What Does the Bible Say About Family?
Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 7 viewsNotes
Transcript
Handout
Handout
What is Family?
What is Family?
Hebrew term Mispaha describes the word “household”.
Included wife; children; unmarried daughters sometimes married sons [and their families]; grandparents; great grandparents; concubines; servants; slaves; visitors and prisoners of war.
Common setting - Patriarchal Setting - A setting in which men hold primary power. The father was the head of the family, having authority over all of his family.
Paterfamilias.
With that being said the first place we see family spoken about is actually in a the command to create family.
God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
1. What God create in order to start the first family on earth?
Hint: Two distinct natures/sexes - Male and Female
2. Why do you think God commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply?
Hint: Image bearers; Reflections of God’s character.
There are many reasons for why God created families and we are gonna learn about a few of them today.
Understanding God Through the Roles in a Family.
Understanding God Through the Roles in a Family.
Family is a central metaphor for understanding our relationship to God.
“Surely, as a woman treacherously departs from her lover, So you have dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel,” declares the Lord.
Israel is portrayed as the Lord’s daughter or wife.
Then His mother and His brothers arrived, and standing outside they sent word to Him and called Him. A crowd was sitting around Him, and they said to Him, “Behold, Your mother and Your brothers are outside looking for You.” Answering them, He said, “Who are My mother and My brothers?” Looking about at those who were sitting around Him, He said, “Behold My mother and My brothers! “For whoever does the will of God, he is My brother and sister and mother.”
Jesus’ followers are children of God.
In many of the letters of the apostles, followers of Jesus are referred to as brothers and sisters.
Now I urge you, brethren, keep your eye on those who cause dissensions and hindrances contrary to the teaching which you learned, and turn away from them.
The covenant with God is understood as a great extended family. Meaning Christ followers have joined into a relationship with God and we are considered to be a part of His spiritual family - In addition to being apart of God’s family - we have to learn who to relate to other’s in our own family.
Understanding How to Relate to Others through the Role in a Family.
Understanding How to Relate to Others through the Role in a Family.
3. What are some of the God’s characteristics that we learn through the roles of mother, father and child?
Father and Mother
Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
Children
Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.
Other Christians
and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ.
Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”
Employees
Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ;
Business Owners
And masters, do the same things to them, and give up threatening, knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no partiality with Him.
Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.
4. How do we learn these things?
God called Adam and Eve to start families to produce more image bearers, but also there is the implication that parents are to teach their families about Him and His love.
The Old Testament writings instructed the people of God to teach their children about God’s work and covenant love.
“For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.”
“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.
‘Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you on the land which the Lord your God gives you.
Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.
The New Testament reflects these teachings and also provides instruction to fathers and parents.
Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.
5. Who is the best example of living out God’s characteristics that are seen in the family?
Living Out The Gospel.
Living Out The Gospel.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. “You are My friends if you do what I command you. “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My name He may give to you. “This I command you, that you love one another.
Culture and Family?
Culture and Family?
6. How does the world interpret what a family can be?
Same sex marriage.
Parents want to be friends.
Parents not teaching or raising their children according to God’s holy and righteousness.
Children thinking they can act like adults.
Premarital sex.
Entitlement.
7. Who can tell why Family is important?