Last week, I started to answer the question of where and when we worship by looking at the personal aspect of worship. The next aspect of worship that I want to consider is that of “family worship”. Before we can parse through the “when and where” of family worship, I need to address the challenges that Christian families face in our society. Let me say to start with that this sermon will be frank, and the conclusions I draw may be radical, but what I have to say comes from two deep and long-standing pains that I have endured as a member of this society.
First, you would have to be blind not to notice the cataclysmic shift that has occurred over the last 50 years with respect to the institutions of marriage and family. Just this past week, in a speech before congress, Representative Cori Bush referred to mothers as “birthing people.” Her statement set off a firestorm with conservatives who were surprised at the terminology and equally surprised liberals who could not believe that conservatives were so exclusive to “heteronormative” gender roles when it is obvious that there are innumerable genders beyond “male” and “female”. Fifty years ago, terminology like this would have been absurd on its face, but the slow fade from Second Wave Feminism of the 1960s to the Abortion debate of the 1970s to the Gay-rights protests and sexual liberation of the 1980s to the Marriage-Equality battles of the 2000s have led to a world in which the most fundamental aspects of an ordered society are questioned.
Woven in between the lines of all of these seismic cultural changes are the individual losses that Christians have experienced. Mingled with the cultural movements of feminism and sexual liberation are the real-life consequences of a rise in the divorce rate and single parent homes, even within the Church. Faithful Christian fathers and mothers now dread a different version of “the talk”; one that doesn’t involve a discussion of sex but sexual identity. Parents watch as their teenage children move off to college, become sympathetic to and then indoctrinated in unbiblical views about human sexuality, marriage, and the family.
With these shifts in culture and their inevitable impacts on the Church, Christians have responded in one of two ways. One response has been to pull away from culture and establish a separate, baptized culture for the Church. But, the far more popular response from Christians has been to engage with culture, particularly through the avenue of politics. Beginning with Ronald Reagan and the rise of the “Silent Majority” under Jerry Falwell, evangelicals have sought with each new administration to change culture by electing presidents who align with our values, with the ultimate hope that a conservative majority on the Supreme Court will turn the tide of moral decay in our country. Yet, conservative presidents have held office for 24 of the last 40 years (60% of the time), and the society has continued its moral decline without any evidence of abatement. As my friend, Rob Fossett (the pastor at First Presbyterian in Greenville), likes to point out, evangelical involvement in politics seems to have had the opposite effect to what was intended. The trouble that I find with the evangelical obsession with politics is that we have found in politics a convenient scapegoat. I’ve heard Christians blame the moral decay of the country on everything from the lack of prayer in schools to the relaxed disciplinary rules for teachers to the liberal democrats in congress. But, you know who I never hear receiving the blame? We Christians!
This morning, I want to propose another way that we, as Christians, can impact our culture and shape it for good. It is a way that involves more than voting. It is a hard way. It requires living in this world but not of it. Yet, it is the way that God has ordained. So, let’s begin by reading our text from Deut. 6:4-15. This morning, I want to focus on one point. I want you to see that God’s purpose for the family is the expansion of his glory through a world that worships him.
If you pay close attention to the verses we just read, you’ll notice two movements. First, in verses 4-9, Moses exhorts the Israelites to diligently teach the law of God within each and every family in Israel. Parents are charged to talk about the law all the time: inside and outside the house, on a road trip, in bed, and early in the morning. They are to teach the law so diligently that it will be like they have it written on their bodies and all over their houses. Second, in verses 10-15, Moses turns to the reason every parent should do this. Moses knows that the luxury that they will enjoy in the promised land will cause them to forget the mighty works of God that delivered them from Egypt. He knows that they will get comfortable, and in their comfort they will begin to think that they earned the land by their own might or worthiness. So, if the generations that come after are to remember, parents must be faithful to teach their children the law.
