The sermon titled 'The Christian Family as a Little Church, Building Homes Centered on Christ, Worship, and Holiness' draws parallels between the Christian family and the local church, emphasizing that both are created by God for His purposes. The speaker highlights the importance of orienting families around the Gospel of Jesus Christ and making disciples for God's glory. Several biblical passages, such as Deuteronomy 6, Psalm 78, Malachi 2, and Ephesians 6, are cited to illustrate the duties of parents in teaching their children about God. The sermon stresses building homes on Christ, focusing on worship and holiness. It explains the Trinity and why focusing on Christ is not isolating one person of the Trinity, as God the Father and the Holy Spirit play roles in teaching and empowering believers. Worship is portrayed as a daily necessity due to God's infinite worth, and holiness is described as both consecration to God and the transformation resulting from it. The speaker encourages listeners to be faithful in their current circumstances and to build their homes on Christ, worship, and holiness.

The title of the message is, The Christian Family as a Little Church, Building Homes Centered on Christ, Worship, and Holiness. I was assigned the title, But I'm delighted in the title, and I'm delighted in sort of the track that it took me down in my preparations. Let's ask God to help us. I thank you for our homes, and I thank you for our church, and the ways in which they're similar, and how our church helps us in our home life, and our home life, home lives help us in our church life. And I pray that you would cause both to be a blessing and to flourish here.

I pray these things in Jesus name, amen. The purposes and functions of a Christian family and a local church are similar enough that it can be useful to think of Christian families as miniature versions of local churches. Of course they're not identical and the analogy breaks down at certain points. For instance, you choose your local church But you don't choose your family members. Children, you didn't pick your mom and dad, you were just born into that family.

Parents don't pick their children. Children are born to them and then they're your sons and daughters. And you can choose to leave your local church and establish yourself in another local church. Families work a little bit differently than that. Still the overarching point is a sound one, which is that like a local Church is to do, a family is also to orient itself around the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That's true of families. We should be orienting our families around the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That's true of this church and all local churches. They should be orienting themselves around the gospel of Jesus Christ and on making disciples for the glory of God. That is a central thrust of family life, making disciples for the glory of God.

And of course that is the mission of the local church. So whatever differences there are, and there are differences, and the analogy can be pressed too far in ways that are very unhelpful, but those very fundamental things are the same. So we can think in some ways of our families as the local church in miniature. More to the point, we should think of both family and local church as religious to the core, as created by God and existing for God and His purposes. So if I say the family is created by God and for God for His purposes, you should say Amen.

And if I say our local church is created by God and for God and his purposes we should all say amen. So the church is not the religious thing while the home is for laundry and meals and houses. That's the wrong way to think about this. Both our families and our local church is created by God and exists for God and His purposes. We're both religious to the core.

Listen to the Genesis to Revelation testimony, the whole Bible testimony of God's instructions for families. Now here I'm going to deviate because I preached a lot of this last week and I'm not going to re-preach all of that, but I'm going to take them sequentially through Deuteronomy 6 and Psalm 78 and Malachi 2 and Ephesians 6 exactly like we did last. I'll just give you a summary statement for each. Deuteronomy 6. You should love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you should hide his words in your heart, and then you should diligently teach those things to your children.

When? While you sit in your house. And, when you walk by the way. And, when you lie down. And, when you rise up.

Psalm 78 talks about the way in which the faith is passed from generation to generation. God reveals to our fathers that they might teach us, that we might arise and teach them to the generation to come. And then verse 7 is the payoff. That they would put their hope in God. That's what all this is about.

That we would pass along a faith that we have and that we would teach the next generation that they would hope in God too. Because hoping in God is a saving hope, that's why. Malachi 2, verse 15, why marriage? Why the two-one? God seeks God the offspring.

What is God doing? By establishing a marriage and then putting children in that home, He wants more people in this world who know him and walk with him and have had their sins covered over by the blood of his son. Ephesians chapter 6 is really just a summary statement of what the Old Testament says, fathers don't provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. That really just is a summary statement and a repetition of Deuteronomy 6 and Psalm 78 and Malachi 2 and all those other places that speak of parents and their duties towards their children. So the Christian family, like the local church, is for the passing on of the passionate whole-person love of God and the teaching of His Word and growing in the faith.

So Christian families are for those very fundamental things and our church isn't about anything fundamentally different than that. Of course there's an external facing part of this in both family life and church life too. I know that's true. Now let's consider one by one the three elements in the title. Building a home centered on Christ, worship, and holiness.

