In Scott Brown's sermon titled 'Introduction Day 2 - Do You Consider God Has Made You?', he emphasizes the importance of recognizing God's ownership over our lives and living in obedience to Him. The sermon reflects on the biblical passage from Isaiah 1:3, highlighting mankind's failure to consider God's creation and ownership. The focus is on living a life that is distinctively Christian, especially in the context of a father-son relationship. Brown argues that Christian families, particularly fathers and sons, should live differently from the world by adhering to God's commands and walking together through life. The relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ serves as a divine paradigm for earthly fathers and sons, highlighting love, working together, teaching, and joyful submission. Brown introduces an acronym 'POWER' to explain the approach he took with his son, emphasizing proximity, observation, wisdom, eye contact, and relationship. These principles foster a strong father-son bond and promote a lifestyle contrary to worldly norms, advocating for fathers to actively engage and walk alongside their sons, imparting wisdom and guidance.

Let's pray father. We thank you for a new day. It's a beautiful day again. We're so grateful Lord we pray you would make us so aware of your claim upon our lives Amen, so let's Let's recite Isaiah 1 3 together Do it together with me The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not consider.

And what the problem is with mankind is that he does not consider that God has made him and God owns him you know when you woke up this morning you know I was the first thought Lord you made me you woke me up today. My life is yours. I belong to you there's nothing sweeter than to have that come to your mind and If it didn't come to your mind today pray that it would and pray that it would all day long in the morning and the evening and the middle of the night. Now the whole proposition that we're making here at this retreat is that it really matters how you live. If you the truth about life is that if you obey the Lord Jesus Christ he'll bless you.

It's very very simple. Living differently is what God calls his people to do and because this is a father-son retreat living differently as fathers and sons is so critical. Do not live the ways the Gentiles live as fathers and sons it's it's it's corruption but the problem is if you actually live the way that God commands you to live as a father and son you will be strange you'll look strange people will think you're strange And you will be strange because you're obeying God. And you are walking with your sons. You're teaching them when you sit in the house, when you walk by the way.

You don't turn them over to other people you walk with them and You carry them all the way through life. That's strange The rest of the world does not do this the rest of the world delegates and offloads their sons to other people And men today don't walk with their sons. But God commands you to do that. And for decades, the churches wanted to look like the world and feel like the world and make worldly people comfortable in their churches. This is the first stage of apostasy.

When people look at Christians, they should say, that's strange. That's not like the world. When people come into a church, they shouldn't say, this is like my nightclub. This is the Church of Jesus Christ. They should actually be thinking, I don't belong here.

I'm part of the world and these people are walking with God. So it's so critical That we are, when we think of our families and particularly fathers and sons, that we do not walk in the ways of the Gentiles. God calls people to live differently. Several years ago I started writing a book called Living Differently, and it's still in progress. But the truth is, Christian people think differently, they act differently, they raise their children differently, they operate their marriages differently, they have families differently, they manage their money differently, they think about manhood and womanhood differently, they engage the church differently, they dress differently, They do everything differently.

And this is so critical that as fathers and sons, you understand how important it is to live in a Christian way, to think Christianly about the way that you have fathers and sons together. Now, I just want to make a couple of comments to sort of launch the day and really to introduce Trent's message to us. And this retreat is really designed to bring fathers and sons together. We must never forget that the foundation of the universe is the love of a father and his son. And so your relationship is so pivotal.

It's a representative relationship. It's a representative relationship of God the Father and his son, Jesus Christ. And I think one of the most encouraging things that fathers and sons can grasp is that God has called us to be like his son and he calls fathers to be like their father in heaven And I just want to run us through a few characteristics of the relationship of God the Father and his Son. Because the relationship of God the Father and his son is a paradigm. It's a pattern for you as a father and it's also a pattern for you as sons.

And we actually are commanded to become like Christ in 1 Peter 1, in holy conduct, in 1 Peter 2 in his suffering, in many, many ways we're commanded to become like him. But I want to just identify several patterns for fathers and sons very briefly, and I pray that these patterns are lived out while you're here and lived out when you go home as well. First of all, the Father loves the Son. That's 1st John 15, 9, and 10. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.

It's interesting the very first mention of the word love the first time the word love appears in the Bible it is It's a it's of a father's love for his son Abraham when he sacrifices his son the son whom I love and then secondly the father and the son are always working together and you find this this pattern this is a pattern for fathers and sons fathers and sons should be working together and in the biblical picture the father is designing he's reigning and he's delegating work to his son and sharing work with his son in John 5 19 my father has been working until now and I have been working and in Proverbs chapter 8 you find this remarkable picture of the father and the son working together in creation and the sons delight in the in the sons of men and The sons delight in in doing the creation work of his father. But the father clearly gave work to his son to do. And the father worked alongside with his son. This is one of the great lapses of fathers today. They don't give their sons work to do, And they don't work alongside their sons They might delegate work to their sons, but they don't work with them and teach them how to work And it's one of the most terrible things that's really happened in our culture Next the son joyfully submits to the father in his incarnation In John 8 28 The Lord Jesus says I do nothing of myself But as my father taught me I speak these things and he who sent me is with me The father has not left me alone for I always do those things That please him the son submits to the father in his incarnation so you sons look at me This is the time when you learn how to walk in wisdom by submitting to your father.

