The sermon titled 'Pure and Undefiled Religion' focuses on the application of James 1:27 to family life. The speaker emphasizes the need for families, particularly homeschooling ones, to avoid being inward-focused and to instead engage in activities that reflect pure and undefiled religion, such as visiting widows and orphans and keeping oneself unspotted by the world. The sermon critiques the tendency to prioritize self-preservation over outreach and encourages families to integrate discipleship with community engagement. Practical steps include practicing hospitality, seeking out the downtrodden, and engaging in missions. The speaker stresses the importance of balancing the two aspects of pure religion: doing good works and abstaining from worldly influences. Ultimately, the sermon calls for families to be active in their communities, putting their faith into action and aligning their hearts with God's desires.

The sermon is not the normal. Normally, we'd be preaching sequentially through a book. So this would be our second week out of the book of Matthew. And I have to say, I miss it. I miss sequential exposition.

I can't wait to get back into Matthew 10 next week. So it's not that. This is also not a thorough exposition of the passage that was just read. That's not the purpose of it. When you get to the end, you'll say, well, there's lots of things about that passage that weren't said that could have been said.

Right. Exactly. There's a very narrow scope and purpose for what I'm doing today. And that's to take primarily one verse, the last verse in the chapter, put it in its context, and apply it to the life of the family. So that's the purpose for today.

How do we have family lives that are characterized in a way where James would look at our families and say, They're practicing pure and undefiled religion. There are these elements of pure and undefiled religion. When I look at that family, I see it. They're visiting widows and orphans in their distress, and they're keeping themselves unspotted by the world. That's beautiful family life.

And so there are many, many points that should be exegete, exegete out of this text that I want to talk about today. There are many, many personal applications, most of which I won't touch on today, because my purpose is very singular. And that is to primarily apply, verse 27, to the life of the family. Probably hasn't escaped your notice that One of the things that often trips us up is inwardness. Is being inward facing in our families.

And by us, I mean homeschooling families who have also abandoned age segregation in our church practices so that Sundays, in terms of age grouping, looks a lot like how we're handling homeschooling. We're all together. And that is beautiful. I'm glad we're doing it. Praise the Lord for the things that have been established through embracing those things.

But it also can have particular pitfalls that we need to look out for. And Inwardness is one of those pitfalls. If you ask our critics, what's wrong? You know, what's wrong? What's the weak spot of what they're doing?

You know, 11 out of 10 of them will say inwardness, because one of them will want to say it twice. And so that is the common criticism. And in breaking down that criticism, I think we would have to say it's at least partially justified as we look at our home lives. And that there are probably at least two things we can attribute it to. One of those things is legitimate.

One of those things is illegitimate. I'll start with the illegitimate one. And that's this. We've been inward more than we could have been or should have been because our hearts are different than God's. Some of the things that God loves, We don't love like he does yet.

There's lots of room for growth in some of the things that God loves. And so we haven't really been trained in some areas to be faithful sons. And I trust that's ahead of us. Hey, this is not the only category where that's true, is it? There's lots of categories where we say, we haven't really been fully trained as faithful sons in this category, this category, this category.

This is one of those categories. And so we would say, God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts as high as the heavens are above the earth and his ways are above our ways and This is an area where we're a long ways from Bridging the gap and we need to grow because our hearts are different than God the second one Which I think is is a legitimate reason is that? Together We've spent a decade reclaiming very important ground, very precious ground in in terms of family discipleship. And so there is some simple math that's involved here that There's an opportunity cost. When you spend an hour on this thing, you can't spend it on that thing.

When you spend a dollar on this thing, it can't be spent a second time on that thing. And a lot of time and energy in our families have been given over in the last 10 years to clawing back ground that had been lost for 100 years, 150 years in our country when family discipleship was across the board largely lost. Not that you could find little pockets that were doing it, but most were not doing it. Well, we've been clawing back that ground that's taken a lot of time and energy. What I'd like to suggest is, is it possible that that ground has been clawed back and reclaimed?

Praise God for the glory of God. And that now we can take some of the time and energy and dollars and all of the resources that God has given us. And now that the ground has been reclaimed, that we can start looking at these other areas where we find that our hearts really are disconnected from the heart of God. And we can begin to invest in those areas. And we can be discipled and trained and brought to maturity in some of these other categories.

