darkness into his marvelous light, happiness increases. Mankind should be glad that God has a plan to fill the world with worshippers and to take those who are not worshippers and make them worshippers. This is actually completely in the direction, not just of the glory of God, but also in the happiness of man. I want to give you a brief summary of some relevant texts. We're not going to go there.

I'm not even going to quote them word for word. You're so familiar with them. I'm just going to reference them to build a framework for how all these things fit together. The first is Genesis 1, verses 26 and 27. Of course Genesis chapter 1 is creation week.

At the very end of Genesis chapter 1, after making all sorts of things, God creates man in his image. Male and female, he creates them both bearing the image of God. And then he says this to man and woman, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the, and then there's a long list of things that he's to have dominion over. Again, this goes back to Jesus being a great king and the earth and its inhabitants being his kingdom and his dominions spreading through his worshippers subduing the earth. So there are two things here.

Be fruitful and multiply. There are not enough people on planet earth and so there needs to be an increase of people. And then also fill the earth and subdue it. Bring it all into subjection to God. We are working under God's instructions according to what God has said to subdue the earth and to bring it under His government.

So having children is central to the dominion mandate. This is often referred to as the dominion mandate. Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. And so God bringing together a man and a woman into a union making them one flesh and then so often bringing children into that equation is for the purpose of spreading worship, the worship of God over the face of the earth. Then we have Malachi chapter 2 verse 15.

There's a lot about marriage, there's a lot that can be said about marriage there but I'm going to just focus on a couple of phrases from one of the verses. Malachi chapter 2 verse 15, where God through the prophet says, and why one? So there's a question and an answer. The question is, why one? Well, one what?

It's talking about marriage. It's talking about God sovereignly bringing together a man and a woman into a union. So why two made into one is the question. What does God have in mind in doing that? Why one?

Why wouldn't he just leave them separate? They could serve them separately. Why does he bring them together into a union? The answer is very explicit, very clear. He seeks godly offspring.

That is why God brings two into a union and makes them one flesh. He seeks godly offspring. This isn't explicitly said in Genesis 1. I think it's implied there, right? He brings them together and he tells them to be fruitful and multiply.

But now there's a clarification offered in Malachi chapter 2 that it's not just an increase of people, it's an increase in godly people that God is after. It's not just a population explosion, some who love God and some who hate God. God wants them to be worshippers. God wants the increase to signify not just more people on planet earth, but more people who see him in all of his worth and beauty and worship him for that. Finally, Ephesians chapter 5 speaks of marriage.

Paul talks about the marriage relationship and he says A husband should love his wife like Christ loves the church. And a wife should respect and follow her husband as the church respects and follows the Lord Jesus Christ. At the very end of that chapter, Paul springs it on us and says, I speak of a mystery, yet these things are about Christ and the church. He tells us at the end of Ephesians chapter 5 what has been held back as a great divine mystery up until that point that Jesus Christ and His coming and living and dying and shedding His blood to purchase a bride is actually showing us what marriage has always been about. God wanted a testimony in the world that would show, that would give planet Earth a glimpse of Jesus Christ and his intense, passionate, self-sacrificing love for his bride.

That's what marriage is. So Paul brings us in and explains the mystery at the end of chapter 5. The end of chapter 5 might be one of the most unhelpful chapter breaks in the Bible. Why is that? Well, because it's not inspired.

Paul didn't start a new chapter there. Paul then goes on to talk about parents and children. Sometimes we end Ephesians chapter 5 and then we move on and then months later we come back and there will be a sermon on Ephesians chapter 6 as if they are somehow not the same thought. They are the same thought. Marriage and This picture that marriage is intended to be of Jesus Christ and His passionate love for people is meant to immediately flow into what is often a result of that, which is children, which is the having of godly offspring, which is spoken of in Genesis 1 and Malachi chapter 2.

