Loving Your Family Part One

Introduction

Today to start off our lesson, I want to teach you a new word.

Microcosm

How many of you have heard of a microcosm before?

Microcosm

a community, place, or situation regarded as encapsulating in miniature the characteristic qualities or features of something much larger.

Miniature version

Examples of a Microcosm

Eureka is a microcosm of Woodford County

School is a microcosm of it’s surrounding society

An athlete is a microcosm of a team

A Hot Wheels car is a microcosm of an actual car

How does this concept of a microcosm relate to our teaching series of a Gospel Based Family?

There is another example of a microcosm and that is your family unit is a microcosm of a local church.

So in a sense your family unit is a miniature version of what the local church should be like.

So what does this mean? This means that the characteristics of local church should also be found in a family unit.

We see this in Deut. 6:4-9

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 CSB

“Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.

Here we see that Israel in the old testament were commanded to worship God with all of their heart, soul, and strength. We also see that parents were supposed to teach their children how to do this. So in a sense, parents are supposed to be teachers of the bible just like a pastor or a leader in the church is a teacher of the bible whether on a Sunday morning (which would be the pastor) or in a small group (which would be a leader in the church).

A Biblical Theology of Youth Ministry says this,

“In this way, the father is a type of pastor over his family and is responsible to ensure that the home is a place where Christ is loved, known, and honored. It is for this reason that Jonathan Edwards wrote, “Every Christian family ought to be as it were a little church.””

I say all of this to come to this conclusion. What is said in the bible about how Christians should interact with one another is true when it comes to how siblings should interact with one another.

As we continue our teaching series “Gospel Based Family” we will be looking how we are called to be Christ-like toward our siblings. Today we will look at what it looks like to love one another in a gospel based family.

1 Corinth. 13:4-7

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 13

4 Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, 5 is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs. 6 Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.