And so this is really the topic for today. And I just want to start out by saying that today I get to be the designated hypocrite in the sense that I see in my life personally and in the life of the Dohm family. In all the categories that are going to be exhorting us to go faster and further that the Dohm family has many areas of growth. Having said that, This is based on a talk that I gave in 2008. And as I went through the note, you know what?

We've seen some improvement in the Doane family. We've seen a good trend and direction. And I'm desiring it to be accelerated. And it needs to be accelerated. But we can look and say, you know what, in this category, we really are doing more here, here, and here.

And it's been a blessing to us. And we believe it's for the glory of God. This is what we want, right? We want to be able to look back in a couple of years and say, God has grown us in these areas. God has given us progress that's evident to all in these areas.

So the fact that I'm the designated hypocrite doesn't mean that my lack of being a finished product or it doesn't take away from the importance of the subject or doesn't change the counsel of Scripture on the matter. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Oh Father, we thank you God for this text in James. How we need your word to help us think rightly on so many different things. But God, I thank you, God, that you've so clearly defined for us pure and undefiled religion.

And God I pray that you would help us this morning to look at our family lives, to look at this text in James, and to compare and to see how we might make progress, how we might move forward. God, would you send your spirit among us for progress, not so that we can be proud of ourselves, but God, so that your glory would spread, so that the knowledge of Jesus Christ would be bigger in the place where you planted us next week and next month than it is today. God, we consider the mercies of Jesus Christ through the work of the cross and this is what we want God. We want to put it on display that you have been kind to us, that you have redeemed us, that you have transformed us and changed us and how we long to see this same thing happen in the lives of our coworkers, our neighbors, and other people in this community. And we know this is your heart, God, your word says it so.

So conform us to your heart today, God. May we be conformed to you today, in Jesus' name, amen. James 1, 27. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. Don't you love verses like this?

No ambiguity, no confusion, no in-depth exegesis required here. It's just plain definition. Pure and undefiled religion equals this and this. Visiting widows and orphans in their trouble and keeping oneself unspotted from the world. And our time is going to be spent developing how we should understand and apply this verse in the context of our families.

Because I fear that a disproportionate amount of our efforts, looking backward, looking backward, when we say, in these two categories, where have we spent our efforts? Where have we spent our time? I think we would we would acknowledge that it's been disproportionate towards keeping ourselves unspotted by the world. Don't get me wrong. It's so important, particularly in our day.

There's a thousand things in the waters that we're swimming in that are pulling in the wrong direction. And so we have to swim upstream and so it does take a lot of time and energy and a big part of our mindshare in order to address the onslaught of the things that are coming at us doesn't it in the family there are a thousand different things that would pull us in a direction that would actually cause us to be very defiled by the world. So in saying it's been disproportionate, it's not to say, hey, there's things that we've done in this category that we shouldn't have done. But I'm talking about a ratio here. I'm talking about I'm talking about the possibility that we've spent almost everything in this bucket to the detriment of the other bucket.

And so the question really that we're considering in our time together is how do we how do we make an in-course correction? How do we redirect ourselves so that we have this healthy balance where we're really we've got we may are maintaining an eye on keeping ourselves unspotted by the world. But then we're also allocating time and resource and mind share to this other category of visiting widows and orphans in their trouble. I want to start today with the purpose of the family. We talk about this a lot, so this is strictly review.

But when you talk about the purpose of the family, you began in the book of beginnings. You began in Genesis 1. And I'll just go directly to 28, since this is review. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So here, just inside the left cover of your Bible, we get the purpose of the family.

And that's that we would be fruitful and multiply, and that we would take dominion over every living thing. Not for our own glory, but for the glory of Jesus Christ, for the spread of the knowledge of God on the earth. And the Great Commission isn't exactly the same thing as that, but they're so tightly related. In one way we might consider it a restatement. So here's Matthew 28, 18 through 20, which you've heard 1, 000 times, but this is a review of it.

And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen." So you can see, when we think about the purpose of the family, multiply. Godly seed, right? This goes right to Malachi 2.