We are to bring up children in the training and admonition of the Lord. You see how all this fits together in Genesis and in Malachi and then brought together and explained more fully in Ephesians in light of Jesus Christ coming and dying. So what this means is that children in a Christian home should get the benefit of the gospel drama. God means for this to happen. Children in a Christian home should get, God has intended for them to get the benefit of the gospel drama.

What does that mean? Well that means in a Christian home the intent of God is that the husband understands what he is about. He has been given a role to play in a drama. You get to play Jesus. Good luck with that.

Good luck with that. It means that as we see Jesus passionately loving and laying down his life to purchase a people, then you act like that. You think, well, whew, you know in a couple hours the play will be over. No. The play is over when you expire.

The play is over when you're over. You play the role in the gospel drama until the end. Until one of you is dead, you're on the stage and you're given this role to lay down your life and lead like Christ has led. And the same for the woman. The Christian woman who has this firmly fixed in her mind, She enters the stage knowing that she has a specific role to love and to respect and to follow this man as the church loves and respects and follows the Lord Jesus Christ.

She thinks, two hours this play will be over. No, no, same for you. The play is over when you're over. The play expires when one of you expires. So for the rest of your days, You're engaged in this gospel drama.

He has a role. You have a role. Sometimes he's going to forget his lines. He'll be standing there. The lights are still on.

The world is still watching. There he's frozen. He's forgotten his lines. He's not talking like Jesus talks. He is not acting like Jesus.

Wife, you cannot abandon your role when that happens, when he forgets his lines. No way. No way. You have been given a role, and God is desiring for you to play your role as faithfully as you can for as long as you can and even knowing that Sometimes he's going to forget his lines. Husbands, same thing.

Sometimes she's going to forget her lines. She's going to be on the wrong part of the stage. You cannot abandon your post. You're not off the hook. We don't just say, okay, play's over, play's over, you forgot your lines.

No, that's not how it works. The show must go on. And the show goes on. And so You're still supposed to act like Christ. Actually, more now than ever.

When the wife goes off track, we could say, maybe that's very consistent with her lines. How often does the church go off track? So far away are you from being able to say, you forgot your lines, now I can abandon my post. No, no, no. Now's the time where it's most important that you man your post, husband when she forgets her lines.

Children, when they are two and three and five and seven and in their teenage years, are to have been given a gift by God in a Christian home. They watch, as imperfect as the play is, as often as the lines are forgotten, they watch a compelling drama. They get to see The playing out of Christ and His passionate love that would cause Him to lay down His life, to set aside His own interests in order to buy the welfare of his wife. Christian children are supposed to see that. Over the course of a couple of decades, God has designed that Christian children would see that, and that they would be captivated by it.

They would find it compelling. Does this overthrow the doctrine of election? Meaning, if we just play our parts well enough, if we just love our spouses well enough and parent well enough, does that mean that our children are guaranteed to be saved? No, it does not mean that. It doesn't overthrow the doctrine of election.

God is still sovereign in salvation. And yet, these children have been put in homes with the means of grace in a properly functioning Christian marriage. You have the Word of God abounding in that home. It's a means of grace. Meaning, God has said that He is pleased to pour His grace through certain channels.

The Word of God is a channel that God has said He's pleased to pour His grace through certain channels. The Word of God is a channel that God has said He's pleased to pour His grace through. Prayer and worship happens in a Christian home that's functioning properly. Prayer and worship is So far from being a strange thing, it's the normal thing that happens. God has said.

...Is grace through those channels, through worshiping in a home, through prayer and praise in a home. In a Christian home there is a devotion to the local church, right? In a properly functioning Christian home there is a devotion to the broader body of Christ in a local church. So God has said He's pleased to pour His grace through that channel. How often has God blessed you in your life through a level of devotion to the local church and you find out that rubbing elbows, being in tight quarters with these brothers and sisters in Christ has rebuked you in many ways, has been an encouragement to you in many ways, and that God really has poured His grace through that channel into your life.

