We've been following through a series in our evening services which has been entitled Reformed Presbyterianism Today. We've been thinking about some of those doctrines and truths from the Bible which are important to us as a church. We come this evening to the thirteenth of these studies and our topic, Honouring the Family. honoring the family. We're certainly not saying that subjects like this are unique to our own denomination, but we are saying that they are central and important to our denomination. And one of the great characteristics of the Reformed faith, of the piety of Reformed people, has been the importance of the family in our thinking, in our living. It's tied up with our doctrine of the covenant, which we looked at some studies earlier. And you really cannot understand Calvinism, you can't understand the Reformed faith, or indeed the Reformed Presbyterian Church, unless you grasp something of our view of the family in the purposes of God. And I do believe that in our individualized, lonely 21st century Our church's emphasis on the biblical place of the family is something that is going to be more and more attractive and appealing to people. And I believe we're going to find that it is something that will draw people more and more into the church of Christ. A place where the family is honored and valued protected and cherished. Now when I say family, I realize that that is an elastic term. It can mean a lot of different things. I suppose we would say that a family has to be more than one person. Although we recognize that many Christians do live alone. And many others are the only believer in their families. But there are lots of varieties of groupings of people that we could describe as a family. There's the single father or mother with their children. They're a family. They're the husband and wife who have no children. They are a family. There are adults who are living still with a parent or parents. They're a family. You have a Christian who's married to an unbeliever. You have adult brothers and sisters living together. These are all families in the biblical sense of the word. And I don't want you to think I'm excluding these. because I want to focus this evening particularly on what we tend to think of as the basic family, father, mother and children. So what I'm saying applies primarily to that fundamental family unit, but it also includes these other versions of the family. And I want to make four points in our topical study this evening. We're not looking at any one passage of scripture in detail, but we're trying to pull together some strands of Bible truth. We're going to think first about recognizing the pressures. Secondly, understanding the purpose. Thirdly, following the pattern. And then lastly, remembering the place, quite briefly at each one. First then, recognizing the pressures. Realizing in other words that the unit of the family is under tremendous pressure today and is being attacked from all sides. Now of course the devil has always attacked families. The family is an ordinance of God and for that reason the devil who loves division and alienation and loneliness attacks the family. But for the past several generations pressures on the family have been mounting until today they have reached crisis proportions. Let me mention some of the pressures which are harming family life. We live in an age when selfishness is for many people no longer a vice but a virtue. It has almost been canonized in our society. You've got to be true to yourself. You've got to fulfill yourself and find yourself and seek satisfaction for yourself. And this self-centered attitude has been damaging to the cohesiveness of family life. We're living in an era where there is no longer any serious commitment to promises In fact, in many cases, no promises are even made. People aren't taken seriously for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. We're living in a time when sexual satisfaction is being presented as almost the key good for human beings. And people are being urged to satisfy themselves in this respect whatever the cost. Medical factors such as contraception and abortion have aided this process. We're living in an age where feminism has gone far beyond a worthwhile contribution. There certainly was a case for attacking male chauvinism for the marginalisation, the abuse and the undervaluing of women. We can only be glad that we are living in an age when men and women who do the same work receive the same pay. That is just and it's something Christians should have been contending for. But feminism has long gone beyond that benign emphasis. And militant feminism now is driving women out of the home, out of the family relationship. Government policies, many of them, fiscal policies, tax policies and in other ways are on the whole against marriage rather than in favour of it. Even the technologies of our day are dividing the family. The personal stereo, the families that have a television in each room The microwave which enables you to make a snack and eat it by yourself so that families no longer sit down together for an evening meal. In many ways the family is under assault. Above all there has been a tremendous decline in vital religion. These factors and others combine to exert enormous pressure and families are collapsing. Marriage is rapidly becoming a minority pursuit as cohabitation is almost in places reaching the same level as marriage. With rising illegitimacy We have many more single parents. We have the horror of child abuse. And the first step to honoring the family is realizing that it is an endangered institution. It is facing huge pressures. And we as Christians need to be aware of these pressures and to give the family special attention. recognising the pressures. But then secondly, understanding the purpose. What is the purpose of the family? If it is a high and noble purpose, then we will value and honour the family. And of course it has. It isn't just tradition. It isn't just animal bonding. The family has a majestic purpose. A heavenly purpose. God's purpose for the family is to produce and to train a people for himself. The family is the agent for the production and equipping of the people of God in the world. It is as fundamental