God, why were the two made one? Godly seed. So the multiplication isn't just about having more knuckleheads on Earth. Earth has enough knuckleheads. It is about godly seed.

It is about an increase, not just of people, but an increase of the worshipers of God who would put the wisdom of God on display. That's what it's about. And then the Great Commission, that we would go, and that we would spread the gospel, that we baptize, that we would teach the nations to observe all the things commanded to us. And so when you put that purpose of the family before our eyes, you can see how bankrupt it is to reduce marriage and family to nothing more than circling the wagons for self-preservation. And we'd have to say, in some corners, of us and of the larger family integrated homeschooling movement, It has become that.

It has become a circling of the wagons for self-preservation. This is in exactly the opposite direction of God's purpose for the family. And so the message of the scripture is, Quit it. Quit it. Stop it.

We can't be only circling the wagons for self-preservation. Nope, not enough. Not compelling enough of the vision. Doesn't bring glory to God enough. And So that cannot be our primary business.

In spite of the threats that are pervasive in this perverse generation, that's what Peter calls it in Acts 22, be saved from this perverse generation. In spite of the onslaught, in spite of those threats, it is contrary to the gospel to adopt exclusively a defensive position. Did you hear what I said? It is contrary to the gospel to adopt an exclusively defensive position. And I understand that there's another extreme here that says, well, let's just throw our children out there to be salt and light.

Meanwhile, the lion is gobbling them up one after the other. And so this is the other extreme. I'm not advocating that we're now going to change directions after we've spent all this time and energy to keep our children from being gobbled up. So I understand that there's another extreme. But God has planted us where he has planted us to be a blessing.

This is the promise of Abraham that through his seed, all the nations of the world would be blessed. And this is our business. This is the business that has been given to your family, that you would be planted where God has planted you today, in order to be a blessing, in order to put the glory of the gospel on display. I was at the homeschool conference this past year. And one of the speakers put up two pictures, put up a picture of a castle, just like you've seen.

And he put up a picture of another building. And they looked very similar. And he said, this is a fortress. This is a monastery. Which is your family?

They look very similar. They perform similar functions in a way. But the fortress is there for a very different purpose than the monastery. The monastery is there just to keep people out. The monastery is just to keep things out.

The fortress is there to provide a solid position to send out the raiding parties. The fortress is different than a monastery. And he was asking the question, it's a good question for us to think about, to look at those two different buildings, those two different structures and say, all right, our home is something here. Which is it? Is it more like a fortress where we do have a strong base?

We really can keep out many of these defiling elements of the world. But that's not the only purpose here. We're also, we've got a strong base, and we're ready to send out raiding parties into enemy territory to take ground for Jesus Christ, to subdue, to multiply and then subdue, all for the glory of God. And God does want our homes to be fortresses, solid bases where we can send out the raiding parties, not just monasteries that are only designed to keep things out. Wouldn't be right if we were that.

So back to James Wan. I just want to read the text again and then make some observations about it and relate it to home life. James Wan, Verse 21. Therefore, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror, for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. That he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the word. This one will be blessed in what he does. If anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his own heart, This one's religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this.

To visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. So verse 27, pure and undefiled religion, is in the context of James's exhortation that we be doers of the word and not just hearers. And he introduces this concept, useless religion. And this just sends us back into Matthew, where we've been for six months. And Matthew, in a way, has been a study of useless religion.

Jesus is taking on the hypocrites, the ones who wear a mask and who are doing things to be seen by men. And it's a full frontal attack on scribes and Pharisees who have turned the religion of a glorious almighty God into just external conformity to a group of rules. And this is wrong. And this constitutes useless religion. It's useless.

It might look OK on the outside, but when you start to poke at it, you find, what is this? This is useless. This is not serving a purpose at all. And so James concludes his thought by giving us the two parts of pure and undefiled religion. Part one, to visit widows and orphans in their trouble.

And we'll talk about this in a minute, but I don't think this is a comprehensive list. I think this is a representative list that points us in a good direction. And not that we would ignore the narrow sense of it, but I think it's very appropriate to expand this, but that we would visit widows and orphans in their trouble. And then the second thing is the things that we should be careful not to do. We should keep ourselves unspotted by the world.