It's meant to be that way. So when God has brought us together in a Christian marriage and given us children, we have great reason to hope that because He's put these children in close proximity, near, very near to all these channels that he says he is so often pleased to pour his grace that he is working in this way to bring them to faith. I think this is how we should think as Christian parents. Not presuming that they will be saved as if good parenting equals the salvation of our children. No, God is sovereign in salvation.

But in saying, God you said you work through these things to bring salvation, you put my children right here, right next to all these things. So I'm hoping and I'm praying. I'm asking you to work in this way in the lives of my children. So we have Genesis, we have the prophets, and we have the New Testament really teaching the same thing. That Family is an important part of the unfolding redemptive plan of God.

I'm going to say that again. Family is an important part, not the only part, but an important part of the unfolding redemptive plan of God. Meaning, God has a plan to have mercy on sinners. You can't see family as separate from that as God's redemptive plan being out there somewhere where we go where people have never heard the gospel before. No, no, no.

Family is an important part of this redemptive plan on the things that are going on under our nose every day. Not just out there in the far reaches somewhere. And at the heart of this is God displaying himself as worthy. The glory of God being at the heart of this. That one generation would see God for who he is and to know him is to love him.

Amen. To know God, to see him as he is in the Bible is to have, if you really see him then your heart is captivated by him. And to see him for who he is and all of his goodness and beauty, and then to pass that on to the next generation, who passes that on to the next generation so that God is just worshiped more and more. He is worthy of that. That's point number one.

God creates families for His glory. Point number two. Our children are a focus of the Great Commission. Really just sort of unfolding the point that I started a couple of minutes ago. Our children are a focus of the Great Commission.

In Matthew chapter 28 Jesus says that all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to him and so we should go, because Jesus has all authority. And maybe a good translation of that is as you are going, because the verb tense of go and make disciples is in a kind of a persistent sense meaning it's not once and done, it's ongoing. So as you're going, make disciples, baptize, teach them to observe all the things that Jesus has commanded. And thinking of it in terms of as you are going keeps us back from thinking that the great commission is when we drop You might put you into the sphere of life where you drop everything and go there, all the way on the other side of the earth, but he might not. And while you're here, you can't say, well the Great Commission is for that other time when we go to the far reaches where no one's ever heard.

No, no, no. The whole thought behind the Great Commission is, wherever God has put me, this is my work. This is how the people of God must think. Wherever it is that God has put me, 101 Patterson Drive, Youngsville, North Carolina, that's where God has me now and so this is my work now, wherever I am. It's not more so when I get moved off to a place where I can't speak the language.

Here's the principle. The closer the proximity, the greater the responsibility and duty before God. I'm giving you a great commission principle. The closer the proximity, the greater responsibility and duty before God. If we embrace that principle, we'll think more rightly about the duty that we have to the people who are close to us.

In other words, I have a greater responsibility to the people who live next door to me, my next door neighbors, or the people who I work with, than I do for the million people in Charlotte who are three hours away and I've never met before. Because I'm going to bump into my next door neighbors. Most of the people in Charlotte I'll never bump into. I'll never know their names. So the duty is increased with being closer to them.

I don't feel equipped to disciple the nations. Do you feel equipped for that? That's going to require a lot of energy today. I don't think I have the juice for that today. Discipling the nations.

Well, you can start with your neighbor. Maybe we'll disciple the nations tomorrow and we'll share Christ with our neighbor today. But this is discipling the nations, one person at a time. And who is more your neighbor than the one who is one door down from you who is this tall and looks just like you? That's your closest neighbor.

So if you've accepted the premise that the responsibility gets greater the closer you are to them, then what does that mean for our children? What does that mean for that little one who's one door down from you, looks just like you? That means that there's a great duty. There's a great responsibility. And so, when we think of discipling the nations in the Great Commission, we have to ask ourselves this.

