At this time, it's my privilege to be able to welcome Reverend Maynard Koerner. Reverend Koerner is an individual who is a very gifted man. I've come to appreciate the the wisdom and the experience that he has and how he attempts to implement that in his life. He did graduate from Doerr College as well as also graduating from Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and that just endeared me more to him. Because it's not too often that you get to find guys who at least have lived in the South in the RCUS. To hear about that, I went, oh, that touched my heart. I don't know if he slips in an occasional yawl or not, but maybe he will. But he currently is working on a doctorate of ministry through New Geneva Seminary, which is located in Colorado Springs, and he simply is working on the arduous task of writing his thesis in order to obtain that degree. He does have a number of years of ministerial experience. We can testify to that here in Watertown as he served this congregation when it first began in the late 90s. Prior to that he had served in churches in Shafter, California and Sutton, Nebraska. and then he left Watertown and then served churches in Colorado as well as Lincoln, Nebraska. He then has moved from serving the church by way of the pastorate to now serve the church by being the first full-time professor for Heidelberg Theological Seminary. In terms of experience, he's also then been affiliated with NAPARC. He's served on the board for New Geneva Seminary, served on the board for Sutton Christian School, and So he definitely is well-rounded. One caveat I have to note, and I know he'll jump back on me for this, but nonetheless, I'll say it. His only flaw that I'm aware of is the fact that he roots for the Nebraska Cornhuskers. But on this side of heaven, no one is perfect. We'll allow that. Like I said, he'll get me afterwards, so that's fine. But Reverend Kerner is married. He and his wife, Marsha, are the parents of four children and grandparents of, it says here, six. Has that been changed or is it still six? The latest update. The latest update. So six grandchildren. And so we do welcome you here, are glad to have you with us today, and look forward to hearing your lecture on a family structure, who makes up a family. So Reverend Kerner, come and address us now at this time. Okay, am I on? Thank you. The way things are going so far this year, I make no apologies for being for Nebraska. Speaking of being in the South and whether I would throw in a y'all or not, I remember as I would walk in the front office at the seminary, I would walk in And the secretary would say, hi y'all, how y'all doing? And I would look around, who's with me? I didn't know anybody was with me. Who's y'all talking to? But that's what we deal with. Well, it's good to be with you today. One of the things about the type of conferences that we often do with a theme such as this one, is that at times there will be some overlapping. As I was listening to the lecture last evening, I kept saying, well now wait a minute, I'm going to talk about that. Not 100%, but you will see some things that will overlap, but maybe looking at them from a little bit different way and elaborating upon those kinds of things. We'll see how that goes this morning. In some sense, this lesson, as I see it this morning, and I'm not sure that it will be everything that Mike was looking for when we put these outlines together. It's more of, rather than another lesson, we basically had the lesson last evening, the teaching lesson in terms of biblical principles being established. What I want to look at in light of those biblical principles, and that certainly is the blueprint, it is the foundation, and it's very, very important to understand that foundation. The approach that I'm taking this morning is to kind of enlighten that foundation, sort of do a reality check. What does that really mean for us today and where do we find ourselves? Is that foundation still the foundation that works today? And how can we deal with it in the world in which we live? And so I do want to underscore the fact that that foundation is very, very important. But is it, of course, as we began to touch on that last night somewhat as well, that it is also important to recognize that we do live in a broken world. We do live in a world in which sin is very much a reality. We see that right off the bat. We see that right off the bat with the family in the first chapters of Genesis. And living in that, we are all sinners. Parents are. Children are. It's just a fact of life, the world in which we live. And it's been kind of interesting. I have the privilege of not serving a congregation myself, as Pastor McGee indicated. But I do get to preach virtually every Sunday in a number of different congregations. Some RCOS, but also PC and quite a few URC churches. People would respond to me, I kind of particularly noticed it about a year ago or a little over a year ago when the economic situation kind of first hit and we first really began to experience hope and change and all that went with that and people would say, what is happening? What's happening in our world? What's going on? And kind of almost like a handy button, like all of a sudden we're waking up and finding out we're living in this pagan world around us. Well, there's some truth to that, but on the other hand, it's been coming for a long time. But in some sense, I think it's sort of, I'll talk about that a bit more in a moment, or after a bit, in terms of how that meets the family, but it kind of snuck up on us. There's a sense in which I know we all sort of gasp and take issue when our president said we're not a Christian nation. But to a great extent, that's true. We are. We live in a pagan world. We really do. And we need to recognize that. And what does that mean for us? And what does that mean for families? That's the kind of thing that we want to look at this morning and maybe be able to have at least a few thoughts on how we can survive in that kind of a world. Because I think that's what I pick up is that's sort of the kind of the fear that people have. How in the world can we survive in this world that we seem to be finding ourselves in? So at any rate, I also want to be very careful to underscore that in recognizing the fact that the reality of the world in which we live doesn't always fit the blueprint that we saw in scripture. We are very capable of messing up the family, messing up the blueprint that God gave it to us. We can do a great job of doing that. There's no doubt about that. But, in saying that, that does not mean that we should