So the two categories of pure and undefiled religion are this, the things that we ought to be careful to do and The things that we ought to be careful to do, and the things that we ought to be careful not to do. And both of these things need attention in our family. These two parts, what we ought to do and what we ought not to do are strikingly consistent with what we see in many other places in the Bible, but especially Paul. Paul is always saying this. Paul is always saying, do this, watch out that you make sure that you're giving attention to doing this list and be careful that you're keeping yourselves from these things.

Paul says that in almost every book that he writes in one one form or another. We've been saved from something, we've been saved from this list of things that we ought to be careful not to do. But we've also been saved to something. We've been saved to these lists that Paul often gives us that tells us what we should be doing, to be doers of the word. We're just not doers of things.

We're doers of things. That's what James is saying. We're doers of things. We're not just abstaining from things, but we're actually saved from things to other things that God wants us to put on. Listen to Isaiah 1, verses 16 and 17.

Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good. This is Isaiah 1. Cease to do evil, learn to do good. Seek justice.

Rebuke the oppressor. Defend the fatherless. Plead for the widows. So the theology of James 1 is found in Isaiah 1. He says it almost the same way.

And James and Isaiah are communicating something very powerful for our families that we need to take hold of this morning and never let go of. Cease to do evil. Keep yourself unspotted from the world. Learn to do good. Visit widows and orphans in their trouble.

Where do we see this in Paul? Everywhere. But here's a couple of examples. In Ephesians 4, we have the put offs and the put ons. Verse Ephesians 4 22, put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts.

And then there's a list. So put off these things. And then in verse 24, put on the new man, which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness. And then he gives us things that we ought to be putting on. So Ephesians 4, put off these things, put on these things.

Just like Colossians 3, Paul again writing another letter, another put offs list in Colossians 3, and another put ons list in Colossians 3. In verse 8, put off all these, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Keep yourself unspotted by the world. And then in verse 12, Colossians 3, 12, Put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, neatness, long suffering. So we spent some of our time, myself and our brothers from Malawi spent some time downtown Wake Forest looking at 2nd Timothy.

We found something just almost like this. So Paul's writing the same things in Timothy. Give attention to these things and make sure you're doing these things and watch out for these things. You don't want to get tangled back up in these things again. Paul is saying that over and over again in his letters.

Open to Titus 2. Open to Titus 2. While you're opening to Titus 2, the put offs take us right back to Exodus 11 and the practice of the Passover. The practice of the Passover, there was a week of time where you would search out leaven in your house and make sure that all the leaven was out of your house. You'd look in every nook and cranny to make sure you purged the leaven out of your house.

It's not about the leaven. It's not about bread making. It's about leaven representing sin. And so here's what I want to say on this category, because I'm not speaking much at all today about keeping ourselves unspotted from the world. But when we look at the Passover, the Passover, the practices weren't about erecting things to make sure leaven doesn't come into your house that week.

It's searching the corners that already exist in your house for leaven. And as we think about this category where we keep ourselves unspotted by the world, it is a wrong assumption to say all we have to do is just make sure we just keep out anything else. There might be nooks and crannies in our house today, where if we kept everything else out for all of eternity, we'd have plenty of leaven in our homes. And so the Passover is a reminder that We ought to look at the nooks and crannies of our houses from time to time. A husband and a wife ought to engage together just to take inventory of what's in the house and to see if we have an eleven.

It doesn't all come from the outside. Some of it came from the outside last year or the year before or seven years ago. And it's still there in the nooks and crannies of our houses. So Titus 2, beginning in verse 11. Titus 2, 11 through 14.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works." Zealous for good works. Now we're getting somewhere. Now we're getting somewhere. Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed. That's what Paul is saying Word for word in this text.

He came to redeem us from every lawless deed and purify us that we would be unspotted from the world. The grace of God was revealed for this purpose, that we would be redeemed from every lawless deed, that we would be zealous for good works. Here we're seeing the same thing again. We're safe from something. We're being redeemed from every lawless deed that we would be zealous for good works.

Now you may say, I understand this on an individual level, but where is the connection to my family life? Well let's just think for a minute about our favorite family texts. What are they? You know exactly what they are. Deuteronomy 6.

