2020: A Year of Celebration!

Image Bearers Steward Family to Reflect God’s Glory!

Key Verses:  Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Genesis 12:1-3; and Ephesians 5:25—6:4)

Written and delivered by Pastor Jerry Ingalls from the building of the First Baptist Church of New Castle, Indiana through an on-line service to the Church of Jesus Christ.

 

The family is the primary small group of the church. The Plan of God begins in the home and then goes with us wherever we go. The mission of God has always started in the household. No matter your current life season or what your household looks like, please know that this message is for each of us as restored Image Bearers of God. The ultimate purpose of our lives is not determined by how any of us feel about our own lives—we are here to reflect God’s glory by loving, caring, and stewarding for His creation as agents of God’s Kingdom!

 

Listen to one of the oldest books in the Bible. The fifth book of Moses, Deuteronomy 6:4-9,

 

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, 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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

 

The Word of God is the primer by which we teach children to read and write and that which we hide in our hearts so that we do not sin against God. How can households with children start integrating Bible memory work, reading from the scriptures, cursive writing with the Psalms? How can we work a biblical worldview into how we search on Google and read news stories and engage social media? You don’t need kids to do this… This is an opportunity for each of us.

 

As a congregation, we invite people to be in groups together for Bible study and fellowship, but those were never meant to substitute God’s original design for spiritual growth as a priority of the home. God’s plan for your holiness, maturity in Christ, and social needs was intentionally designed and instructed for your family. The family is God’s first small group, but when we don’t have that, what a blessing it is that there are small groups for singles, widows and widowers, and people who do not experience spiritual unity in their family units.

 

That is God’s grace by being a part of a congregation, because whether at home or in an congregational small group, God’s purpose for your home or small group is the same.

 

How is your small group helping you mature in Christ? How is your home prioritizing spiritual growth?

 

We were designed to live in community, in relationship, because God has always and will always exist in perfect community within Himself—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.[1] There never was a time that God was or will be lonely. He is perfect within Himself. God didn’t create humanity because He was lonely or somehow incomplete without us. God created His creation out of His great love and capacity to love, to delight in us and for us to delight in Him, to know and to be known.

 

Humans are designed and commanded to steward the world that God created. We are to reflect His Image and to respond to His plan by loving, caring for, and stewarding God’s creation. That important job began with Adam and Eve, of course, but we can’t forget that the family has been, from the very beginning, God’s primary plan! The church came much later and when it did come, it did not replace the family; rather, it brought families together with a common vision of the resurrection from the dead and the coming of Jesus Christ to make all things new—to cultivate the soil of this dying world and to plant seeds in human hearts for that which is to come.

 

It was through the family that God designed us to bless all the families of the earth! Listen to Genesis 12:3c in God’s great commission to Abraham and Sarah,

“And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

 

Families gather together and make communities and then communities coalesce together to make societies. The larger the group, the more diverse and difficult it gets, but at the heart of every society is the family unit and at the heart of the family is the need for spiritual leadership.

 

 

We are local congregations made up of family units, whether it is one individual or a five-generation group of people. And local congregations together make up the larger Church, who is called by God to look like Jesus—the body of Christ! As Paul says in Romans 12:5, “so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”

 

Local churches are only as healthy as the individuals and families who covenant together to be a congregation. The Church is only as healthy as the congregations of each community, county, state, nation, and world. We are the only Jesus the world sees…

 

If your family is a church, how healthy are your members? And what do they think about you as a person who is responsible for the spiritual growth of the other family members? How do you and your family affect the health of our congregation? What does the world see through us?

 

Image Bearers are called to steward their own families first because that is where we are transformed into Christ’s image the most. Guess who God is using to cause you to be more gentle and humble, kind and generous, loving and patient? Yes, your parents or your children, your aunts and uncles, your cousins, nieces and nephews, your grandparents…your spouse!

 

As Paul said in Romans 8:29,

“For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren.”

 

The family is where that begins and continues. The family only grows up as each family member matures. So if a parent never matures, but remains focused on themselves (the epitome of immaturity), they are hindering their child’s ability to mature into adulthood. An easy example is when you watch a parent deal with their child’s temper tantrum at a restaurant. We expect that,  but it is an altogether different matter to watch a parent throw a temper tantrum at a basketball game and everyone, but them, knows it and is looking around for the grandparents (the parent’s parents) to bring the adult child back into conformity with the family expectations of attitudes and behaviors. Ultimately, this is why we have police and the department of corrections. When this can’t be done in families, local churches and community organizations such as schools, society has created mechanisms to deal with it—the police and department of corrections.