change the blueprint. This notion, while the old idea of how a family is to function, doesn't fit the world today. We live in our modern world, we need to find a new way in order to live as a family. I have no use for that whatsoever. We do not want to begin to look at the culture of today and say we need to construct a family because this is the culture, no, the other way around. But we do need to understand how God would have us dress as a church and as individuals, how we would address today's culture as a family. And hopefully, as I said, we can see some things in regard to that this morning. Now Reverend Sims made the point, and I want to pick up on this in several areas this morning, that the family is the basic unit of society. It is natural, and if that's the case, which I certainly believe that it is, but if that is the case, if the family is really important, and it is the basic unit of society, then where do you suppose Satan is going to want to attack the most? At the family. Because if he can mess up the family, he can mess up the whole society, which is what he of course wants to do. In fact, it's interesting, at the very point, Not only is there murder, in fact, within the first family, as you know, brother kills brother. But even prior to that, in the very point in which Satan seeks to tempt man, he does so by attacking the very structure of the family. It's not an accident that Satan tempted Eve rather than Adam. Because he knows that Adam is supposed to be the one in charge. and making those decisions. And he sought to mess up the structure right away and get Eve to have a role that she's not supposed to have in the family. So we see there right off the bat that Satan attacks the family in that way. The family in particular, the structure of the family is not only tremendously important in terms of seeing how God structured it, instituted it, how we set it up, but also how it is to function. The family and the way it is structured has a great deal of implications and influence in the world in which we live. Now we don't want to fall into the trap that's so common today. We look at certain things as to find reasons why people behave the way they do. Someone grows up to be a rapist and we say, well the reason he's a rapist is because his father abused him when he was a child. That's just given an excuse for sin. But there is, we need to recognize this as well, we see that in the second commandment. There is a real clear relationship between families that are not structured correctly When we ignore what God has given us as the structure, and what that does to a culture, it is no accident that in the, for example, the cities, in the inner cities, in the large cities, where there are virtually fatherless families, those cultures are primarily. That doesn't happen by accident. That is an effect implication that comes out of that. Now as we talk about structure, I need to be very careful to point out that we are talking about general principles. For example, just one quick one here because Mike McGee talked about our family. One of our daughters is not married. She's 30 years old. She's single. to say that the basic unit of society is the family. That that is the way God structured it, that's what's very important. Does not mean that she's somehow not important in God's world or somehow less a citizen in God's kingdom or something of that nature. In God's providence at this point in time, that's where God would have her to be. But that does not mean, and so when we're talking about general principles, the general principle is that marriage is important. and families put together that way are important in this society and that's how God uses them. So I want to be careful that we understand that we're talking about general concepts. The Bible gives a basic structure to what the family ought to look like. Now, we know that they don't always look that way. In fact, it's probably going to be becoming more and more that they look like, you know, different sort of structures. We'll talk about some of those. We know there are families in our churches. There are families in our churches that have dealt with divorce. There might be one parent that's not a believing parent, certainly dealing with rebellious children. And I would say that the more and more we're dealing with the reality of the world in which we're living in, if we are serious about doing the work of missions, more and more the type of families that we're going to be able to reach, if we reach anybody and bring them into the church, are going to be families that are going to be having these sorts of situations. How are we going to bring them in? How are we going to minister to them? Are we going to say, well, your family doesn't fit. Or can it fit? Now that doesn't mean that any family, which doesn't look exactly like it is supposed to, in terms of the structure again, and we'll look at that, that doesn't mean that they somehow are second-class citizens in the kingdom, or they somehow ought to be looked upon as and look at themselves as filled with guilt or any of those sorts of things. But they do need to understand what God's word does say to them and how they ought to respond. So there's perhaps some areas that we as the church, it seems to me, certainly I know as I think back of the years of my ministry, that there have been times in which I've not dealt with that very well. Because we haven't really thought about how to minister to these types of people in more effective ways. In fact, some of the thought that went into putting together, I believe it was Mike and I communicated about putting together the outlines and the lectures for this conference were based on that very important reality. There is the ideal structure of what scripture gives. and there is the reality. I'm not saying that because I want to excuse sinful behavior in any way whatsoever, not at all. But I want to address that reality. I want to deal with how the church needs to deal with it, and how the Christian family needs to deal with it. Simply to say, to sum up this introduction now, the more we find ourselves living in a pagan world, the more important it is that the family follows the biblical principles. In other words, rather than saying, well, the old-fashioned idea of a family with the role of the husband and the role of the wife and children in submission and all those sorts of things just doesn't fit today. The fact remains that the biblical principles are not just sort of an ideal structure that's up here somewhere that doesn't work. No. The fact is that the more we deal with the reality of a broken