Have we been faithful with a few things? Isn't this how it works in the Kingdom of God? We are faithful with the things that God has put in our lap, the things that are near to us, and we attend to that diligently. We don't need to pine away for the things out there. We need to be diligent with the things that God has actually given, put right in our lap.

Then, as we prove ourselves faithful with that, then he expands it a little bit. He gives us a little more to be faithful with. And then as we prove to be faithful with that, he gives us a little more. This is how God's kingdom works. So these things are very related, meaning your family and the great commission aren't separate categories.

They're the same category. They're very related. Your family is the great commission. Point number one was God creates families for his glory. Point number two was our children are a focus of the Great Commission.

It's not a separate category, it's the same category. Point number three, our children are weapons of war. Weapons of war. Turn to Psalm 127. Turn your Bibles to Psalm 127.

We're going to read the whole Psalm, which is not a problem because it's just five verses. It's easy. How often does it occur to you that your children are weapons of war? It never occurs to me that mine are. And yet, Psalm 127 wants to arm us with that mentality that our children are actually weapons for the kingdom of God.

Psalm 127, a song of assents of Solomon. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord Behold children are a heritage from the Lord. The Lord, like arrows in a handful of warriors, shall come from the children of the Lord. Happy and contented as is the quiver full of them, they shall not be ashamed, and shall speak with their enemies in the end.

This song begins with these words, unless The Lord builds the house, they labor to build it. This goes right to the heart of our work, building a home for the glory of God. Unless the Lord is in that work, All of the labor is going to be in vain. So it doesn't mean that we shouldn't labor, we should labor. But it means that we should labor in faith, trusting the Lord, looking to the Lord, crying out to the Lord that he would enter into these works so that they wouldn't be proven at the end to be of no value.

As husbands and wives here listening to this engage in home building, house building. We are to humble ourselves and to come in acknowledging our complete dependence upon God for this work. Because though we're called to labor, though we're given duties by God, the key ingredient in the recipe is God entering into the work and blessing it. So You can do all the same things and get a radically different result depending on the key ingredient and you are not the key ingredient. God and his blessing and him entering into your labors because you are doing those labors in dependence upon Him is the ingredient that takes one set of labors and being completely fruitless and being proven in time to have been of no value and another group of laborers that looked the same from the outside but because they were done in complete dependence upon God and because God entered into those laborers and he blessed them, he makes them infinitely valuable.

That can happen. That does happen. Listen to the progression of verses 3, 4, and 5. Verse 3, Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Do you believe that? Do you believe that? I know you believe that. You're here. You probably wouldn't be here if you didn't believe that.

This is really a question more for Lassley and Dainty and Anya at Baptist, because they're deciding now whether they believe that or not. You're here they're deciding they say they believe I believe everything around They say they believe that the Bible is true, and I believe that... Everything around us, and people believe that. So right now, Right now, we should be praying for them. This is happening at Antioch Baptist where they have said, we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, that it is truth, But now they are being brought face to face with a truth from scripture that is completely against the flow.

The Christian community over there doesn't believe this is true. The children are a reward, and they're doing something about it. And they're being aided by the United Nations, who's telling them, you're already having too many children, have less. While we were there in the papers, the vice president was saying, we need to start doing things. The vice president was recommending a one child policy.

They want to go do what China is doing. The people at Antioch Baptist, that's the environment that they're in. Things are bad here, but they're not that bad here. We don't have our vice president saying things like that. And they're deciding, are children really a reward?

Is God's Word really true? Do you believe that? Do you believe that? Are you willing to see your children as weapons in a war? Offensive weapons in a war.

That's what the Bible says. It closes by saying, they will not be ashamed, they will speak with their enemies in the gate. The having of children allows you to be nose to nose with your enemies in the gate without shame. It's an increase of strength for the kingdom. Finally, verse five, I'll just translate this into my own words, the more the merrier.

The more the merrier. Better a full quiver. In terms of weapons of war, if you're in a war, you want more weapons, not less. And the Bible says we're in a war, and that children should be seen as weapons of war, the more the merrier. So We are Christian husbands and wives, fathers and mothers.

