Biblical Families

Thanksgiving is coming up in the next couple weeks and one thing I love about Thanksgiving is the gathering together of family. Some of my family is already here. In my house growing up we would have uncles, aunts, great uncle and aunt, cousins and 2nd cousins gathering together to share a meal together. For that one meal, it's usually great.

Then, with all that "family" together in one place, it's like a countdown clock begins. Everyone is on their best behavior, smiles and hugs, and funny stories. But maybe there's a countdown timer because the crazy is coming. The underlying drama or tension, the two people that are being nice but actually kind of hate each-other. Waiting for the old argument to come up...

On the immediate surface, for just a moment, your family can look perfect. But the real truth is that every single one of our families is to some degree, strained, stressed with a history of drama and brokenness.

This can make the holidays kind of a nightmare.

So, with Thanksgiving, and later Christmas coming up, we are starting in on a short series on family. What does the Bible say about families?

The Ideal

Well, families start with an ideal. They are created by God.

Created by God

Gen 1:27-28a

So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number...

Created to multiply, command to have children right there and to make the marriage thing clear, you often here this one at weddings:

Gen 2:18-, 20b-24

18 The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.”

20b ... But for Adam no suitable helper was found. 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

23 The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called ‘woman,’

for she was taken out of man.”

24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

Good. So this is a beautiful and ideal creation of God. Man and women together, being fruitful, having children, those children leaving father and mother when they are grown and cleaving to each other. Beautiful ideal of family.

Honor, love and submission

To further shape this ideal, God gave some commands regarding family.

Exodus 20:12Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you.

Ephesians 5:25Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

Ephesians 5:22Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.

(No maybe that 'submit' just offended some of you. It's the Bible. And don't worry, we are going to talk about this more next week).

Loving, Honoring, Submitting. Doesn't that sound nice?

We are created by God to live in family: loving, honoring and submitting to each other.

That is the ideal for human family.

The Real

Does that sound like your family?

Maybe a little bit. Maybe on our best days. Maybe in this dream you had one time.

But it misses the biting and fighting, the arguing, the bitterness, the sarcasm, the history of betrayal and pain. It misses the "you always" "you never" and "you are supposed to."

We have an ideal of family... and then we have our real family.

Return to the Adam's Family

Remember that idyllic creation of family in Genesis 2? How long did that last?

Next chapter, Genesis 3. Eve is deceived by the serpent and she sins. She takes the only fruit in all the Garden God told them not to eat. She eats a bite, then she gives it to Adam to bite.

The relationship to God was broken, but here is the thing, all relationships were dimmed and damaged as a result of sin.

I will wager, in all of Adam and Eve's ongoing relationship, Adam lived something like 930 years? Adam maybe once mentioned that whole "you had to eat the fruit..." thing. His trump card:

Eve"You forgot to take out the trash, Adam"

Adam"Yeah, well you ate the fruit and got us kicked out of the Garden of Eden! "

What do you say back to that?

The first family, created by God with this beautiful ideal... the real was not so beautiful.

Their children, the first brothers, founded a legacy for brothers of all time to follow.

Cain"My younger brother is getting the affection and approval I want... how can I take him out." Cain killed Abel, and ever since, older brothers have been coming real close to killing younger brothers ever since.

From the very first, families have been terrible. You can see the idea, the intention Go d had in creation, you see the ideal. and you can see the real.

You can see what God created... and it was good. It was ideal.

You can see what a real family looks like. Maybe your family is a whole lot closer to the real Adam's family than the ideal.

We live in the tension between real and ideal.

I love how real the Bible is about this.

The families that seem pretty ok in the Bible are the families we just don't know anything about. Surface details: everything looks fine. The families we get to see in detail always have all this drama and tension and tragedy.

Sound like life? My neighbors family looks great... until I get to know them and I discover all the crazy. Maybe to you, my family looks perfect. Get to know us. Just get to know me, I am most of the crazy in our family.

The Reuben Family

Just to make you get how honest and real the families in the Bible are, here is another little look.