Deuteronomy 6, our favorite family text. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up and our favorite New Testament family text is Ephesians 6 for and You fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." And when we put our favorite family text in front of us, we have to ask ourselves, what does it mean to teach our children diligently? What does it mean to bring up our children in the training and admonition of the Lord if it doesn't mean to impart these things to them? Is it just to teach the things that they ought not to do?

When we've read Deuteronomy 6, when we've read Ephesians 6, have we thought that, OK, this is my mandate to teach the law of God, and these are the things that my children will never do so that they can be faithful to God? Is that how we've defined faithfulness to God? Wow, that starts to sound a lot like what we've seen in Matthew that has been cast in a very, very unfavorable light. This is not what Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 6 is pressing on us. At least not exclusively that.

Here's a reality. We're going to have this thought. We're going to have this thought. OK, so now we're supposed to do ministry outside the home. And It's going to be put on the pile.

We've already got a pile of stuff we're working on, and we're finding ourselves failing at some of those things in the pile already. So now we're going to put something else on the pile, and we're just going to be more diluted still. But I guess, I mean, the Bible says we have to do it. So we're going to put it on the pile, and we'll see how it goes. But isn't this going to compromise our family discipleship?

The guy just said we spent 10 years clawing back this ground. Are we about to give back the ground that we've spent 10 years trying to reclaim? Are we now moving on from family discipleship? Is that what this signals? And so I just want to ask this question.

Are these really two different categories? Is family discipleship one category, and ministry to the downtrodden another category or is it possible that that they really match up really nicely. That they can be married in a way where we don't have to think of them in terms of limited resources and dilution. Where we could integrate the life of our family so that discipleship really goes side by side really well with ministry to the downtrodden. And so I want to say, integrate.

Integrate these two things. Don't let them be two categories where one is stealing from the other category. But marry them up. Put them together. And don't allow them to be separate.

Don't give back one inch in the area of family's discipleship. Not one inch, not one centimeter. We're going to stand guard over what we've clawed back. We are. We're going to stand guard over what we've clawed back.

We are. We're going to stand guard over that and we're not going to allow that to be lost. But I don't think that means that we can't bring this other thing into the same stream and have them be together like a hand in a glove. So I'm not saying it's time to shift from this to that. I'm not saying that.

It's not time to shift from this to that. It's time to include this in that. It's time to put these things together and see more fruit from both of them by joining them together. When Jesus says this in Matthew 5, 13 through 16, this is some of my favorite verses we've covered so far, you are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned?

It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. The city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand. And it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." It means that for the sake of the Gospel, for the sake of the glory of God, that our neighbors and others in our community would see the goodness of God through us.

Our neighbors and the others in our community would see the goodness and faithfulness and mercy and maybe discipline of God through us and they would attribute it to God. That's why we're here. To put God on display. To put God on display for how we live with our neighbors and our co-workers and the people in our community. We must Take our children by the hand and show them how to put their light on a lamp stand.

You've got to take them by the hand. How are we salt and light? Okay kids, come along. We're not good at it yet maybe, but we're going here. Take my hand.

And we're going to show them how to be salt and we're going to show them how to be light. James 1, 27, pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. This is the business of our homes. This is our charter. Want a charter for your home?

This is it. Pure and undefiled religion. Not useless religion. That is about external conformity to things we ought not to do. And I'm not saying, hey, There are things that we ought not to do.

I'm not against external conformity, as long as it's married up. The law is spiritual, as long as it's not to the exclusion of the things that ought to be happening in the heart. External conformity is a beautiful thing. I think we want that, don't we? I just think we don't want it absent what ought to be happening in the heart for people who love God.

Some practical ways that we can move in this direction. What are some things that we can do to move? The first thing, practice hospitality. Isn't this our answer for everything? What's the answer for this too?

Practice hospitality. It's so important for the life of the church, but also our duties to the downtrodden and our neighbors and the people in our community. Our dinner tables are a secret weapon. I'm convinced more by the day that this is the Trojan horse, so to speak. This is our secret weapon, Our dinner table.

Make your dinner table a secret weapon. Not just for the life of the church. Praise the Lord. What we're seeing in terms of hospitality. You people are relentless.

