Psalm 127 in your Bibles tonight. We've called it Family 2.0. And I'm probably going to preach this week and next week and then we'll be done. Just having a refresher on marriage and family life. Psalm 127 verse 1. I hope you'll leave your Bible open tonight. We're going to look at several portions of Scripture. We're going to preach about one point tonight. Lay a foundation. Preach one point tonight. Come back and finish up next Sunday evening. Psalm 127 verse 1, Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows, for so he giveth his beloved sleep. Luke verse 3, Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord. That word heritage means possession. Can I help you to understand that our children belong to God? They belong to the Lord. He has entrusted them for a period of time to you, to rear them for Him. to prepare them to live lives for Him. He says, And the fruit of the womb is His reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Can I help us understand tonight that a Christian home is not a place where Christians live under the same roof. It's much more than that. Just because that mom and dad are saved and maybe all the children are saved, I don't know, does not make your home a Christian home. A Christian home is a home in which those that are in that home are under and submitted to the same Lordship. That means that Jesus is Lord of your life, your home. That means, best we know how, we want to be submitted to Him and follow Him with our lives. Husbands, wives, children seeking to honor God with their lives and obey Him and follow Him with their lives. That we recognize the importance of of submitting to, honoring, and pleasing the Lord. Young person, I want you to listen to me tonight. You can't please God and rebel against and be disobedient to mom and dad. You can't do it. You can't be right with God and wrong with your parents. You can't. If you in your heart see that your parents, if you're angry with them, Rebellious toward them. Continually back-talking and showing a heart of disrespect toward them. You don't love God. You're not living for God. You're not seeking to please God. Your parents are a God-ordained authority in your life. I'm going to talk about that when we get a little further down the road, but I'm talking to children. I'm going to come back and talk to parents here in just a moment. I just want to address children, young people for a moment. If you don't honor the God-given authority of mom and dad, you won't honor God's authority in your life. By the way, mom and dad, if they don't honor your authority, they're not going to honor the authorities placed over them, whether it's their pastor, youth pastor, children's pastor, life group leader, whether it's a school teacher, a principal, a police officer, or a judge. I'll never forget, I was in Danbury. Nobody goes there except on purpose, right? I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But some kids took a joyride with one of our buses. Wrecked our bus. I'll never forget when I was summoned by the prosecutor to come to the courthouse and sat in the courtroom while these young people, in case I was asked a question or I needed to clarify something or share, I was there watching. And I watched one particular young person walk up that was part of that joyriding group with our bus. I remember that bowed back, that uplifted chin. I remember the arrogant, smart mouth that he had toward the judge. Absolutely no respect for his parents, for nobody in that room. My heart broke. You would say, well, that young man ought to be ashamed of himself. Can I tell you that mom and dad standing with him ought to be ashamed of themselves because they failed their child. They failed to hold him accountable. When you're all the time siding with your child against God-given authority in their lives, you are defeating God's purposes in their lives. I can promise you that. If you always make them feel like they're the target, you're defeating God's purposes in their lives. God places authority over us. I'll never forget, I was a pastor leading a church. I wasn't a young pastor. I was a veteran pastor by this point. I was working and taking classes at Ambassador Baptist College. I was working on my master's. That's before I came here and finished up. And I'll never forget going there and I went to my student box, my mailbox. That's where you communicated with professors. And I didn't know this. That's where the dean of students and dean of men communicated with you when you had demerits. Here, I've been pastoring for 10-12 years, and I walk in there and I pull my demerit slip out, alright? And I got 130 demerits. And I'm thinking, what did I do? What did I do? And I read on it, it said, you didn't sign in in chapel. See, it was the rule. Brother Dale, if you remember this, you had to come in and sign in. And here I am. I'm a pastor. I've been pastoring 10, 11, 12 years. I've got kids. I'm married. I'm not an 18-year-old. I'm not a 20-year-old in there that I have to walk up to holding this clipboard that I've got to go up and sign my name on. I didn't even think about it. I just went to chapel and letting God bless my heart. I'm fuming. I'm riding up the road. Who do they think they are? I mean, who do they think they are thinking that I ought to go in there to some 20 year old and put my name on that clipboard that I was in chapel? I don't know whether or not I'm in chapel and they know it too because I shook their hand. About that time God said, are you taking classes there? Yes. Do they have rules? Yes. Pastor, do you want your