world, I think the more we need to have the biblical structure because that's what works for us to deal with it in the broken world in which we live. It's very interesting that as you look at the Bible simply in terms of families, from the point of view of a structure, you can certainly go to the Bible and find no end of instruction from the scriptures. As to how this structure is supposed to look like. What a man is supposed to do as a husband and as a father. What a woman is supposed to do as a wife and a mother. How children are supposed to behave in that structure and so on. How that structure is supposed to be. But it is interesting when you look at the scriptures. And if you want to, if somebody who's new to this, for example, will say, well, I'd like to see a picture. I'd like to see an example of this. Where would you point to, what family would you look for in the Bible to say, here's an ideal picture? Anybody? There are far and few, aren't there? There are far and few, even in the scriptures. There's a few things here and there that we can point to. We can talk about the fact that young Timothy was instructed as a youth and Paul encourages him in terms of remembering what he was instructed. But who instructed him? His mother and grandmother, not his father. Which the structure would say that's where it should happen, so on and so forth. Again, I don't say that. I'm not pointing it out and saying, well, hey, there's nobody in the Bible. We'll do that just a little bit in a minute. You can look at Adam and Eve and their family. You can look at Abraham and his family. You can look at David and his family. Horrible examples of families. And so, I don't say that, though, in a sense, well, okay. That means it's an ideal that no one can reach and so let's not even try and it's an excuse for whatever. That's not the point. But it does underscore the importance of just how deadly sin and the influence of sin can be upon the family. Turn with me to to look at a few basic aspects. I want to look at four specific things that, there may be more, I'm sure there are more, but I've chosen these four basic things that the scripture teaches us about the structure of the family, starting in Genesis 2.24. And I know we talked about this last evening, but perhaps to elaborate just a bit further, Genesis 2.24 at the end of the second chapter as God has given Eve to Adam as his wife. Then we read, therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. The thing that really strikes us there, if we look at it carefully, is the idea of one. They shall become one. That's expressed in a number of different ways, including in a physical way. But the most basic principle that God establishes in his word about the family is that one unit in society. Adam and Eve are a family and as they are one, all things being as they ought to be, that's probably not the best way to put it, but as God has created, out of that oneness there of course will be children and that's that one unit of society. but notice how that oneness takes place a man is to lead father and mother so there is a separation there is first of all a separation that takes place a change from that relationship as a young man grows up, and be joined to his wife, that's the union that takes place. A family is one unit in society by, in some sense, separating off from the society, from the rest, particularly from the previous family relationship, and now establishing their own family, their own union, by clinging to his wife, a union that takes place. So there is a proper distinction in the society and there is a proper establishment of a unit in that society. It is how God has established that the society works. And again, I want to emphasize, with all that I said a moment ago about the individuals, I think one of the things, and Reverend Sims talked about this last night too, the importance of the family is really being put down these days. The way God has established His creation is for the creation of this society to be all that God intends for it to be, is that He has put into place the family. that there would be a society that works as it ought to. So it's not just the picture, it's what works. Again, we'll see that develop further. In my next one is simply the fifth commandment. As you find it in Exodus 20 and verse 12. we're familiar with the commandment of course for children to obey parents but notice the principle that is involved there Exodus 20 verse 12 honor your father and your mother that your days may belong upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you it's important to remember that all of life is of course living here on earth as God would have us to live in our relationship with God. He is the creator, He is the sustainer of life. He is the one who brings about His purpose in the creation. He does so by His authority. So we always need to be looking at our life in every part of it. In terms of how am I, am I obedient to God in this way? Am I obedient to God and living as God would have me in what I'm doing? And so it's a recognizing the authority of God. And yet God does not do that in His, you know God is of course always with us and He works in our hearts. But God does not discipline your children for you. Parents discipline the children for God. But the point is it's the authority of God that is being applied in that. That is being established. So God in His wisdom has chosen for parents, weak human sinful people, to establish a concept of authority. But here's the thing about this commandment. It's a fundamental principle of authority in the fifth commandment, but it also ultimately establishes that not only must children obey parents, but citizens must obey, even when there's hope and change, citizens must obey the civil government. Members must obey elders. Servant must obey master, etc. So why does the commandment, I don't know if you've ever asked yourself this question, if the commandment applies to all of these areas of authority, why does the commandment only speak about children obeying parents? Why does it also say, and you need to obey your elders, and you need to obey your president? It's very simple. That's an authority principle that goes throughout the society, but it's established in the home. That drives me right back again to the point that family is important, that structure is important. When you have a society in which the idea of submission to authority is ingrained in the family and children as they're growing up, It will work throughout the other areas of society. When you have a society, as we are getting very close to having these days for