as that. The scriptural command, do all to the glory of God, applies to his instruction to our first parents. Be fruitful and increase in number. We are to do that to the glory of God. We are to bring into being image bearers of God who will glorify him and live forever in his presence. And this is why the family is God's normal method of transmitting his salvation. from one generation to another. Now God isn't limited to the family of course, and we'll say a little more about that later. God chooses people for salvation from some unlikely places, from the ends of the earth. Some of you here weren't brought up in Christian families. But that did not limit God's power to save you. In His mercy, He reached out. You were those who are described in the Bible as those who are far off. We're told that the promise of salvation was to God's people and their children and to those who are far off whom the Lord our God will call. And some of you in that respect were far off, but God has called you and brought you into his family. But when we have said that, we have to recognize that God's normal method, his usual method of transmitting salvation is through the family. And the majority of us here this evening had Christian parents, and some of us Christian grandparents and great grandparents and on through the past centuries. God's great promise to Abraham in Genesis 17 7 I will be your God and the God of your descendants after you. So this is the purpose of the family. to raise human beings who will worship and know God as their God. And when you think about it, it is perfectly adapted for this purpose. For the child is profoundly influenced in every way by their home environment. Far more profoundly perhaps than we realize. And some of you here tonight who may have some of your children who are not yet Christians, I would encourage you to have hope and not to minimize all the teaching and the prayers and the example of those years. They have made a profound impact on those children. You must keep praying that in God's good time it will all bear fruit and your child will come into those covenant blessings. But God means our children to be surrounded by his word and his grace and his love from their very earliest days. that almost before they can think, they hear the singing of God's praises. They see their parents bowing their heads in prayer. They experience the love and gentleness of Christ in their own home. What a noble purpose this is. What a tremendous responsibility God has given to you, your parents. and how kind a provision it is. Supposing God were to come to you parents and say, I want you to influence certain people for me, so that they would become Christians. Now who in all the world, if you had your choice, who would you most like to see becoming Christians? What would you say? Well you would say I would like to see my children become a Christian. God says they are the very people I want you to concentrate on. They are the very people I want you to give yourself to. The human beings that you love the most. The human beings who are dearest to you and nearest to you and mean most to you and whom you have the greatest opportunity for influencing. These are the people to whom you are to give attention. Those of you here who have been brought up in Christian homes and are not yet Christians, think of the kindness and the grace of God which has been extended to you. And how ungrateful and how stubborn you are being in refusing to bow to Jesus Christ and call him to be your Savior. The family, you see, is God's method of producing a people for himself. And it applies, of course, to families where there are no children. Because it's in the family relationship that we can grow in grace. It's in the day-to-day living with other human beings. that we develop humility and patience and unselfishness and kindness. It doesn't really matter in that sense whether there are children in the home or not. Living together in community, it's this way that we grow in the likeness of Christ. So the purpose of the family is enormously important in the plan of God. And the family needs to be nourished and protected. If it were to collapse, it would be a catastrophe. For the nation, of course, but for the church. We have a huge responsibility. Recognizing the pressures. Understanding the purpose. Thirdly, following the pattern following the pattern. And I mean the pattern set out in the Word of God. Thank God for the pattern. Because we're living in an era of unparalleled confusion in society. When men don't know what it means to be a husband, when women don't know what it means to be a wife, when fathers and mothers don't know what their role is, what their authority is, what their purpose is, where children have no idea how they should relate to their parents. It is all thrown into the melting pot in our society. And we should be thankful that as Christians We have this Word of God. We have the instruction manual, the guiding principles which are laid out. God's Word tells us how husbands are to behave, how wives are to live, how parents are to treat their children, and how children are to honor and obey their parents. And all we have to do is to take the teaching of the Word of God seriously, believe it implicitly, and practice it in our homes as consistently as we can. And I ask you, husbands and wives, are you living according to Scripture? parents and children? Are you living according to scripture? Are you allowing our culture to shape your family? Or are you allowing God's Word to shape your family? It's not only the Bible. It's God Himself who is our pattern. God Himself who we are to follow. If we here men want to know how to be a father, we have the example of the perfect father, the heavenly father. And we are to seek to model ourselves upon him. We are to be imitators of God. Husband and wife are to relate together as Christ and the church relate together. In other words, the deeper our Christian experience, the better equipped we will be for family responsibility. The more you know God, the more accurately you'll be able to imitate Him in your home. The more you know of His Word, the more comprehensively you'll be able to obey that Word in your home. We have the pattern to follow. And