Rooted in this point that Moses makes is a principle that is found in the Law itself. To see that, flip back to chapter 5, verse 16. Every parent loves this verse, and every child hates to hear it. But, we typically misunderstand this commandment. We read it to say that the child who is obedient will have a long life. I want to suggest that this commandment is directing us towards a broader principle in the law: obedience to the Law of God ensures that God’s people will be sustained in the land that they are given. Notice that the concern of this commandment is so that “it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” If the Israelites were to remain in the land and prosper in it, they could only do so by remembering and obeying the Law of God. And children must honor and obey their parents, so that they might continue in the land. As the Israelites obeyed God, the land would prosper. When they failed to do so, the land would wither. As they proclaimed the excellencies of the one true God, the Gentiles would be drawn to Jehovah. When they bowed down to other gods, the same Gentile nations would lead them away in chains. So, we find that the purpose of God for Israel was that he might be glorified through them, starting and ending with the faithfulness of each family.
This principle was true before Israel, though. In fact, what God is doing here in Deut. 6 is simply a recapitulation of the first commandments that he gave to mankind back in Genesis 1:26-31. Here we find that God makes man and woman in his own image, and there are three ways that mankind is to bear that image of God to the world. They are to be fruitful, to subdue, and to have dominion. Chief among those commandments is the command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” I say that it is the chief command because the commands to subdue and rule cannot happen with just two people! In order to bring God’s rule to bear over the whole of creation, Adam and Eve would have to bear children. They would have to raise their children to know God and obey his commandments. They would have to teach their children to worship God through their work and rule.
Brothers and sisters, this is cultural transformation the way God intended it. The world changes culture through subtraction, either by shaming everyone into the same beliefs as we see in our society, or through the outright genocide of whole people groups, as we see in China. But, God’s purpose is to form culture through addition, with Christian parents having babies and raising them in the admonition of the Lord. The world changes culture through power, using whatever means necessary to gain a leg up on the political opponent, even if it means compromising the principles they claim they have. But God’s way of forming culture is through the simple faith of a child as he sits on his father’s knee and learns the ways of the Lord. Psalm 127:3-4 says that children are the heritage of the Lord and compares them to arrows that a warrior uses in battle. In other words, the only effective way to win the culture war is to raise a family.
To do this, church, we have to change. We have to stop speaking of children as a burden and start treating them like the blessings they are. For generations now, we Christians have bought into the same philosophy that began with the secularist of the early 20th century. I hear Christian parents tell their children, “Now, don’t get married until you are ‘ready’. Don’t have children until you are ‘ready’. Don’t have too many children until you are ‘ready’.” STOP! Do you not realize what these statements imply?! First of all, you will never be ready for marriage, but marriage is a blessing! It is the first institution that God established. It is good! And, you will never be ready for children, but children are a blessing! We have to stop talking about marriage and children as though they are lesser priorities than money and career and education. And, we have to treat children like they matter here in church, too. If we are going to see this church grow and prosper for years to come, we must be about the task of raising the next generation. This means that life will be messy, because it always is when children are around. But it’s a good messy. Do not let your peculiarities about food in the sanctuary or crying babies during the worship service be a reason a child is turned away from the kingdom!
To do this, parents have to change, too. Young men and women, you need to have children. And, I know this is a radical statement, but you need to have a lot. You need to be diligent to raise them in a Christian home, to raise them in church, to raise them to know the Lord. Some of you might be thinking, “but what if we can’t have children, or what if we’ve stopped having them?” If you can’t have children, then adopt. There is no greater picture of God’s grace than the adoption of a child. If you can’t adopt, then foster. If you can’t foster, then pour every extra moment you have into your nieces and nephews. Teach children’s Sunday school. Volunteer for VBS.
Aunts, uncles, and grandparents have to change, too. You know that this society is in desperate straits. Watching Fox News and bemoaning the state of the world ain’t gonna cut it! The young men and women of this congregation need you. They need your wisdom. They need your help. They need you to teach so they can be taught. They need you to love their children.
God’s purpose for his glory still starts and ends with the family. Where the family goes, so goes the church. Where the family goes, so goes the nation. If we are to be a people who delight in the worship of God, we must value family.
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