Meet Reuben. Here is his family story.

Well my Great-Grandpa came to this country. He is the one who kind of made us wealthy. He did have an affair with my Great-Grandmother's maid before my Grandfather was born. So my great-uncle and his descendants are always trying to kill us.

My Grandfather was a little less weird but he kind of messed his kids up. My Dad and uncle were twins and he literally told my uncle "You are by far my favorite son." My Grandma preferred my Dad and together they tricked my Grandpa into giving the inheritance to my Dad...

but then my uncle tried to kill my Dad and so my Dad ran away, married two women and slept with one of each of their maids.

So anyway, I have 4 moms, 11 brothers, six of those are half-brothers. Some sisters, I lose count.

My Dad and uncle made up eventually, by the way, but now his descendants are always trying to kill us too.

So just like his Dad had a favorite, my Dad would constantly tell Joseph "you are by far my favorite son." Actually, favorite son of my favorite wife, even though she was a kleptomaniac. Anyway, we found little "favorite-son-boy" really arrogant and annoying. So we beat him up and sold him as a slave. Like you do.

Oh, and I kind-of-sort-of slept with my step-Mom and my Dad like demoted me from eldest to third. That was just after my brothers castrated and murdered a whole village for raping my sister.

That is the Reuben Family. For those who aren't familiar with the story, it is also the story of the Patriarchs of the Faith: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and his sons.

You think your family is messed up? Welcome to Biblical families.

The Bible isn't saying that that is good. It is descriptive of real families. The ideal is still what families were and are supposed to be. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were all supposed to have one wife and their family should honor, love and submit to one another. It didn't really play out that way.

We have an ideal and we see the real. We see that just like my family is weird and quirky and crazy and messed up in not so funny ways, so are the families of the Bible.

Why are Families Broken

We live in the tension between the ideal and the real.

The Why is not hard to understand. We see it in Genesis 3

We are all sinners.

Rom 3:23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

More specifically: we want and we do not have. To revisit a passage in James 4:1-2

1 What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.

Doesn't that sound like family? Does that sound like your family.

You don't have respect, they don't have love, she doesn't honor me, no one submits, every one wants something they don't have and they are striving to get it out of you or her or them.

Know that you are not alone.

We all live in this tension between the real and the ideal... and you know... we can't let go of either.

We have to hold on to the ideal. We have to chase it, pursue it, know it and discover it and, a little bit, begin to reflect it. Just like perfection, it becomes our direction. If we aren't, as families, heading for the ideal, where are we heading?

We have to hold on to the ideal.

And we have to acknowledge the real. We can do a lot of damage by pretending to be perfect. We can do even more damage by really thinking or convincing ourselves that we are perfect. The truth is, the real is, that we fall far short of the ideal. We are sinners bound together in families and that is a messy business. We all want things we do not have and we struggle and plot how to get things from each other: love, respect, attention, freedom.

We are in a real family, striving for God's ideal of family.

We have to hold on to both of those things or we lose something.

We have to live in the tension.

The Family of God

One final family that shows the tension between the real and the ideal.

A family who has adopted internationally like it's no big deal. A family who has adopted people with histories and problems: murderers, rapists, and blasphemers. Liars, adulterers and even Sabbath-breakers! A family who tries to stick all the nationalities and ethnicities, all the personality types, all peoples as brothers and sisters.

The family of God.

Here is how crazy that family is: you are invited to be a part of it. I am a part of it. Look around: we are in the family of God... that is one crazy family.

We live in the real but the ideal is coming.

Are there things we can do grow and improve our families, especially the way we live and love in our families? Yes, absolutely, more next week. But to me this is a message of incredible hope:

Your family is messed up, just like every other family here and every other family in the Bible.

We sit back, breathe a sigh of relief. We are in this together. And God our Father, Father of the most rebellious drama-filled tension-causing family of them all, He is going to help us through.

Somehow, He has promised, ultimately, He is going to solve every tension, every fight, all the drama and rebellion in His family.