You're in each other's homes all the time, and just hearing about it all the time. I was over at so and so's house, or we're going to be over there Thursday. My ears are assaulted by that all week long, and I'm so thankful. And not that we can't do more and shouldn't do more, But there's a lot happening on that front right now. And it's helping the life of our local church.

But don't keep it to the life of the local church only. Our dinner tables are the secret weapon to engage our neighbors in a different kind of way. I think most of us are uncomfortable going immediately in the first 10 seconds into gospel presentation. Well, The dinner table puts it in a different context. And the context is more comfortable for me.

And my comfort is not the only thing that ought to be considered. But I tell you what, there is a beauty in what you can communicate, the time that you have to communicate it, the environment that you have to communicate it in. Let's make better use, more use of our dinner tables for the glory of God. This is a great book. The number of years ago We handed this out to everybody in the church.

I'm getting ready to order some. We're going to hand it out again. It's Alexander Stroud Hospitality Commands. Little book. It's read in an hour.

But it's really helpful and it will help us get our minds parked around how prominent hospitality is in the New Testament and then some very practical things that will help us be able to do it more frequently and with less heartache. Hospitality can be very difficult depending on how you approach it. But it doesn't have to be very difficult. And so, Strauch will give us some tips that will help us be more frequent with it without it, you know, without bringing the whole household to a grinding stop every time we try to do it. I want to encourage you to have a hospitality schedule.

I want to encourage you to have a night of the week where you just plan to have hospitality. Not that it's the unbreakable rule and hey, stuff happens in the schedule. Fine. But when we plan, we do more. When we set aside and allocate, we'll be more faithful in the category.

And if we don't, it'll just it'll just happen when it happens, which isn't very often. If it happens when it's scheduled, it happens, it happens in a regular rhythm of life. If it happens when it happens, that's not very often. Number two, look for opportunities where you're already connected. Hey, we can't be taught, we can't be asking for revolution in every sermon.

Don't you know that? We can only have so many revolutions. And so when we think every sermon, well, here's a sermon and the application is right, but now every week we're creating a new category. We've got to do something in that. This goes back to the pile and adding something else onto the pile.

I'm not calling for revolution in this sermon. I'm calling for intentionality on the things that already exist in your life. So what about this one? The Tuesday night outreaches. I was talking with James and I had a lot of time to talk yesterday.

We talked about everything. We talked about many useful things and many useless things because we had time to talk about them all. And one of the things we talked about which was useful is Tuesday nights and how the Lundquist have found Tuesday nights. And he said, in some ways, it's the hardest night of the week because you put something else in there. And at First, it seemed like it was in competition with family discipleship.

But what they found is that there's no better night to do family worship than after going home from the Tuesday night outreach. Because you have fresh, you have 15 minute old things to pray about. And this is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about integrating these things together. Not saying Tuesday night's a break from family discipleship because we're doing this other category.

No, no, no, no, no. We're talking about integrating them together, either gathering briefly before you go out there to say, let's pray. Let's consider a scripture about the heart of God for unreached people so that we're ready and we're loaded for bear when we go out there or after the fact say we met we met people and they had names and here's the names and let's let's pray about them and let's consider a psalm that's related. Intentionality buys us so much more fruit from the things that we're already doing. It costs you 10 minutes of planning.

That's why I'm so condemned and convicted that I'm not more intentional because you can get such a radically different result from the things that you're already Doing with with ten minutes of playing so let's take the ten minutes of planning and let's find ways to merge these things together Like like our Tuesday night outreaches. How about this you got neighbors I? Got neighbors I'm shorter on coworkers than I used to be, but I got neighbors. And I got a dinner table. So we can merge these things together.

I don't think we ought to suspend family worship on those nights either. I think we ought to press on with family worship even when we have the neighbors over and show them something they've probably never seen ever before in their life. They might not be ready to sign up to bowing their knee to Jesus Christ, but they're going to see something that they'll say, I'm starting to understand why these people are different. I'm starting to understand why their children relate differently than a lot of the other kids in the neighborhood. They have a different life over here.