the most part, in which there is no authority in the home, what's going to happen when those people grow up and they start having to deal with authority in all other areas of life? They have trouble. So again, it establishes the society. The third thing I want to look at, which is a very interesting one. If you turn to Psalm 127, we can look at a number of verses in scripture in this regard. Keeping in mind that God has put us here to live on this earth and has made us in his image to enjoy God. The most basic, basic thing that we can say about being human is that we are created in the image of God and we are created to have fellowship with God. That's what God and Adam had in the Garden of Eden before he fell into sin. And that's what was cut off and separated when Adam, when man sinned. And the basic idea of that fellowship is to enjoy Life ought to be, it's an interesting phenomenon, I don't want to get off on a rabbit trail here, but very often reformed people have this sort of notion that life is, well, just sort of pits to get through and someday it will be great in heaven. Yes, there is a reality of sin, but no one, I really mean this sincerely, no one ought to know how to have a happy life and enjoy life more so than Calvinists. We know what it means to live in fellowship with God. But that is also to be reflected in our family. If you look at Psalm 127, which of course talks about the children aspect in the family, but I don't want to necessarily pick up on that, but look what it says, if you have it there, beginning with verse 5. Happy is the man who has his whoever, whole of them. We can have a lot of discussion about what's a whole whoever, that's not the point here. But the idea is, happy is the man who has a family. They shall not be ashamed, they shall speak with their enemies in the gate. It's implied in the passage we previously looked at in Genesis 2.24.25. It's clear in Psalm 127. Psalm 128 verse 3 says, Your wife shall be like a fruitful vein in the very heart of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table. That's a picture of fulfillment, of happiness. Proverbs 5.16 speaks about the source of happiness there again. And as the Bible also points out, the opposite is all too often the case. You know, how often do we have this normal sort of picture when we think about the family? Teenagers hate their parents. And we think that's, well, that's just teenagers, you know. No, that's not the way it should be. When the guys, let's be honest, when the guys are out with just the guys, how do they speak about their wives? In a negative way or in a positive way? When the gals are out, I have no idea what gals talk about when they're out, but you know, same sort of thing. The biblical picture is that the family is the source of happiness. That's how God has given us to us. The fourth one then turned to Psalm 78. Again, we can look at a number of passages in scripture in this regard. Psalm 78 is a basic one. Again, this is a general principle. I know that Christ, and it's important to remember this, that Christ died for you who are a believer. And it is his death for you that restores you to God and gives you eternal life. But it is in the family or through the family, generally speaking, that God has established the work of redemption. God has established a covenant. It's through the family that God, in other words, God uses the family to redeem his people in an aspect of that, at least. And most certainly in terms of the continuation of the church. That is from generation to generation. Psalm 78 says, and it's a great psalm, but it says that if you're concerned about your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren, even those of your descendants that you will never see on this earth, then teach your children. I want to pick up on the question that was raised last evening. We do need to be careful. It's a very, very important question. I know that there are those who have, in every church, there are those here who have dealt with this. The idea that we hold to, and I think is so basic in the scriptures and is precious to us from a reformed perspective is the covenant promises that we claim with our children. But it is important that we understand that properly. God does not tell us, and I want to address this for just a bit if I may, God does not tell us that if you do A, B, C, D, E, and if you do all of them just exactly the way God has said, then that's a guarantee that your children will grow up and be faithful members in his kingdom. That's not the promise. What he says that if you want your children to grow up, this is the way to do it. This is the method that God has provided for us and it's a great method. But we always need to keep in mind that the whole structure of family, again, as I said a moment ago, God has established His family and God in His wisdom has, in a very real way, God does not bring, look at it this way, God does not bring adult mature people into this world. He brings infants into this world. And from day one, infants need everything. You need to take care of them in a complete way. So you are the substitute for God, if you will, in that regard. God has called upon you to carry that out for Him, including the training them and instilling in them in the acceptance of who God is and in fear of the Lord. However, God in his wisdom has chosen to do that by using sinful people, every parent. Even if you go back to the idea that okay, here is A, B, C, D, E, and F, and if you do all of these steps exactly perfectly the way God says, then your children will turn out okay. First of all, there's no parent that ever does that. We are all sinful parents. No one raises his children perfectly. So even if you follow that sort of step, we've missed the boat there. But that's the point. It's not just that we look at that. So we understand that in sinful parents that God has chosen to use. And there are, of course, sinful children. And so it is the sense in which, of course, we rely upon very much what God's work is in their hearts. And so we need to understand the fact that while the principle, and it is the family, and it is a basic biblical, yes, reformed principle that we hold, reformed is, in my mind, simply biblical. And that is that it is through the family that God has chosen to continue his truths, his testimonies that are spoken of in Psalm 78 to pass them from generation to generation. Again, that puts a lot of emphasis on the importance of this basic unit in society and that structure that God has given us. Now I have here a number of them and I'm going to go through them fairly quickly. Again