the converse is true. God teaches us about our family. But the opposite is true. Our family is meant to teach us about the invisible God. That's how Jesus argues, for example, in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7, 11. He appeals to the fathers and mothers. If you know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your father in heaven? He teaches them what the heavenly father is like by showing them what the earthly father is like. That's quite staggering. Those of us who are fathers have an awesome, an awesome responsibility. Every time your children pray to the end of their lives, Our Father who art in heaven, you will color their prayer. Their view of their heavenly Father will be affected by their earthly father. For many years after his conversion, Martin Luther found it hard to call God father. His own father was a remote, strict, stern man. And he filled the word father with ideas of sternness and frighteningness, so that when Luther prayed, O my Father, the word was damaged for him. God has given to us who are fathers a tremendous privilege of making that word a loving word, a kind word, a compassionate word, a strong, wise Or the same way with mothers. God compares himself not only to a father, but to a mother. It's really wrong to start arguing whether God is masculine or feminine. God has created both masculinity and femininity. And although he is revealed to us primarily as a father, he often compares himself to a mother. Isaiah 49, 15. Can a mother forget the baby at her breast? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. As we follow the pattern, the pattern of God, the pattern of God's Word, our families are made strong. recognizing the pressures, understanding the purpose, following the pattern, but lastly, by way of balance, remembering the place. Remembering the place. And I'm thinking here of the danger which besets all human beings. of overreacting of overreacting of going from one extreme to the other we're living in an age when the family is under pressure where the family is devalued and the danger for some of us is of going to the opposite extreme and of idolizing the family and making almost a little god of the family. And my friends, that is not a hypothetical danger. I have seen it in many reformed churches and reformed Christians. More often I've seen it in North America than here. But I don't think it's absent from here either. Christians overreacting so that the family becomes the great focus and the ultimate good of their lives. And the church, as it were, almost exists to cater to the family and minister to the family and nourish the family. And this is wrong. It's wrong. It's dishonoring God. God is the greatest good. The family is a means God uses. A great means. A noble means. But a means. And God is not bound to bless this means. Many families are hideous, cruel places. And God is not restricted to using this means. Many men and women who haven't been blessed with a family are fine, mature, joyful, effective Christians. And to keep our balance, we need to note not only the commendations about the family in Scripture, but the warnings about the family. The family can be a snare. The family can be a barrier against God. The family can keep people from following Jesus. You remember the man in Matthew 8.21 who excused himself from following Christ because he was a good family man. Lord, let me first go and bury my father. Our Lord's words are uncompromising. Matthew 10, 36. A man's enemies will be the members of his own household. The next verse, anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Don't make a God of your family. Don't excuse yourself from responsibility to serve in Christ's church because of your family. You won't strengthen your family, you'll weaken them. Many of us here can remember the years when we had to give most of our spare hours to trying to put up this building and prepare the site. Saturday after Saturday after Saturday. We brought our families with us. Your little toddlers sitting about in stones all over the site. We made it a family occasion. There are times when we have to disrupt our family times for the sake of Christ. There are times when we have to give ourselves in service for Christ, when we might perhaps rather be home. If Christians idolize the family, it will become a curse instead of a blessing. We must never think either that Christians who do not have a close, natural family lose out. Our Lord again is clear. He looks round at his disciples in Matthew 12, 49. He says, Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother. and sister and mother. Our ultimate family is the family of the Church. This is the family to which we all belong. And the promise of Christ is clear. Everyone who has left brothers or sisters or father or mother or children for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. We value the family. We give great attention to our families, but we don't make an idol of them. We honor them by giving them the place which God gives them. We thank God for his blessing to us as a congregation through our families. We pray that he'll enable us more and more to experience his covenant blessings. Amen. Let us bow in prayer. O Lord our God, thank you for the institution of the family in human life. We know, Lord, that it has been damaged by sin, and yet by your grace we still see so much of beauty and goodness in it. And we have received so many blessings, many of us, from our families. And we pray, O God, for those of us who are blessed with Christian families, that you will help us to accomplish your purposes through them, that they may be training grounds for the people of God, that they may be places where holy men and women and boys and girls are matured and developed. We pray, O Lord, for those of us who are not blessed with Christian families, And we thank you for the family of the Church. We pray that you will help us all to love one another, to extend care, hospitality, friendship, and commitment to one another. We thank you, O God, for those who, for your sake, have left close natural ties to follow Christ and pray that in their lives His promise may come true, and they may receive a hundred times as much. We ask it in His name. Amen.