church to submit to you and follow your leadership? Yes. Then why don't you follow the leadership I put over you? I had to humble myself before the Lord. Humble myself before the dean of men. Now thankfully they erased all of those 135 demerits. They will not be on my record in heaven. And I signed into chapel the remainder of my time there. You say, preacher, why did you do that? Because it was right. There's times you do that because it's right. If I can't model right, how can I expect you to model right? If I can't follow the God-given authorities that are placed in my life, how in the world can I expect you as a church to follow the God-given authorities in your life? And then can I just say, Mom and Dad, if you can't follow the authorities in your life, don't expect your children to follow your authority nor God's. Now I know I'm being tough today, but we're going to get down where the rubber meets the road. And young people, there is an authority that God's placed in your life and it's your parents. And you need to learn to follow that authority. You're not always going to like it. I didn't like going up to a 20-some year old and signing my name on their little clipboard. I didn't like that. I didn't think I should have to do that. Matter of fact, I thought I was bigger than that. But you know what God said? You want my blessing, then humble yourself and do what I tell you to do. And you follow the authorities that God's placed in your life. I didn't like it, but I did it because it was right. And God's going to place authorities in your life. You're not always going to like every decision. Even the authority on a human level is not always going to be right. Mom and Dad, we're not always right. We make mistakes in parenting, or at least I have. I have. But that doesn't excuse you, young person, of not following the authority of your mom and dad. And I'm going to talk about parents holding their children accountable here in the future because I believe it's a biblical principle, but that's not tonight. I got a little ahead of myself. What I do want to say is that there's two ways you're going to do marriage. It's going to be your way or God's way. If you do it your way, I'm not being arrogant or smart, but I'm just asking, how's it working out for you? It doesn't work out when we do it our way. We need to do it God's way. Our nation's in trouble because they're doing marriage, and some of them are not doing marriage at all. They're just playing marriage. That's what they're doing. Especially young people today, they're jettisoning commitment, and they're just deciding, hey, we're just going to live together, we're going to play house. But we're really not going to have house the way God designed the home. We're going to do it His way or our way. Family, we're going to do it your way or you're going to do it God's way. Raising your children, you're going to do it your way or you're going to do it God's way. The choice is ours, isn't it? It is. Children are heritage of the Lord. God desires a godly seed. I believe if I was to interview every parent in this room tonight, what you would desire for your children, it would be that they turn out right, that they're people of character, that they work hard, that they have a family, that they follow and fulfill God's will for their lives, that they live a godly life. You know what we call that? That is a godly seed. They honor God with their lives. I believe that's what we would want. And therefore, if we're going to have a godly seed, which is what God wants, and what I believe every parent in this room wants, every grandparent wants for your grandchild, then we're going to have to learn to do things God's way. We're going to have to humble ourselves before the Lord. We're going to have to follow His authority in our lives. Spurgeon commenting on Psalm 127, he said, "...men desiring to build know they must labor." It takes labor to do anything. And he goes on to say, "...and accordingly they put forth all their skill and strength." But let them remember that if Jehovah is not with them, their designs will prove failures. Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. G. Campbell Morgan said, no house building is successful that leaves God out. I remember a preacher, and I was listening to him preach along these lines, and he told about a little boy that was up in West Virginia, and he had rescued a couple of his friends that had fallen into an abandoned coal mine. And Johnny Carson, back in The Tonight Show, heard about it, invited this little eight-year-old boy's parents to come, and they made their way up to New York City, recorded the show, Johnny Carson was interviewing this boy and noticed this little eight-year-old boy was continually making references to the Lord. He was talking about God. And Carson was an astute journalist. He asked this boy, he said, Son, are you religious? And he said, Oh yes. He said, I go to Sunday school every week. He said, I'm a Christian. Carson asked, Well, what did your Sunday school teacher teach about last Sunday? And little boy, he thought a minute and he said, She taught about Jesus going to a wedding and turning water into wine. Johnny Carson thought, well, I've got him now. This is going to be interesting. He said, son, well, what did you learn from that? And the little boy said, well, I learned, I reckon if you're going to have a wedding, you better invite Jesus to be there. I think that's pretty good, isn't it? Look at verse 4. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. We're to polish these arrows, prepare them in their childhood, polish them in their adolescence, point them in their late teen years, and then propel them out into the world. God didn't design children to remain at home. God designed children at some point to be propelled out into the world. To make their way in the world. That they might be a force for God. An arrow is an object of war. It's a weapon. And what they should be is we fire them. We propel them out into the world. We want them to be a force for God. To influence and make a decision. To influence those around them for God. That's exactly what we want. We want them to make a difference for God. Isn't that it? But I've got the responsibility in those early years to prepare and to polish and point and then propel. I want to give you some principles. I'm going to look at one of them tonight. Notice, first of all, there is the principle of affection. This is starting point. This is where it all begins. It's this matter of loving your child. of loving them God's way. Children need to know that they are loved. We live in a society when many children experience the breakup of their home. Mom and dad, one of them has left that home. Many times, it's no fault to that child. Most often, it's not the fault of that child. However, that child feels a responsibility that somehow it was their fault that mom and dad... And it doesn't matter. You can spend all you want to trying to tell them it's not their fault. But yet inwardly, they still feel that somehow, someway, they're to blame that mom and dad could not stay together. That's why it's so important that what relationship you're in with children, you need to remain stable in that relationship and give stability in that home and security to that child and to have love within that home. You say, well preacher, that's what we'll do. We'll just stay together till they're grown. Can I help you to understand something? It hurts even grown children when their parents divorce. I'm just saying that we need to love their child and it starts with loving each other. To having a home filled with love and affection. You say, well preacher, I'm just not a very affectionate person. Do you know what I've learned? Affection can be learned. It can. It can be learned. You can teach yourself to be affectionate. You don't have to fill it. You just have to show it. to show I love you. Children need to know that we love them. Ephesians 6 verse 4 says that we're to bring them up in the admonition of the Lord. It's the idea of cherishing them. It's the idea of loving them, of showing affection to them. It's the idea of reaching the heart of the child. I want you to jot this down. Parents, I think this is important. You must capture, are you ready? You must capture the heart of your child. You must capture the heart of your child before you can discipline the will of your child. You must capture the heart of your child before you can discipline the will of your child. Can I help us to understand that discipline, correction, without love leads to rebellion? It does. Our children need to know that we love them. and show them affection. How important that it is that they know that we love them. Can I help us to understand something? God is a perfect parent. Isn't that right? I'm imperfect parent. He's the perfect Father. Do you know what my Father tells me? He tells me that He loves me. over and over and over again. When I read the Bible, I understand that my Heavenly Father is a loving Heavenly Father. 1 John 4, verse 8 tells me that God is love. Do you know Jeremiah 31, verse number 3? You know what it tells me? It tells me that God loves me. Listen to what God says, The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." John 17, 23, Jesus spoke of the Father loving Him, and then said, Thou hast loved them. Can I help you to understand something, child of God? Your heavenly Father loves you. He does. And if God loves His children and He desires a godly seed, can I help us to understand the Bible said, Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth. Isn't that right? God captures our heart before He disciplines our will. We love Him because He first. What is the first response of a person when they first get saved? They love God. We love Him because He first loved us. Isn't that right? And so we respond to the love of God, and then as we respond to the love of God, then we respond to the commands of God, and the directives of God, and the precepts of God. And so mom and dad, can I tell you, at the earliest times, show your children you love them. They're crying out to be loved. They want to know that you love them. Love ought to be the centerpiece of our homes, not arguing and fighting and bickering, but loving. Love and affection ought to be the atmosphere of our home. It ought to be the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Galatians 5 tells me the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. The love of God, Christians, has been shed abroad in your heart. If the unsaved world can love their children, how much more should we as the people of God love our children? Isn't that right? And they're crying out for us to love them and to show them that we love them. How does God love you? He loves you first of all unconditionally. You know what we do many times? We try to appease God rather than please God with our lives. That means we try to live in a certain way so that hopefully we'll gain God's love. You know, even as Christians we do this. We feel like that when we blow it, God loves us less, but when we do good, we read our Bible, we pray, we go