if you look at the devastating facts of sin, the very first family that was murdered In the very next chapter in the Bible, in chapter 4, we see the story of Lamech and his wives. We have polygamy. And we have Lamech's speech to his wives. Anybody gets in my way, he's dead. You will watch. We have adultery right off the bat. You look at the family of David. David is a great man of God. And yet David himself committed adultery and murder. David's son, Amnon, raped his sister. And then another brother killed Amnon because of that. Not a very healthy family, is it? Not a very nice picture of a family. The Bible speaks again and again about widows and orphans. and the importance of one of the first things that you will see in the scripture and if you look at for example in the book of Isaiah and the prophets one of the first things that you will see in the scripture when God condemns a people for turning away from righteousness is because they mistreated the widows and the orphans so we see again those implications Now, in here, if you have your notes for my lecture, there is this list of types of families. I'm not going to go through them, each one of those. If you take it from the point of view, of course we've got the idea of the two-parent family with children as the structure. But we could take each of those and say, well now, what is the implications here and what lessons can we draw from scripture for this family, for that? We could do a lecture on each one of them. So I'm not going to begin to go through those from that perspective, but just to understand, There's families that deal with not being able to have children. There are families with one parent. There are families with, as a result, a remarriage with his, hers, and ours type of thing. There are interracial families and the issues that come that deal with that. And so on down the line. But what I do want to do with this for just a little bit is to talk about the structure and what leads to that and how we need to be careful not to wrongly look at this and yet at the same time to see the things that are very important. I have in my mind three things that lead to a family structure that is different than what fundamentally is given to us in scripture, father, mother, children. And there are three reasons why those things happen. First of all, simply due to a fallen world. without looking at anything in which someone has particularly gotten into, and we'll look at that in a minute, and we do that, we all do that, but in particular sin, but then the fact that we live in a world in which sin is affected in this world, and we have disease, we have war, we have natural disasters, so there's going to be single parent families, there's going to be orphans, there's going to be widows, that is not anyone's particular punishment from God because of some sin that they've been involved in or anything like that. We simply need to understand we're dealing with, not in a great scale, but we deal with single parent families because war has taken place and a father is gone. And in these days, sometimes the mother is gone. I'll comment about that in a moment. So that's one reason why that's a reality. Certainly, that kind of family ought not to be looked down upon in the church and made to be a second class family or anything like that. But it does give, I think, and we'll talk about that in a minute, a particular ministry that the church needs to be aware of. Now secondly, there are of course situations where the problem has been caused by a particular sinful action. Marrying outside of the faith. Divorce has taken place. Premarital sex has taken place, leading to a single parent family. And yet, these are sins that must be dealt with like all sins. The church has always had, I think, a struggle with We like to pick out our favorite sins to make the worst ones that anyone can ever, and we need to be careful about doing that. Just simply to take the example of a family where there is a child born out of wedlock. Yes, certainly there is a sinful action that caused that to take place. But there is forgiveness, and there is repentance, and there is the grace of God, just as with any other sin. And who amongst us have not been involved in some sin? Maybe not that particular one. So we don't want to. But then we have that kind of a family. That structure itself, that kind of family, is not a sinful situation. in an ongoing way. There's nothing wrong with a mother raising her child and she not to be dealt with for the rest of her life as somehow having to carry all kinds of guilt and so on. And that's the sense in which a church really does properly need to minister to them. And sometimes in those kind of we have sort of a negative look upon them. And that's not right. It ought not to be. We simply recognize that yes, sin led to something and the consequences are there, but God forgives when all the right, of course, repentance and so on takes place. So there are those structures that don't meet the ideal that have, yes, come about because of sin, but that does not mean that they're sort of doomed the rest of their life or anything of that nature. And then thirdly, there are, none of those are listed here, but there is a whole set of, in our world today, well, and it's not just today, they've been around since the beginning of time. I talked about Lamech and his wives. A polygamous situation is a structure that is in of itself a simple structure. Two men living together, two women living together is a simple structure. The one that probably more so is even, maybe not even so much anymore, the homosexuality thing is so prevalent, but living together, a man and a woman, without being married. It's a sinful structure. And there's only one answer to that, and that is stop. So that's a different category that we need to understand. Again, it is sin, and it needs to be dealt with properly as with sin, and that is that there is repentance. There is change in this desire. The church must minister to people of that nature. If you are going to, as a church, be missions active and bring people from the world into the church, those are the kind of people you're going to be ministering to. You need to be ready to understand how you're going to be able to deal with that. You've got a young couple that shows up in church, and they're excited, they want to come to church, and we've heard the gospel, we love the gospel, and you get to know them, and you find out they're not married. That's kind of a unique situation we're going to have to deal with. And yes, we need to deal with it honestly, and the scripture has the