Building A Happy Healthy Home Series

HomeBuilders

Building a Happy Healthy Home

May 20, 2007

070520 – Building a Happy Healthy Home

Video: The Perfects

This isn’t real is it? There are no families on earth like this. In fact we live in a world populated with dysfunctional homes. It has always been so.

A World Filled with Dysfunctional Families

Adam and Eve

Abraham and Sarah

Isaac and Rebekah

Jacob and Rachel

David and Bathsheba

Solomon and 700 wives

Ahab and Jezebel

There is a word that is used to describe the broken and shattered homes of today. And that word is dysfunctional.

If you listen closely you will hear people talk about, dissect, dialogue and analyze dysfunctional homes and dysfunctional families. Jerry Springer, Opray Winfry, and Dr. Phil all thrive because of dysfunctional families.

I want to submit to that there has only been one fully functional family home in the history of mankind and the human race. That home, without argument, hands down would have be the home of Adam and Eve, the masterpiece of God’s creation in the world, prior to their sinful disobedience. You know the story very well—They were created to be in perfect and harmonious sync and relationship with God in a perfect environment.

Everything about them was perfect, ideal, just right—then all of that changes when Adam does not take his God-given covenant authority to kick a snake out his relationship, his home and his family. And as a consequence, sin entered in and it has never been the same since.

From Adam to today, families have faced an onslaught of tough problems. Adam and Eve had a dysfunctional marriage. Abraham and Sarah struggled with Ishmael and Isaac – half-brothers with a real hatred for one another. Isaac and Rebekah played favorites with their boys – Esau and Jacob. Rebekah connived against her husband and Jacob cheated his brother out of his birthright.

Jacob married Leah while he loved Rachel. Leah had 10 sons and Rachel had two. Guess which two were favored over the others. Joseph was so hated by the others that they almost killed him outright but ended up just selling him into slavery and then told their father that he had been killed.

David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then had her husband killed.

Solomon took 700 wives and had another 300 concubines.

Ahab and Jezebel were so filled with evil that they took whatever they wanted from others.

And the beat goes on…

The Bible is full of such stories: stories of families as they suffer the storms of life. Those stories are the stories of our lives today. No family is immune to the storms of life – they are simply a fact of life.

Every family here today is facing storms: you are either suffering through them now or you know they are coming.

Some of you are in financial distress and there seems no way out. Some of your marriages are taking a beating from the hurricanes of life and you wonder how much longer you can hold out. There may be family shame, lying, deception, jealousy, or mistrust. It may be that you’re burdened with having to take care of family that cannot take care of themselves.

Let’s look at what God says about building a home.

God is The Master Builder

Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.

In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for he grants sleep to those he loves.

Psalms 127:1-2

Our Father God is the Master Builder (It’s no accident that Jesus was a carpenter!) Buildings are among the most complex projects that a person can engage in. It takes someone who knows what they are doing to build a good building.

First building project in St. Joseph led by a man who was a pig farmer turned builder… Needless to say the man who knew how to yell soouueee and slop the hogs couldn’t lay out a level foundation or plumb up a wall.

 4000 sq feet 4 inches out of square

 Beam upside down

 Plumbing along the beam

 Roof gutters in the walls

It’s clear to me that if you want to build a good building you have to work with someone who knows how to build. If you want to build a home – you must go to the one who knows how to build that home. God is that master builder.

God’s Design for the Home

6 “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, 8 and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”