First, building our homes on Christ. So we believe the Bible reveals a three in one God. A God in three persons blessed Trinity, like as we sing. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Three persons, one God.

So this is a mystery. When we talk about persons, we're thinking of very separate, independent things. But when we talk about God and use the same word, we're not talking about separate, independent things. We are talking about something that is in a sense distinct, but there is one essence to these. Three persons, one God, so it's not polytheism, multiple gods, in any sense, It is one true God revealed in the scriptures.

But how does he reveal himself in the scriptures? He reveals himself in triunity. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. So it might seem strange that we wouldn't just say build your home on God. In other words, why are we identifying just one person of this three-in-one God in this way?

Turn to Philippians 2. Philippians 2 teaches us why it's not inappropriate to say, build your home on Christ, and it's not an inappropriate isolation of one of the persons of the three-in-one Trinity. Philippians chapter 2. I'll be reading verses 5 through 11. Very well-worn territory here.

I understand that. No apologies. Philippians 2, 5 through 11, Paul writes, let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God. Another translation, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. He didn't hold on to it.

He left heaven, became a man. Verse 7, but made himself of no reputation, taking on the form of a bond servant and coming in the likeness of men, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross, even the shameful death of a criminal on the cross. Verse 9, Therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow. Those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father. Paul starts by talking about Jesus, his eternal glory that he relinquished to take on the form of a bond servant, to humble himself and to dwell in flesh for flesh, and his work on the cross, humbling himself even to the shameful death of a criminal on the cross, and then he says, therefore, because of that, God the Father has highly exalted his Son.

How high? He's given him the name above every name. And everyone will bow before him and every tongue will confess, that is the Lord. To the glory of the Father. So the glory of the Son is the glory of the Father.

Of the Father. God has highly exalted his son and it redounds to his own glory. The appointing of a son to save sinners and the exalting of his son in the salvation of sinners results also in his own glory. There is no disputing it. The people of God have a special relationship to Jesus.

Is there anything controversial in that statement to you? The people of God have a special relationship to Jesus, our Savior. And That is the purpose and design of God the Father God isn't offended by our special relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. He sent Him to save us. He designed us to have a special relationship with Him.

He designed Him to be the head and us to be the body. If that's not a special relationship, I don't know what one is. He is the head and we are the body. He is the husband and we are the bride. God made it that way.

This is for His own glory. This is special. And God the Father is not diminished by any of these things. In fact, he is exalted by all of these things. This does not diminish God the Father, it exalts him.

God the Father wants us building our houses, building our homes on the person and work of his son. And God the Holy Spirit is working within us to teach us to do it. And to give us power to do it. And to help us to do it. So in that way, to say build your home on Christ isn't isolating a person of the Trinity at all.

Now what does it mean to build on Christ? Well, We are disciples of Jesus. What does that mean? We're his students. He's the master and we're the learners.

He's the leader. And we're the followers. So, it starts with passing from death to life, spiritually, through repentance and faith in Jesus. We're nowhere without Jesus, His person and His work. The starting line is repentance and faith in Jesus.

You're nowhere until you're there. And then it progresses in learning to walk closely with Him. On the day that you were saved, it was wonderful, but you knew so little about what it meant to walk with him. And the next day you learned a little bit, and the next week you learned a little more, and the next month more. Over time we are learning what it means to walk with him and how it is that we can walk closely with him.

Part of that learning is times when we're not walking closely with him and we just feel like nothing's right. Part of learning to walk closely with him. It progresses in being conformed to his image. When we make progress, what do we talk about? That growing in Christ-likeness.

Learning to think more like we see him thinking in the gospels. And speak like we see him speaking in the gospels. And acting like we see him acting in the gospels. So that there's less of the old man, now I'm going to pull from Paul's language, less of the old man and we're putting on the new man and though it's slower than we wish it was, we see ourselves making progress, less of the old and more of the new and growing in Christ-likeness. Growing in this happy and complete obedience that we see in Jesus.

I think that's a great way to describe what we see in Jesus. Happy obedience, meaning it was his delight to do it, not a grudging duty in any sense. We've got to grow in that. It starts out as a whole lot of duty and sometimes grudging duty, and we get happier in it as we find out how good it is for us and how sweet it is to actually obey the Lord. Happy and complete obedience.