way to deal with that. I need to move along here. Now, let me talk a little bit about the roles of the family. It's pretty simple and pretty straightforward. Let's just look at the roles based on some of the things that I've said about the context. There's a real way in which we need to understand I'll go back to the notion again that we are here living as God's image bearers. We are living here in this world as God has put us here made in His image. And our life is in some sense, we are image bearers of God, a reflection of God. And in the Godhead, what do you have? You have God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And within the Godhead, you have fellowship. That's a perfect picture. If you want to have a picture from scripture, you have a perfect picture of fellowship, that idea of life is to be enjoyed. And each member of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, contributes to that enjoyment. There's a real sense in which that ought to be reflected in the family, in that each member of the family has a role to play in terms of contributing to the fellowship and the joy of what it is to be a family. Getting back to this notion that we have, well, it's just the way they are. All teenagers are brain damaged, right? And they're kind of a drag on the family. No, they have a place to contribute to the family, as everyone else does. to that unit of fellowship. Secondly, you have, of course, the HHS principles. I'll let you have, for the sake of time, we won't look up all the verses. I believe they are listed there in your outline under HHS. Yes, the hijab provider. And so God has provided for this family. This family is the basic unit of society. It is the way in which God wants to influence the society, wants to establish himself as the authority, the sovereign God. That there has to be someone who is responsible. There has to be someone who says, this is right, this is what we're going to do. There has to be someone who is the provider that that family can exist. So there is the role given to Adam, Genesis, given to the man, husband and the father, terms of Patriot provider. There is the role of support. Again, Ephesians 5, 22 and 24 talks about a woman in support in terms of her husband and raising her children. You know, there's so much emphasis and so much silliness out there about the equality issue and so on. The greatest influence, the greatest influence that any woman can have in society is build up her husband and to raise her children and influence her children. She wants to have an influence and such. It is really very interesting to me and very distressing to me. I've made some sort of under my breath in the sense that it kind of not always so subtly references to our political situation that we're in today with hope and change and all of those sorts of things. I am, just personally, I find it very kind of ironic and frustrating, I guess is the word. We're having all these Tea Party candidates, right? And we think that politically, they're really right where they ought to be. We're happy to see that. And who are the candidates? Young women. A society which sends its women to war and governs itself by its women is a society that's stupid. Period. Don't talk about that. Messed up the roles. And they are important. And of course then there is the role of those in submission. And again, you know, I understand that that is, you know, that's that struggle. But I think the issue that we need to see here and try to instill in our children and in the whole business of submission is that this is not about one person forcing his will over someone else. This is about God's authority being established and understanding that God all of us, that's why we as adults also are in submission, in the church, in the world in which we live, in various ways, is that God is through this means seeking to establish for us to understand how we are to live and best enjoy life to its fullest when we live in relationship to God. And so by establishing that in the home, it is only the positive way in which, I mean, if you take your child, let's literally, I guess there's those who've tried that, if you literally have an infant or a child at a young age, and don't teach them anything, how to hold a spoon, how to eat, how to walk, how to go to the bathroom, what have you. What kind of person are they going to be when they grow up? It's the way in which God has established that we can become adult citizens in the world in which we live. Let me pose with this. I've been kind of maybe rambling here a little bit. I have, as I've thought back over the years as a pastor, And certainly as a father, and I can sit down and tell you any number of ways in which I know that as a father I've blown it, and haven't done it as I ought to, and as a parent, as a pastor as well. But we find ourselves, back to what I kind of started with, we find ourselves in kind of an interesting situation. If you think about, you know, the question that I said people ask, what's happening in our world? What's happening? Where are we headed? If you think about the history of Christianity from the time of the apostles, the end of the New Testament, until today. What we've experienced in this country, and we can have an interesting discussion to what extent it has been or not been a good Christian culture or world in which we've lived in, in this nation. But basically, generally speaking, it has been a world in which Christianity has been very dominant, very influential, and it's been a pretty good situation that we've lived in as Christians in the last two, three hundred years. But in fact, if you look at the whole history of the Church, that's an anomaly. For the most part of Christianity, Christians have lived in a hostile, pagan world. But what am I saying about that? So in a sense, we've kind of been lulled to sleep, and we have the notion, especially in small town mid-America, but it's true across the country, is that when it comes to some of these very, very basic things about what it means to be a family, we just assume that everybody knows what that is. father is to be a father, a mother is to be a mother, children are to be, and all of those sorts of things. And all of a sudden it's stuck up on us, and the society doesn't know what that means anymore. And I find myself as a pastor thinking, we need to go back and start teaching people ABCs about family. And I'm not sure that we've really thought about that very well in the past, and we need to How do you sit down and think, okay, maybe you do a little bit more premarital counseling, but you have to just kind of talk