Don't contradict your father Follow your father listen to your father and the Bible promises that if you if you honor your father your mother God will bless you. That's a promise and if you don't you'll bang your head up against the wall for the rest of your life That's just the way it works. You can't beat the system if you're dishonoring your father right now you've got trouble ahead big trouble hey by the way the happiest men I know are the men who honored their fathers they're the best adjusted They have the greatest longevity and effectiveness in their work as they submit to the authorities of their bosses and things like that It really matters young boys Whether you submit to your father and honor him There's much that we could say the Son imitates his father's actions in Word and Deed, John 5.30. I do nothing unless I see my father doing it. I say nothing unless I hear my father saying it.

All this to say, sons, have your eyes on your father. Gravitate toward your father, not other little boys. Also we find the father teaches the son the we know this from all over the Bible but in John 828 the father teaches the son the Father has not left me alone for I always do those things that please him and the Son did nothing of himself now I wanted to try to find a way to explain this to my son when he was growing up. I only had one son. I had three daughters and I wanted to explain to my son why I wanted him to be with me, to work with me, and to walk with me.

Even when we were in church meetings, even when we were in father-son retreats like this I wanted my son with me I didn't want him I didn't want him very much with other little boys he was he was allowed to be with other little boys but I restrained it because I wanted him to have his eyes on me more than anything else I tried to explain it to him in different ways. And he actually did do that. And I'm very grateful for it. And it put him about 10 years ahead of his peers because he did that. In fact, frankly, you see that house over there?

That's his house. My son right now is with one of my daughters in Nebraska today, so he couldn't be here. But the reason that house is sitting there and the reason my son is now 29 years old with eight children is that he listened to me and he didn't spend his youth playing. He spent his youth working and working with me. And he wanted to have a house built free and clear by the time he was 18.

And that happened to him. And so now he's living over there with eight children and a house paid for free and clear. But the reason is because he honored his father. He listened to me, and I'm so glad that he did. But I tried to explain to him why I wanted him to be with me more than anyone else.

And I came up with an acronym to explain it to him. And it's from the word power, P-O-W-E-R. And I said, David, here's why I want you to be with me. First of all, P, proximity. I'm the best person for you to be with I'm the wisest person in your life So I being proximity to me is the best thing that you can do I I didn't believe that other ten-year-olds were the best companions They weren't the wisest men in the room.

I was wiser than them, and I wanted him to be with wise men. The Bible talks about those who walk with the wise are wise, and those who walk with the fools suffer harm. So secondly, observation. Oh, remember the acronym is POWER. P.O.

Observation. I wanted him to be standing with me and making observation of the conversations and the things that were going on. It was difficult for me because I was always having to draw my son in. You know, he would have the tendency to be looking around, you know, at the other boys that were running around. And so I had to work harder to just engage him in conversations with other adult men who were wiser than those boys that were running around.

The next the next letter W in the word power, wisdom. I wanted him to be with me to to gain wisdom from those conversations that we were having. The next one, the next letter E, eye contact. I didn't want him to be looking around, looking at the floor. I wanted him to be looking into that man's eyes.

Whatever man is talking, you look into his eyes and you learn from him and you respect him by looking at him in his eyes. I want him to make eye contact and learn how to make eye contact with men and then finally our the last letter in power relationship. I wanted him to have relationships with the godliest wisest men that I knew and he would know the difference but I wanted him to be in relationship with those men to know those men to understand those men now so that's what I did That's just how I did that's how I was trying to hack it out with my own son to try to help him not to be focused Another little boys, but be focused on me the wisest person in the room in his life and I just I just so recommend to your brothers that you keep your sons with you as much as you can. If you have a lifestyle that doesn't allow you to do that, I would just say you don't want to fast forward yourself 20 years and say, wow, I wish I had walked with my son. Because the Bible actually tells you what you should do with your sons and your daughters, and that is to walk with them.

The world's way is to delegate them and offload them. God's ways is to walk with them. The Hebrew method of fathers and sons is a walk-along, talk-along method. And by the way, it's not the Greek method where you just pour information into people's heads. Information is included.

But what the Bible calls fathers to do is to walk with their sons and for their sons to walk with their fathers So that's the whole proposition Give your son a lot of work to do and keep him with you as much as you can in every context even while the rest of the world and the rest of the Christian world is doing something different live differently God will bless you