We're under the authority of King Jesus. We're part of his kingdom and it's a kingdom at war. We want a lot of arrows for shooting in this war. You can see how this is directly related to the Great Commission. We're tasked with expanding a kingdom into enemy territory.

No enemy ever gives up his territory willingly and without a fight. So it is here. The enemy fights for his territory. We are to take the gospel, make disciples of the nations, baptize them, teach them to obey, and the enemy is not going to sit still for that. If you want that enemy territory, you've got to go bleed for it.

You've got to go get it, and secure it, and fight for it, and then defend it. That's how war works. And that's how the Great Commission works. And that's how expanding the kingdom of King Jesus works. Listen to Paul in 2 Timothy 2.

This is 2 Timothy 2, verses 3 and 4. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life. That he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. As a soldier in his army and that as such we should keep ourselves from being entangled by the affairs of this life so that we're ready to fight.

And that includes being willing to endure hardship. So as the Christian Father of this nation makes a question, Am I enduring hardship or escaping hardship? Am I ordering my life in order to avoid every discomfort and get away from the hardships and the discomforts. Do I just sort of redirect when I come into contact with hardship and say, okay, well we'll reorganize to get away from that? And The answer to this question has a lot to do with this question.

One day am I going to shoot out an arrow to take ground for my King Jesus or is someone just going to leave the house that has the same idols that I have? Maybe add a few more, I'll add a few more in. Are our children really being prepared as weapons of war to engage in the Great Commission with all their hearts because they have a love for their king and they've seen me endure a hardship So they're ready for that or have I been so careful to preserve my idols and to serve them that it's just going to be more of the same when they leave my house. I've taught them to serve their idols. It's a penetrating question.

I don't consider it like the answer in some ways to that question. We should be asking it. If children really are weapons of war, To put in our homes to be fashioned in order to engage in the conflict when they leave, we should have to ask ourselves that question. I want it so clear in our minds that when we have a five year old, that we say in fifteen or twenty years, this five year old is going to go form a family of their own, God willing, by the grace of God, and they're going to move into a neighborhood, and they're going to be next door to people who are getting crushed into powder by the world. They are being unregenerate neighbors who are being treated by the world, the flesh and the devil, like the world, the flesh and the devil treats all unregenerate people, and my 20 or 25 year old son or daughter moving in next door is going to mean a testimony of life to them.

They are going to be ready for that. They're going to be ready to engage in the conflict, to go for the souls of men. You thought that was just a five-year-old. Okay, he did. Or a six-year-old.

That's you, Joseph Zechariah. I know you're the birthday boy. He's going to move into a neighborhood one day. What will it mean? If we're not thinking about this now, it's not going to mean very much.

Do you understand that? We've got to start now. We've got to be on it now. We've got to be engaged in these things now so that in 20 years from now it will mean a lot for the unregenerate people who live next door to our children as they are forming families. That was number three.

Our children are weapons of War. Number four, the last point. Our children are meant to be discipled from a deep well. Our children are meant to be discipled. We're given the task of making disciples.

So that begins with evangelism. You don't disciple the unregenerate. You can train the unregenerate, but disciples of Jesus are made from people who have repented and believed the gospel. And then that training, that discipleship is meant, what we are meant to have a deep well of resources to draw from. So that every day we have an abundance to draw upon, to draw from in order to help them come to faith and then make progress in the faith.

Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 6. Of course this is very well trod ground for us. Although we haven't been here in a while, I'll say that. Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 1 through 9. Deuteronomy chapter 5 is what?

It's the giving of the Ten Commandments. So Deuteronomy chapter 6 is talking about Deuteronomy chapter 5, the law of God, the giving of the Ten Commandments, and then Deuteronomy 6 says what we are supposed to do with that, beginning in verse 1. Now this is the commandment, and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you. That you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess. That you may fear the Lord your God to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life and that your days may be prolonged." So here in verse 2, the plan of the giving of the law of God, The giving of the ways of God is not just for me and my life, but is also to be for the life of the children that God should give us and the grandchildren that God should give us if He is pleased to do that.