about, and sometimes you have to deal with new parents and new married couples with just ABCs. Okay, now when you get up in the morning, the first thing you do is this and this and this and so on. You know, we have to do that as pastors in our churches, it seems to me. More so than we've ever done that before, because we can no longer assume that just because you've grown up in middle America, and even grown up in a church home, that these young people know what that means. Because they're so influenced about that world in which they're growing up in, That's not the case anymore. So it's in a sense, it seems to me that it's snuck up on us. And we need to, in new ways, see how to do that. I think the church too, we could talk at length. I don't want to get into a lot of detail because everyone in these situations are different and it's hard to put down the specifics. But let's just take for example a family in the church that's a single parent family. Maybe it's a mother, there's no father there. You know, I don't think the church then comes in and forces itself upon the family. I don't think the elders come in and say, well, there's no father in this home, so we're going to discipline the children and so on. No, the family is still that home. But certainly there is a need for extra pastoral care. We talked last night about family visitation. There's a need for them to be ready to assist in a way that is probably not needed in other ways. Or there's a family where the father's gone and there's no provision. And we need to make sure we don't come in and do the budget for that family. We don't come in and buy the groceries for that family. But certainly we have an extra concern to make sure that the family has what it needs. And I think the church has a ministry. in that way that we need to be sure to build up. And I think we need to find in ways more than ever before, if the family is indeed this basic unit of society, rather than having what we have right now, is the culture out here has in a devastating way, I believe, influenced families in the church. There ought to be the other way around. We ought to be ready to live in a pagan world, much as I hate to think about my grandchildren and Saul growing up in that kind of a world, but we ought to be, as Christians, ready to live in a pagan world in which we are the influence of Saul, the Light of the Shining Hill, rather than the other way around. We need to think about how to do that. I'm going to stop at that point. I have a question for Reverend Kerner. And if you're still taking time to digest, Don't forget about the thoughts or questions on a note card, and bring those up here. And you can ask if there is plenty of opportunity. And there's still opportunities to go and ask questions for Reverend Sims or something related to his lecture from last night. But any comments or questions right now? One question that I might ask, and it's something with regard the outline with the different types of families. And I think it's an idea of clarification, and that is that when we see different types of structures, are we saying that empty nesters, let's say you have a family that has two parents, they had children, they fulfilled their duties and responsibilities, and in so doing then their children are sent out on the home and they have their own families. How do empty nesters fit into different structures? Do we want to say that they're somehow impacted by a fallen world, or they're somehow resulting from sinful actions, or they're based on sinful structure? Would you care to touch base on that for a moment? Or is it the idea that you have types of them, you have the ideal, and they fulfilled their course, and now they're at the end? Can you elaborate a bit more about where you're going with that in terms of what would be the, obviously there's the emotional things, all of a sudden one day the family, the last child goes off to college and you're home and those sorts of things, but help me understand a little bit where the problem is or what are the issues that you're dealing with, that you're thinking there? Well, the reason for my question is that, as you've listed, number one, two, the impact of the fallen world, or structures that are resulting in sinful actions, or something that's based in sinful structure, we're not saying that each of these different types of families necessarily fall in any one of those categories, are we? No, but each one of these are, well, let's just, you know, let me respond to the empty nesters. As Roman Sims said last evening, very correctly so, that the most basic relationship there is between husband and wife. Children are in a real sense on loan to us from God. As I said, God doesn't bring adults into the world, He brings children into the world and so they need help. They need parents. But we think we need to understand that the purpose for raising children is to get them to their own family one day. And if we don't understand that, but we make a wrong sort of relationship and we want to be, you know, still want to be parents and all that it means to be parents, not that there should still be a proper relationship, between when our children are adults, between them and parents. But if we understand that our purpose for raising children is so that someday they are out of the nest, that's the goal, that's what we're looking for. If we have that wrong, then we're going to have a simple problem probably in dealing with the fact that they're adults, or the other way around. I'm not saying that there aren't some situations in which parents need to help out their adult children, and maybe even... But our purpose is not to have them live in our home all their life. Our purpose is to get them away. We're at the point now, when the rare occasion when it happens, when all of our children and all of our grandchildren are home for a couple of days over Christmas or something, we enjoy that tremendously. But the day they're gone, Marcia and I look at each other and say, hey, we're glad they're gone. Life is happy just between the two of us right now. That's a healthy structure. I don't know if that's the kind of thing that you're talking about. In each of these, if we don't have a healthy biblical view, and all of us struggle with this, we don't have a biblical healthy view, then it leads to the problems that these kinds of situations can come up with. The nature of my question was just wanting to make sure that we're not saying that if a couple has followed to the best of their ability into the glory of God, and they're now by themselves, just husband and wife, and they're