We grow in that. Parents, this is what we're tasked to do under our roof. To know the Lord, to grow and walk in closer to the Lord in these different ways, and then to try to help our children know the Lord, if he would give us the grace for that and had then as they do to Help them grow and walking with the Lord and all the while whether they're believers yet or not believers Yeah, we're teaching them his ways because His ways are good and they need to be learning them. We're not waiting till we're confident they're born again to teach them His ways. Part of teaching them His ways actually will make them see in themselves that something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

This is one way that we bring them to Christ is to teach them his ways. Yes, of course, we must have God's help. You are not sufficient to do what God has given our homes for the purpose of doing these things. How are you going to do that? The starting point of this is the raising of the spiritually dead and none of us are up to that task.

But What God has done is given us duties and then so often he's pleased to meet us there with the Holy Spirit, to breathe spiritual life where there was only spiritual death, and to merge together with the efforts that we're doing. So often he's pleased to do that. The name of Jesus should always be on our lips. It's not wrong to say, build your home on Christ. Take up his name on our lips.

So that was first building our homes on Christ. Next, building our homes on worship. Do you think of your home as a place of worship? If separate from this I asked you to describe your home, probably there would be many things mentioned before this and maybe this wouldn't be mentioned. If you reversed it and you caught me at a time when I wasn't preparing to preach on this and asked me about my home, what is your home about?

Describe your home to me. I might be a long ways or might miss it altogether. Do you think of your home as a place of worship? Well, how have you been thinking about up until this moment from this moment forward settle it in your mind that your home is a place of worship If it's nothing else in the world let it be a place of worship. Why?

Because God is worthy of all the worship we can give him, then times a thousand. Our home should be a place of worship because God must be worshipped. How can there be someone like the God who has revealed himself in the Bible? How could it be that he would not be worshipped every day? His infinite beauty and infinite goodness and infinite mercy.

Think of all the sins he's overlooked and infinite grace. Think of all the unmerited favor he's poured out. And infinite perfections are too much to just be adored one day a week. It's too much to live to one day a week. I love Isaiah 49 verse 6 so much.

Listen to Isaiah 49 verse 6. Indeed the Lord says, It is too small a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel. I will also give you as a right to the Gentiles that you should be my salvation to the ends of the earth." Now what's happening in that verse? We know more about what's happening in that verse than any Old Testament saint ever did. That is God the Father saying to his son, Saving the nation of Israel is too small a thing for you.

I will make you a savior of the whole world. That's more like it. You are too great of a savior just to save a couple million people in this nation. You'll simply have to save the world and bring together sinners from every people and tribe and tongue and nation. I want to say the same thing about worshiping God.

I want to take that thought and just bring the principle over. It's too small a thing that we would just worship God here on Sundays and then go about our business the rest of the week. It's too small a thing. It would be too small. There should be so much more worship than we could even do if we did it all day on Sundays.

It will be enough to preoccupy us throughout eternity a day is not enough. So we mobilize our homes for this. So we organize our homes around this. If our homes are about nothing else in the world, for all of our lives it should be about worshipping God because He's so worthy of it. Why not worship Him every day in our homes?

He's worthy every day. We're not ahead on giving Him what He deserves. Oh, we can take a break now. We got ahead on giving God what He deserves. I've already proved that God calls us to this in Deuteronomy 6 and Psalm 78 and Malachi chapter 2 and Ephesians 6 and we can go on and on.

But sometimes we think in the terms of means. The pathway. Reading scripture is a means and prayer is a means, and being a part of a local body of believers is a means, and these are a pathway. We don't think as much about the end. What do these things exist for?

What are they taking us? Worship! Reading the Bible is not about reading the Bible, it's about worship. Prayer is not about prayer, it's about worship. Being part of a local body of believers is not about being part of a local body of believers, it's about worship.

That's so obvious. And yet when I say it to myself I think, oh yeah, I should reorient because these pathways can so easily become... We act like they're the end, like they're the destination. They're not the destination. That we would see this glorious God who has revealed himself to us in Scripture and Worship Him from our hearts.

Adore Him. Do you have a frame of reference for that kind of language in your religious life? Adore Him. That's where these pathways are designed to take us. They are not the end.

There is an all-glorious God who is worthy of all of our worship, as much as we can adore him all of our lives. And these wonderful means entirely exist for and are infinitely less than this great end. None of the means is worthy of being compared to this end. They exist to take us there. The Bible says that if we don't, the rocks will cry out.

That's Luke 19.40. Well, I can't speak for you, but I've seen a glimpse of this God who's revealed himself to us in scripture. I'm sure it's just a glimpse, but I'm not giving up my spot. The Bible says that we don't cry out the Rock's will. I'm not giving up my spot.

Not in my life, not in my home. I hope you join me in saying that. So let's center our homes on this great privilege of worshipping God who made you and then saved you. It would be enough if He just made you and gave you your life. He would be worthy of your worship.

