God's Firm Foundations: Family

Prerequisites to the Sermon

We are preaching on these institutions because we believe in firming up God’s foundations for society.

Pastor Bob said last week that God had said, “It is not good that man should be alone,” but man now needs to learn how to get along.

Because these are God’s Institutions for Society, it is obvious that these are the things that our Enemy, Satan, will attack in society.

In thinking of marriage last week, he has attacked marriage by undermining the value of covenant in our day, making marriage all about the self, and making it completely about pleasure.

This attack has resulted in millions of divorces, broken homes, broken contracts, and broken lives in our generation.

Now we think about this institution of Family this morning, because it is the bedrock of the foundation of society.

Satan has also attacked family by:

Divorce

Abortion

Redefinition of a biblical family

Making family about self. Limiting children based on convenience. etc.

Lead into Chuck Colson’s statement in Against the Night: Living in the New Dark Ages (1989 - 31 years ago):

“Ordained by God as the basic unit of human organization, the family is not only necessary for propagating the race, but is the first school of human instruction. Parents take small, self-centered monsters who spend much of their time screaming defiantly and hurling peas on the carpet and teach them to share, to wait their turn, to respect other’s property. These lessons translate into respect for others, self-restraint, obedience to law - in short, into the virtues of individual character that are vital to a society’s survival.

No other structure can replace the family. Without it, our children have no moral foundation. Without it they become moral illiterates whose only law is self.

3. There are a million parenting manuals, but they are all from unique scenarios. They are helpful, but unless they are Bible they are not absolute truth. We need to look at the Bible for how to be good parents and children and families, and the first thing the Bible tells us is that all of this flows out of the heart condition. So today, I want to think with you about your heart condition and how it affects the family.

Dressing the Heart (Colossians 3:12-14)

Colossians and Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary iii. Do All in the Name of the Lord Jesus (3:12–17)

Having taken off the shabby ‘clothes’ appropriate for the old age, the Colossians are to be fitted out with beautiful new robes, appropriate for their new position. They are not accustomed to such finery, but God’s loving and gracious choice of them makes it fitting that they should now wear it.

Put on Compassionate hearts.

Put on kindness.

- And if ‘kindness’ is a Christlike attitude towards others, humility is the Christlike attitude towards oneself, supremely exemplified in that readiness to forgo his own rights

Wright, N. T. (1986). Colossians and Philemon: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 12, p. 146). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Put on humility.

Put on meekness.

Put on patience = forbearance and forgiveness

Blessing the Heart (Colossians 3:15-17)

Let Peace of Christ rule your heart, resulting in thankfulness.

Colossians and Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary iii. Do All in the Name of the Lord Jesus (3:12–17)

Love, peace and gratitude reinforce each other, and set the context within which the exhortations of the next verses may be obeyed.

2. Let the Word of Christ dwell in your heart richly, resulting in teaching, admonition, singing, and thankfulness.

3. Let the Glory and Name of Christ guide your heart, resulting in thanks and glory to the Father.

Acting ‘in someone’s name’ means both representing him and being empowered to do so. Paul’s exhortation is therefore a salutary check on behaviour (‘can I really do this, if I am representing the Lord Jesus?’) and an encouragement to persevere with difficult tasks undertaken for him, knowing that necessary strength will be provided.

Wright, N. T. (1986). Colossians and Philemon: an introduction and commentary (Vol. 12, p. 149). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

Assessing the Heart (Colossians 3:18-24)

When Followers of Christ have dressed hearts and blessed hearts:

Wives are submissive to their husbands.

Husbands are loving their wives.

Children are obeying their parents.

Father’s are not purposefully angering their children.

Servants or employees are working well for Jesus.

Masters or employers are managing well for Jesus.

You Serve the Lord Christ!

All other relationships are based on this relationship

One commentary wrote:

“How happy would true religion make the world if it everywhere prevailed , influencing every state of things and every relation of life!”

Louis Armstrong sang:

I hear babies cry, I watch them grow They'll learn much more Than I'll ever know And I think to myself What a wonderful world.

But this is not happening, because as Chuck Colson again wrote in Against the Night:

“It is easier to redefine family than it is to restore it.”

The Poet Laureate William Cowper, who authored hymns like There is a Fountain Filled with Blood and God Moves in Mysterious Ways, lived much of his life depressed and even some of it in an sanatorium. He had lost his loving Christian mother when he was only 6 years old, but listen to what he wrote as an adult to a friend in a poem entitled Tirocinium decades later:

This fond attachment to the well-known place,

When first we started into life’s long race,

Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway,

We feel it even in age and at our last day.