So it's multi-generational. It's always the plan. You and your son and your grandson. Verse 3. 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." Now Jesus just identified that verse as the great commandment in Matthew chapter 22. He is asked which is the great commandment in the law and he quotes Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 5. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul and your strength. Now 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." So the picture is The Word of God everywhere. You're writing it on the doorposts of your house.

You're writing it on your gates. You're sticking it between your eyes. The Word of God everywhere. It is to be pervasive in our homes. We think of Deuteronomy chapter 6 as the teach your children passage.

That's right, it does tell us to diligently teach our children. But I want to argue that you cannot start there in this passage. And that really this is the progression of the passage. It begins with a personal fear of God in verse 2. It starts with a personal awe and reverence and fear of God in verse 2.

So set aside child training for a minute and start with your own heart and the need for awe and reverence of fear of God to be the starting point for child training. And then it progresses to love for God in the heart. What kind of love? All consuming love. All the heart, all the soul, all the strength.

No part of the affections left untouched. That's what that means. All the heart, all the soul, all the strength just means all consuming. All consuming. Nothing untouched.

White hot love for God. This lukewarm love for God that we so often find in our hearts is not what Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 5, the great commandment is talking about. We should find this commandment to be a crushing commandment when we compare the temperature of our hearts to what the commandment is requiring. And it should humble us and send us to God crying out that he would help us to love him more. So fear of God, love for God, what kind love?

All consuming love for God. And then verse 6, these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. The Word of God poured into the heart. A heart that fears God, and a heart that loves God, and a heart that has the Word of God just poured into it day after day. Feeding ourselves on His Word.

Becoming more and more well grounded and well established in His Word. And Then we teach them diligently to our children. God wants us to have this deep well, a well of the fear of God, a well of all-consuming love for God, a well of having had the Word of God poured into our hearts day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, and now we have this to draw upon to diligently teach our children. I'm not suggesting that we hold off. I'm not suggesting that you backtrack.

No more teaching the Word of God to our children until we get more of the fear of God, more of the love of God, more of the Word of God in our own hearts, and then we're going to come back and teach our children. I'm not saying that. What I am suggesting is that this text requires us to give careful, ongoing attention to the condition of our own hearts. Because you cannot possibly diligently teach these things to your children unless you have your own experience of this to draw on. I think this text has us drawing on our own experience with God to give to our children.

Your own experience of fearing God in your own heart. Your own experience of having a love for God that extends through the heart, the soul, your strength, all of the affections of your heart trained upon God. The Word of God poured into your heart and we are drawing on this to teach our children diligently. I want to end by quoting John G. Peyton.

John G. Peyton was a missionary to the cannibals. He went to the South Pacific and he believed that God wanted him to take the gospel to man eaters, people who eat people. When he got there, soon after getting there, his wife and his newborn child, I think his wife may have died in childbirth, but it was a newborn child. His wife and child died together.

And child died together. He had to sleep at the burial plot with a musket so that the natives didn't exhume his wife and his child and eat them. This is the most difficult missionary field you can imagine. You have to guard the bodies for a period of time so that they are not dug up and eaten. In this quote, he is reflecting on his mom and dad and what they did in order to bring them up.

Now I want to know what the guy who takes the gospel to the man eaters, what his parents did. Like I'm interested. What is compelling enough? What makes someone ready to go take the gospel there? His parents clearly had in mind that they were fashioning weapons of war.

If anyone did, his parents did. And so he's reflecting back on what his parents had given him and the experience that some of his contemporaries had. Listen to this, John D.P. It has been an amazing thing to me, occasionally to meet men who blamed catechizing for giving them a taste of religion. We've got friends and his friends were brought up being catechized as just a way to teach the great truths of the faith through questions and answers.