enjoying their life and so forth, that that somehow still fits in the category, but it can deal with that depending on reactions to situations or decisions made, those types of things. But in and of itself, we're not saying that empty dentures somehow fit into, we're not saying that other abuse families necessarily. Well, in a fact, you know, this list is interesting, and if I remember it to your list. This list is not a list of simple situations or anything of that nature. An empty nest situation is, in fact, a biblical principle. That's the goal for which we raise children, so that some day they're gone, and then they're all facing the hell. So it's kind of an interesting list, and maybe it could have been arranged. differently from so on. We're looking for questions and clarification, right? Perhaps more of a thing that we have different types of families in the Church. Obviously single family there are also the infamous. And the role in the Church is different than if it is as a role with parents. Apart from parents with children, right? So there are different roles within the Church depending as to what you are. Sure. And I think that's probably more the issue there with the Ancestors. They're still our children. I think we're still going to be there to try to provide guidance and support to them. But we are not their parents anymore telling them what to do. They're a little family, right? I think the biblical principle of a son shall leave father or mother and think his wife is an important biblical principle. You understand that? And I think with that, to take it a step beyond, is with roles have different challenges. For instance, if you look through this list, you can have blended families of two individuals who are both widowed, or you can have even blended families of two individuals that have been biblically divorced, depending on your view of that. But with that then, now they have new challenges, as you mentioned. And you also then have, as it notes there, the challenge of two Christians that have come together, but they come from different cultures. And so now, how do you, what are some of the things that they'll face, and what will they have to deal with? See, in every one of these, on this list, the structure itself is not a sinful structure. It's there because of the fact that we live in a sinful world. But in each one of these situations is not under the third category, none of those are listed where you have a man and a man living together and a woman and a woman living together and those aren't even listed. So I want to be very careful. The structure themselves in each one of these, whether it's an interracial family, whether it's a family with adult children living in the home, you know, we could talk about that in terms of how that ought to be handled and so on. But a family of only one, even the family of one believing parent, the Bible does not say, tear up that family, it can't be together, no. But they create unique situations in which they perhaps need unique ministry from the church in order to help them deal with the potential problems that are there. I don't get it. My wife and I have been a little part of this, and I'm not sure the rest of you are. We have been small bodies of maybe 150 cops. Why can't I just go talk to them? You know, there is a place for that. Absolutely. You talk about, you know, we need to take these people and help these people. There's practical considerations. Well, there's two issues involved in that. I think certainly as individual members, we all have a responsibility to one another. Not to interfere in each other's families, but to be there in a support way. And probably, we do emphasize in a conservative church and in a biblical church as the RTOS, we do emphasize the roles of the officers of the church in terms of the formal counseling, biblical advice, and so on. But we probably do not do as well in terms of just the role of the general office of believer, which is a biblical concept. that could meet that in a much better way as well. It's a fine line at the one point where someone's difficulties become the purview of what the pastor ought to be dealing with rather than what the fellow member ought to be there. And it overlaps at times. So that's an important point. I do think when you mention the size of congregations, Certainly, that is something that ought to be able to be carried out if your observation is interesting and it's a smaller congregation and it doesn't happen. Certainly, it ought to be able to happen a lot easier in smaller congregations than a large congregation. If you've got 3,000 members, who knows what the other person's situation is. And so yeah, if they haven't been fought, or if they haven't gone on... And you do have, and Timothy talks about, you know, there's another very interesting thing, I could give a whole lot of lecture on this, I won't. But with the whole business of structures in our society today, what in fact happens in the world that we live in today, and in our churches, let's just be very honest, What happens when the roles that the church or the other fellow believer ought to be fulfilling in these families that don't have the perfect structure? A father is missing, a mother is missing, and so on. Who in fact fulfills that and is to help there today? State government. It's not their job and they don't know how to do it. But we've given it over to the state all too often. That's what church hasn't done. No problem. Just to pick up on that, I talked about the fact that we need to, we need to, and I don't have a quick solution how to do it. It's something that as pastors, we need to, at least in my mind, think fresh ways of how to do this, in terms of teaching young members and young parents. older, newly empty nesters, all those sorts of things, they need seats. I mean, as soon as a child is born in a hospital, where is the first place they get a visit from about the fact that how they're going to raise their children and the car seat that they have to have in order to take their children home? From the state social services. I live in the trunk. I need a 40 to represent myself. Alright, seeing no questions at this time, don't forget to ask. There will be another couple of opportunities to do so. And with that, why don't we take a break. There are refreshments in the back, and you can use the restroom or facilities and have opportunities to engage. If you have any questions you want to ask one-on-one, you can come and talk to Reverend Turner reportedly. We'll be back here at 10.50. Okay, so 10.50, we'll be back here for Reverend Trite's lecture.