We want them to see that. We want to provoke some questions in their mind and create some opportunities for discussions that we wouldn't have otherwise. You got neighbors? Can you come out to the Tuesday Night Outreach and either pray before or afterwards? There are some things that are already built into your schedule.

So I'm not saying add another category and throw a bunch of time that you already don't have at it. I'm saying look around at the things that you're already engaged in and and find a way to weave these things together in a way that makes everything that you're doing stronger than it is today. Number three seek out the downtrodden. Seek out the downtrodden. Orphans and widows is the narrow literal application of what's happening here.

I think you have to start there. If you, it's legitimate often to broaden it out But if you broaden it out before you paid attention to the things that are very literally and narrowly there you've lost your mind You've lost your way And so we need to find out where the orphans are we need to find out where the widows are now a lot of widows are easy to find. They've been abandoned and they're at nursing homes and they're all around us. And so my mother was taking me to see widows really early in life. And there was one particular widow named Hager that she probably visited every week or every other week for I think it was 17 years.

Nobody knows this about my mother, except for when I mention it to people who don't really know her anyway. And So she wasn't doing it. That's a beautiful expression. For my mom, it was not to be seen by men. Nobody knows my mom was doing that.

But for 17 years, she went and visited either every week or every other week an abandoned woman. And honestly, this was pure and undefiled religion. I'm thankful. And I'm a little ashamed to say I haven't replicated the pattern in my own family. But that's an opportunity.

Those are people that are downtrodden. Often when orphans are spoken of in the Bible, a tightly related category is also spoken of, the fatherless. Now if we don't have a lot of orphans around here, we sure have a lot of fatherless. You can throw a rock in any direction and hit three fatherless people. I don't recommend that, but they're everywhere.

The fatherless are everywhere in our culture and this is related. Single parent homes in a lot of ways are downtrodden. So I think there are ways that we can expand this out and say, hey, let's not just have ministry to yuppies, you know, find people just like us and, you know, just right in our socioeconomic group. Let's have our ministry look a lot like the gospel, which breaks down those walls and just runs right through them. And let's go to the type of people who can never pay us back, who if our neighbors knew we were working with them, they wouldn't be impressed.

And they might actually have concerns for us. Let's go find those people. And let's do ministry to them. And let's do it together. Not a night for dad to be out of the home to go do ministry while his wife and kids try to figure out what they're going to do with the evening.

But let's wrap ourselves around this. How about the abortion clinic? Any downtrodden there? How about pregnancy support services? You know, are there any innocent lives there to be contended for or disciple house, what Tony's doing.

So I'm saying there are things that were already connected to that where the downtrodden are. Let's link into these things and then finally engage in missions. Hey it has been fantastic for the Doan family to have these precious brothers from Malawi around. We're around the dinner table, and we're talking to them about all sorts of things. This is going to open up things for the years to come.

This is not a one and done, this is not a single shot event where they come over for three weeks and we hug them and they get on the plane and you know never the two shall meet again. We're going over there. We're going over there. I don't know who's going and I don't know when, but we're going over there. And they're coming back over here.

And I'm praying that our children will be doing things, disruptive things, on the continent of Africa and that they would be coming here to do disruptive things here. We want to do long-term things and we're gonna we're gonna figure out ways to do things in international missions to get outside of the boundaries even of our community and our country and we We're serious about this we We want Jesus Christ to be known in the corners of the world where he's not known. And in some instances, we don't have to go very far to find that. The knowledge of God is fading in our community in some ways. But there's opportunities to go to the far corners of the earth as well, and we ought to do that.

Here are three conclusions. Three conclusions. This relates very much to how we view the role of the local church. Very much, very tightly related to how we view the role of the local church. We believe that God has tasked church leaders to equip the saints for the Work of ministry, Ephesians 4, 11, and 12.

Not to do the ministry, not to have all the best ideas and then go deploy all the resources, not to be in charge of all the ministry, not to be the hired guy who is here to do the ministry for us. No, no, we're 1, 000 miles away from that. But this is how the typical local church works. Somebody has a good idea, and they say, hey, let's do that. And it just seems like a good idea.

So they say, great. Let's just take this in to the charter of the local church. But the problem is, it's like government. There's never a sunset clause. And so there's never an ending to that.