to church, we do this, we do that. Somehow God loves me more. Can I tell you, God doesn't love you anymore when you fail as when you succeed. God doesn't love you any less when you don't read your Bible as you do read your Bible. God's love for you is not based upon your performance. God's love for you is totally unconditional. That means God loves me no matter what. And can I help us to understand something tonight? We need to be careful that we're not creating a merit-based love system in our homes. Mom and dad loved me because I made an A on my report card. Mom and dad loved me because I carried out the trash. Mom and dad love me because I did this, and did this, and did this, and did this. Do you know what? You're training your child that they have to earn your love. And then if somehow it's less than what you expect, then you're harsh, you're going off on them, you're angry, and now they feel that you love them less. My love for my children shouldn't be based on a report card. My love for my children ought not to be based on their performance. It shouldn't be merit-based. It should be unconditional. That doesn't mean that I'm pleased with every decision. That doesn't mean that I'm pleased with every action. That doesn't mean that I'm pleased with every lifestyle choice that a child makes. That doesn't mean that at all. That doesn't mean we condone wrong or rebellion or disobedience in their lives. But what it does mean is you don't have to earn my love. I love you no matter what. That's what that means. And we show it. Children may break our heart. I understand something. Don't think that because your children are grown, you're home free. They can break your heart after they're grown. They can break your heart when you're 80 and they're 50. They can still make bad choices. Don't think that we're ever home free. Because we all have a sinful nature and we all can make bad choices, can't we? Isn't that true? They may break our heart. We may not have approved of decisions and lifestyles they make. That don't mean we ever stop loving them. I was preaching in a church here recently and a person came forward in the church broken. Their son was a graduate of a Christian school, Bible college, pastor of a church. But yet had a terrible, terrible temper problem. Had a terrible problem in several areas. Exploded his ministry. Exploded his marriage. I mean he blew up everything around him. Walked away from God. Walked away from his faith in God. He took on an alternative lifestyle. He's choosing to transition into a woman. Her mom is broken. What does she do? How does she respond? Boy, it's so easy to give what you do to your there. It is. She comes to me, Pastor, what do I do? I told her, I said, never condone him. Never acknowledge that he's become a woman. Never go into his world of unreality, but always assure him of your love, that he's never stopped being your son and your child. What I'm just trying to tell you is this. You're never home free. And our children need to know at the earliest ages that we love them and that we love them unconditionally. Isn't that right? Because our children want to know that we love them. Don't always love their sin. Don't always love their wrong. We don't always love their choices. But we love them. Because God doesn't always love your choices either. But He loves you. Isn't that right? Children need to see you loving each other. They need to see you getting right with each other. We need to be modeling love and affection. My kids, when they were little, hated for me to kiss Lori. They still don't like it now. They'll be up at the house. I'll lure them home with food. That's how I do that. I'm smoking ribs. You want to come up? Absolutely. I like to kiss my wife. I enjoy that. And so I'll hug her and kiss her, and they'll listen. They'll say, keep this family, keep this family right, you know, something like that. Or, there's kids here, you know. But you know what? I'd rather them see me kissing her than smacking her. Our children learn affection. We show affection to one another. Hold hands. Put your arm around her. Hug one another. And then shower them with hugs and kisses. I know them boys don't like it when they get older. I know that. Mom, stop that. Stop that. Never stop it. That's right. Never stop. Because deep down inside, they love it. They love it. You'll never make your boy feminine, Mom, by loving and hugging and kissing on him. You won't make him feminine. You'll just make him know that there's a mama that loves him. Best way to show your love is to give them time. Your time. We don't ever want our children to doubt our love for them. We need to communicate it often by saying, I love you, telling them we love them, affirming their love for one another. My wife's family's sick. They're sick. I mean, it's awful. I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, all the time. I mean, her sisters, I mean, it's awful. And then they tell me, and I'm like, what do you want me to do with that? I just inherited you because I married her. I don't mean I have to say I love you all the time. I mean, come on, you know? I think it's wonderful when a family says I love you and means it. Dad, tell your son you love him. Give him your time. I know there's work. I know there's things in our lives that take our time. I understand that. But you know, he also loves us sacrificially, doesn't he? And there's some times that we have to give up what we want to do to spend time with them. One of the biggest battles of ministry, because see, we as preachers, we don't just like what we do. We