But then He saved you. He snatched you from the flames. Think of the privilege of worshipping this God. Let's center our homes on that. Building our homes on Christ, on worship, finally building our homes on holiness.

1st Thessalonians 4 verse 3, Paul says this, 1st Thessalonians 4 verse 3, For this is the will of God, your sanctification. In the Greek, this word that is translated sanctification, this is the will of God, your sanctification, in the Greek, it's the same word group as holy or holiness if you looked at that Greek transliterated of holy and where it's translated holy or holiness and where it's translated sanctification here you would essentially see the same word in transliteration so anytime in the New Testament you see sanctification you just think holy or holiness anytime you see holy or holiness you can think sanctification it's the same in the Greek. We're using different English words. I'm not really sure why. There might be a good reason.

I sorted out it. So 1 Thessalonians 4 verse 3 could as easily and well be translated, for this is the will of God, your holiness. God's will is that we're holy. We grow in holiness. We grow in holiness.

Now this word holiness or sanctification is used in two ways in the New Testament. And actually, if you go to the Greek lexicon, and you click on this word, you'll see both of these senses, one's primary, one's secondary. But you see them used in both ways often, but both often in the New Testament. One way is the thing itself, and the other way is the effect of the thing. What do I mean?

The thing itself is Consecration. What is consecration? Being set apart to and being set apart for. So I don't think set apartness is correct in English, but that's what we're talking about. Set-apartness.

Set-apart to something, set-apart for something. And of course, in the case of the New Testament, it is set-apart to God. It's God saying, I'm taking you out of your current condition, the world, under the curse, and I'm taking you out of that and setting you apart to myself. You belong to me. And so you're set apart to me and for me.

From now on, you're mine, you live for me. So That's what sanctification is or holiness is. That's the thing itself. The other is the effect of having been set apart to God and for God. So this actually has results in your life when God sets you apart.

Says your mind takes you for his own. All wrapped up in this is being given a new heart and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That has effects. What are the effects? It transforms.

It's such radical transformation that the New Testament language is born again, new creation, new man. So this is not a tweaked version of the old. It is like transformed and new. We were this, we become this. And we grow in what we know and how we think and in what we do.

We pretty much grow in every category. So there's sanctification, the thing in itself. God sets us apart to himself and for himself. He says, your money, he takes possession of us. He makes us sons and daughters.

We become part of a whole new family. But then there is the effect of this thing, the transformation of life that comes hand-in-hand with that. Again, not as fast as we would like it to happen, but it happens progressively over time. We should build our homes on holiness in both senses. Meaning, our homes should be more consecrated by the day, week, month, year, decade.

More set apart to God and for God today than we were yesterday. And please don't let it be that Our home isn't more set apart to God next year than it was this year. And homes built on the transforming effects of that. In other words, this should be working itself out in ways that we can see and others can see They're growing They are making progress. They are pressing forward life is hitting them with challenges life's hitting that home with lots of challenges, and they're growing in spite of it, maybe because of it, they're growing through it, they're changing, they're over time becoming more like Christ.

The members of this home over time are becoming more like Christ. This has to be a real thing because it's transforming them. The gospel is not a placebo effect. It's real transformation at the core. So go build your home in holiness.

Let your home be more God's possession, set apart to God and for God tomorrow than it ever could have been today. And, and, and, going just marching out through time. Growth and let it be transformed in ways that the world can see and that You can see too. Let me conclude by saying this. God has given you a home.

That also is a great privilege. You say, I'm not even married yet. I don't have a home. I'm just a little kid. Whatever you have, whatever sphere God has given you, it will probably give you a greater sphere later.

If you're single now, when you're married, the sphere expands. You get new opportunities. Guess what? You're only ready to do something with the new opportunities when you do something with the opportunities that you have right now. In a sense, You do have a little home.

You have the little sphere that God has given you. Do be faithful with it. So that when God expands your sphere, you're ready to honor Him in the new sphere. When you're single and you get married, this fear has expanded. You have new opportunities to honor Him, and then it expands again, and you have new opportunities, and as you age and as they grow, you have new opportunities.

The way to be ready for that is to be faithful. Today there's not another day to live. It's just a day. Build it, build that home. Build it on Christ.

Build it on worship. Build it on holiness. God, thank you. It's humbling to preach these things knowing all that I am and knowing all that I'm not, at least what I can see of it. I thank you that You give us an opportunity to shape the lives that you give us together in a home around these things to know you and to honor you in this world.

And I pray that you would give us grace to know you more and to honor you more in the lives that you've given to us. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.