And then there's another person in four months who has another good idea, a really good idea. And so it just gets everything centralized. Everything's right there under the umbrella of the local church. And All good ideas have to be approved and then executed by the local church. This is not what we see in the New Testament at all.

It isn't. We see a local church with a very laser beam focused charter of what to do. And there's only a few things that the local church ought to be doing it. But the local church ought to be doing those things with all their might so that people would be raised up in the local church to do the work of the ministry. We have an infiltration model.

We come together, and we get strengthened by the word of God together. We get discipled by Jesus Christ together through His word and through singing and through the Lord's Supper, through all these practices that God has given us. That's a limited number of practices. And then we go home. And we put those things to work for the glory of God in our neighborhood.

It's an infiltration model. It's not bring your neighbors here so that Pastor Dohm can preach the gospel to them. No, a thousand no's. Number two, I believe that this explains many problems that families experience. I believe this explains many, many, many problems that are common to families.

Ephesians 2, 8-10. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We were created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. Before the foundations of the world, He was making ready good works that we would walk in them.

And this is why he has redeemed us. So what happens when we're not doing what we were created for? I have plenty of time for navel gazing, for being self-obsessed, for nitpicking every little thing personally. It's because we're not busy doing what we ought to be doing. And I spent quite a bit of time speaking with Jeff Pollard.

This is a big concern for him in his church, that people have mastered the things not to do. It's not enough. It's not enough. It leads to self-obsession, to only thinking about yourself all the time. And it doesn't provide the vigorous life that God has called us to.

Hey, you know what? When we're busy doing these things, when we're engaging in these things there's a lot less time to think about ourselves and moan about what we do and don't have and and nitpick ourselves and each other. Number three, lastly, let's move. Let's get going. Let's get in motion.

This has been a directional talk. In other words, you're not going to be able to quantify it. You're not going to be able to quantify it. You're not going to be able to count it. I'm saying, here's a direction that the Bible would send our families in.

So let's get moving in that direction. So you have an evangelistic hospitality once every six months? Do it three times the next six months. Let's let's set a direction and then see progress in that direction. There's There's a great joke in our family where Janet will be taking care of about five different things and I'll be reading a commentary or something like that.

And she'll say, hey, could you put the napkins out? And I'll just roll my eyes and say do I have to do everything? And The joke is she'll say no just something And and so that that is the message You don't have to do everything. Just do something. Just start.

Just start. Don't go away and do everything. You can't do it. We've all been through the loop, the routine, where you just overcommit in your mind about, we heard an inspiring sermon to go do X. And so I've got 15 steps I'm going to go implement.

And then you do none of them. And then you're discouraged. Don't Go do everything. Go do something. God will help us.

God will give us strength. If these things sound heavy, then Jesus says, come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It doesn't mean that the Christian life is a cakewalk. That's not what that text means. What it does mean is that when we walk by faith, Jesus Christ meets us there and He gives us the strength that we need to be faithful to Him.

But He often doesn't supply that in advance. He doesn't supply it in advance. He wants us to walk by faith. He wants us to get moving and then He meets us there with the strength. We'll find Him to be true to this.

If we'll step out, if we'll make our dinner tables our great secret weapon, we'll find that Jesus Christ supplies everything that we need to be faithful to Him, to begin to do more than we've done in a very, very important category. And our families will be blessed. Let's go for the blessing. Let's pray. God, we know that your word is true.

We know that pure and undefiled religion is that we would visit widows and orphans in their trouble and that we would keep ourselves unspotted by the world. And we desire to be putting off all the things that we ought to put off. We desire to put on all the things that we ought to put on and and to find ourselves giving attention to both of these categories. Oh God would you help us. God would you would you send your spirit to do a mighty work in our families so that we would be found, we would be found faithful in this great category of the purpose of marriages and families that we would be giving you what you desire, godly offspring.

We would be multiplying but also subduing little bits of ground for the Lord Jesus Christ. We would see people baptized. We would see them taught to observe all the things that you've commanded because God happiness, happiness is there, joy is there, wherever your commands are observed. Who, what people has such wise laws, what people has such a great God as your people. No people.

Thank you God for what you've given us. Help us to be faithful with it in Jesus name, Amen.