It's a great way to teach actually. John G. Peyton had been brought up being catechized, taught the great truths of the faith through questions and answers and he's got friends who shared that and his friends said, that just gave me a distaste for the faith. That turned me off to the faith. So this is where we are in the quote.

Resuming. Everyone in all our circle thinks and feels exactly the opposite. None of us have ever once even dreamed of wishing that we had been otherwise trained. Of course, if the parents are not devout, sincere, affectionate, if the whole affair on both sides is task work or worse, hypocritical and false, results must be very different indeed. Do you see what he's saying?

Two homes, same activities. Over here, the catechizing is done without devotion to God, without sincerity, without affection. And the whole affair on both sides is task work, meaning it's just like something we have to get done in the day because it's expected. We do it and we move on, but there's no heart in it. In fact, their experience was that it was hypocritical and false, meaning It was done in a home where religion was just lip religion.

There was no heart in it. There was lots of talking about God and Christ in the Bible, but the children were watching and they could tell that there was no real affection for God in these things. The catechizing, the training, what should have been establishing children in the great truths of the faith, it gave them a distaste. Over here, it was done in sincerity. The children watching could tell that at the root of this was real, live affection for God, and it made children ready to take the gospel to the man eaters.

You cannot get a greater difference in results than that. Distaste for religion over here and over here the children found it so compelling that they would go where you have to sit by the graveside with a musket to fend off the natives. Are you raising the next missionary through the cannibals? Could that even happen in your home? Are Our children, when they leave, if God gives them grace to be saved, is the kind of discipleship we are doing, giving them such an awe of God, a reverence for God, a love for God, that they couldn't possibly dream of telling God no when he wants to send them.

The unthinkable, because their view of God is so compelling that wherever he sends they'll go. Is that what our children are receiving in our homes? It goes without saying that we have to fight for this. This doesn't just happen. This cannot just happen as a matter of course.

You have to chart the course for this. And you have to stay at it day after day. If this is the objective, we have to be ready to exhaust ourselves for this objective. This is not going to just happen as a matter of course in our homes. We have to swim upstream for this.

A few concluding remarks. First, don't lose sight. My guess is, there are some parents in the room who are six inches away from an oak tree and all they can see is tree bark. And you have lost sight of the forest and God's intent in all this. And You're to the point where you're just happy to suppress a little bad behavior in the home.

If you can do that, you just feel like it's a good day's work. I get that. We have all been there. Back up, okay. Back up.

See the forest. See God desiring to put himself on display as of infinite worth in and through, even laundry and diapers and meals and long work days at the office and all these things. God has something grand behind them to put Himself on display. That is why we are doing what we are doing. And that is why we should keep doing what we are doing, even when it becomes very mundane and very tedious.

Backing up to see the forest helps us keep going. Second, start with love for God. Do whatever you can do to make the well deeper. The resources in God are infinite, aren't they? Of course they are.

That is where we go for the resources to do this. If we're going to raise a generation of children who it's unthinkable that they would say no to God when He's ready to send them, it begins in our own hearts, in our own fear of God, our own love for God, and pouring the Word of God. We're going to have to be able to pull endlessly from those things if we're going to make disciples who fit that description. Third, finally, I like think kingdom. Thinking kingdom is what allows us to see our children as weapons of war.

We have a great King in Jesus Christ and wherever his dominion spreads to, the happiness of mankind spreads there too. If you love your fellow man at all, you should desire to see the spread of Jesus' kingdom, because that's where happiness comes. God, I thank you for the great commission, and I thank you that you've put us very close to that. You've put us in the middle of that by joining so many in our midst together in marriage and putting children in those homes. I pray God that you would help us in our duty to the spouses that you've given us and the children that you've given to us to help us to Help us to love you deeply To fear you to put your word in our hearts and then to draw from this to give the faith to our children as you would give us grace.

We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.