 

When I always get my way, I’m not forced to grow or change or sacrifice or be obedient or anything. In fact, it is dangerous for any of us to always get our way! When I have to put someone before me by holding my tongue or suspending my opinions, I have to grow in my Christlikeness. Whether it is my immediate family, my extended family, or my church family, those people are sanding off my rough spots, removing the selfishness of my heart, breaking my pride and arrogance, if I choose to let them. I can, if I want to, pull myself out of God’s plan for my life, but it is usually to my detriment personally and to the detriment of the family and church. Christians are formed in the crucible of relationships—at home and at church! Don’t bail before the blessing!

 

Are you maturing because you are willing to remain as a member of a family or church?  

 

The church is a multigenerational family built on individual members and their families. The purpose of the Church is to respond to the plan of God in such as way that we reflect God as one mature body and not act like children. This is what Paul is teaching us in Ephesians 4:11-16,

 

And he gave the [leaders of the church] to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love [italics added].

 

We are to speak the truth in love! Two sides of the same coin—never to be separated. But our culture has lost this skill and unfortunately with it so have many in our families and churches.

 

Church membership has fallen into the same dysfunctionality as the modern family—we have become deceived that church and family are about our personal happiness and fulfillment, to meet our needs. What a dangerous situation it is when your personal well-being is dependent on another person always doing what you want them to do—making you happy and feeling self-fulfilled. That is not real family, nor biblical church, that is self-centered consumerism.

 

When you read about developmental lifecycles of the human, infants and toddlers are cute as a button, which keeps us from eating our own, because they are also some of the most narcissistic and manipulative human beings you will ever meet. They use their smiles, giggles, and those big beautiful eyes to get exactly what they want out of us, their parents and grandparents. And we love to give it all to them, until we don’t! Then, when cute doesn’t work, hang on to your sanity because here comes their sin nature and we call it the “terrible twos”.

 

We cannot be a church full of disgruntled toddlers and expect to function well. The terrible twos is supposed to be a phase, not a lifestyle choice! Maybe that’s a prophetic word for America…

 

Family is designed by God for His glory! Before your family is about your satisfaction, it is about your sanctification. Before it is about your happiness it is about your holiness. God is forming you into His image and He will use members of your family and church to do so.

 

Learning how to serve in love starts at home. Listen to this passage from 1 Timothy 5:1-8,

 

Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. Honor widows who are truly widows. But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

 

Powerful! To not steward your family is to deny your faith and to be worse than an unbeliever.

 

In conclusion, listen to the famous household scripture from Ephesians 5:25-6:4,

 

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), ‘that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.’ Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.[2]

 

Are you serving your family in love? Is your home the primary place of your spiritual growth or have you abdicated your responsibilities to someone else in order to have time to pursue other plans for your life?

 

Trust me when I tell you, a couple hours a week of church activities will never get you the results you are looking for, for yourself, your kids or grandkids. We are not enough to get anyone where they need to be, so here is the way Jesus has invited you to become what God commands: you are invited to make Him the center of your life: your ambition, your personal identity, and all your planning—family & finances, career and retirement. Because He owns everything that you are called to steward!

 

I’m calling you to respond to God’s plan! How will you respond?

 

Image Bearers of God steward their families to the glory of God! It always starts at home—your family is your first ministry because the family is God’s building block of not only the church, but of the New Heaven and New Earth that we are invited to proclaim with our love, care, and stewardship of creation, beginning around our kitchen tables. That can be in the season or circumstance of it being just you and Jesus over a cup of coffee and a bran muffin, or it can be the season of chaos where the cereal is flying and the dog is barking, but that is where God designed it to begin.

 

There is always grace for today and hope for tomorrow. So no matter what has happened in your life and in your family, today is the day of salvation. Start with what you do have and don’t focus on the past. Be a good household manager of what you do have for the glory of God!

Listen to the Message here:

To watch the video click HERE

FOOTNOTES:

 

[1] In Genesis 2:20-25, there is something in the Garden of Eden that was incomplete. We were made in the Image of God (Gen 1:27), but not yet able to experience community as God does within the Trinity.

 

[2] This is so important to God that He makes our success at this as a requirement to be a leader in His Church (1 Timothy 3:1-5).