love it. At times, you would think we're married to it. There's times in my life I've been more at the church than I have at home. I have deep regrets. Deep regrets. If there's one thing that I don't like about being an independent Baptist, I like a whole lot. There's one thing I didn't like. That was the pressure that you had to grow a church a certain size to be successful. And I swallowed that. And every waking hour, I was knocking doors and doing this and doing that. And it was all good. I mean, don't you think it's right to try to win people to Jesus? Do this and do that and do the other. Absolutely. Sure is. But at the same time, you can even take a good thing and go overboard with it to the point that you neglect the most important thing in your life, which is your family. Billy Sunday was one of the greatest evangelists in American history. They say over 100,000 people walked the sawdust trail and shook Billy Sunday's hand. Do you know that Billy Sunday's children died drunkards? Because he traveled the world, America, reaching everybody else's kids, and he lost his own. Tragic to go to heaven, reaching everybody else's kids, and your kids go to hell. That's tragic. Didn't mean you didn't need to go reaching other people. Doesn't mean you didn't need to do the ministry. But didn't need to do it to the exclusion of not investing in the most important things that God's given us. Oh, I've got regrets I look back on. A failing in some early years of putting other things in front of my children that were unnecessary because I thought that's what you were supposed to do. I sure learn better now. You'll never make enough money and you'll never have enough stuff to work for and live for to come to the end of life and be happy you did it if you neglected the most important people that God's placed in your life, and that's your family. And I work with our guys on our staff, our young guys that's got families. And they'll tell you, I'll ask them, I'll call them out and say, are you spending time with your family? How's your family doing? Are you getting time with your kids? Don't make the mistakes that I made. Thankfully, right now, both my kids are living for God, and I'm so thankful for that. It's not anything their daddy did, I can tell you that. My kids, they're serving God. It's because God did something, I can tell you that, and their mama. But I'm just saying, Dad, it needs to come from you, and you need to spend time. Maybe you're trying to raise that child by yourself. God can make up the difference. You give yourself to that child and God can place some men in his life that will help him turn out for God. You just stay faithful and just love. And let's make investments. Redeem the time because the days are evil. It's short. It's short. My goodness, it's short. I thought, boy, you get your kids out of diapers, you're home free. I knew nothing till they quit eating the dollar menu at McDonald's and then it just destroys you. And you're thinking, man, can we just go back to baby food or something? You know, can we do that? I mean, do we have to order the biggest thing on the menu? All I'm just saying is this. You don't want your children to ever doubt whether or not you love them. Tell them. You say, well, they don't like it. Tell them anyway. I'm not saying to go out there in front of all of his buddies and smother him with kisses, Mom. I'm not saying that. Embarrassing. But I am saying those moments that God gives you to hug and love. Because that's going to set the stage for discipline. You see, one thing about my mom and my dad, I'm not going to say that every time they disciplined me, they were right. They were probably right more times than I think they were. Let's just go there. I'm sure they made mistakes. I'm sure. But I never wondered whether or not they loved me. Never wondered that. Never had to question it. I knew they loved me. And I hope my children knew that I loved them and that their mom loved them. And tonight, church, if we could do anything, it would be practicing love. To begin to go home, and if you're not practicing love in your home, to fix that, to repent of it, to change your mind, and begin to practice love in your home. Communicating it, showing it, unconditional, sacrificial. It's everlasting, right? It goes on and on and on. It doesn't stop. See, I believe those are what we need in our lives. It starts with the principle of affection. It does. And so let's start there. Could we do that? And then I'm going to talk to you about the others, because I think they're important. But if you don't have the first one, the other three really don't matter. They really don't. You're not going to accomplish what you want to accomplish in their lives. And can I help you understand something? You can do it all right. You can. You can show love. You can give time. You can do it all right, as best you can. And your kids still not respond. You say, why? Because they have a sinful nature just like you do, and they have to make choices. But you don't ever stop loving. You don't ever give up. You just keep on loving. Wouldn't we agree with that? Amen. So tonight, tonight, let's start with principle number one. And let's determine that we're going to have a love-filled home, just like we want a love-filled church. Amen. And grandparents, just keep on loving. That's God's reward for you not killing your kids when they were young. Enjoy them. Amen? Enjoy them. All right. Do you love your mom and dad, young person? Do you love them? You need to tell them. Better yet, you need to show them. Father, take them.