Family Faith Series

What is our most basic calling in life? Let me put it another way—why are you here? There is a lot of talk in the church today about finding our purpose in life. What is God’s purpose for me? What is His will for my life? Why has God put me here? And people look all over the place to find the answer to that question. They look to personality tests. They look to different ways of finding out what their gifts and talents are. They spend time and effort on trying to look at different programs in the church and seeing where they might fit. But there’s a problem with those methods. Because God doesn’t always call people to do things that they are equipped to do. As a matter of fact, sometimes God gets the most glory out of taking people who are completely incapable of doing what He calls them to do. As the saying goes—God doesn’t call the equipped. He equips the called. So if your gifts and talents can’t tell you what your purpose in life is, what can? The Bible can. You see, God’s will for you is not really the mystery that we like to make it out to be. We like to think of it like a game of hide and go seek. God has His will for you and it’s up to you to find it if you can. But God’s will for your life is not a mystery. He tells you what it is very clearly and plainly in His Word. His will for your life is for you to love Him. Love Him with all your heart. Love Him with all your soul. Love Him with all your strength. In Matthew 22, one of the Jewish specialists in the Old Testament Law came to Jesus. He asked Jesus a very precise question. Out of all 613 laws in the Old Testament, he wanted to know which one was the most important. Jesus didn’t hesitate. He went right back to Deuteronomy 6:5. Love God with all your heart. Love God with all your soul. Love God with all your strength. And then He told the lawyer this—He said, “this is the greatest of all the commandments.” “And if you do that and love your neighbor as yourself, you’ve got the whole Law covered.” What Jesus doesn’t say there is that if you love God the way that you’re supposed to, loving the people He’s created will come as a natural byproduct. So your most basing calling in life is to love God. That’s why you are here. You are here to love God with all of your emotions—that’s your heart. You are to love God with all of your worship and your thoughts and your inside life—that’s your soul. You are to love God with all of your body and your physical abilities—that’s your might. That is your sole purpose in life. God said so in verse 5. Jesus repeated it in Matthew 22:37. What’s interesting is the context He put it in, in our passage this morning. Because He put it in the context of family. When God talks about our purpose in life, He immediately places that purpose in the context of family. That means that you can’t isolate God’s personal will for you from His will for your family. They are interconnected. They are dependent on each other. In other words, if you want to be in God’s will personally, you’d better be doing everything you can to make your home a place of family faith. Your faith is not your own. Your faith is also your family’s faith. The question is, is your home a place of family faith? In order to answer that question, we’re going to have to ask some more questions. The first question we need to ask is, Why should your home be a place of family faith?

Is this really that big of a deal? Why is it that important? The reason it’s important is because of verse 4. It’s important because of who God is. God is one God. At the same time, He is three Persons. He is God the Father. He is God the Son. He is God the Spirit. In the original, verse 4 literally says YHWH, our Elohim, one YHWH. YHWH is the personal, covenant name of God. It’s the name He used to reveal Himself to Moses in the burning bush. It is singular in its grammatical construct. Elohim is a more general name for God. It can also be used to talk about false gods or idols. But the interesting thing about Elohim is that it is plural in its construction. So, even in this verse, God is identifying Himself as both plural and singular. So why does that make a difference to us? Because our God is a God of relationship. Relationship is who He is. And because He is relationship, He created us to be in relationship. That’s the way we learn. That’s the way we teach. That’s the way we live. We learn and teach and live best in an intimate, close relationship. The kind of relationship that is best expressed in a family unit with a mom, a dad, and children. That’s the way God designed it. He designed it that way because of who He is and the nature of His triune relationship between the Father, the Son and the Spirit. But that’s not the only reason our homes should be places of family faith. Because that’s all pretty abstract. There’s a far more concrete reason. Because God told us to. Why should your home be a place of family faith? Yes, because of who God is. But if that’s not plain and simple enough for you… your home should be a place of family faith because God commands it. These 6 verses are not optional. They are the crux of the Law. They are everything that God requires, boiled down to its most irreducible form. The Ten Commandments are a summary of the entire Law. Verse 5 is a summary of the Ten Commandments. Love God. God commands us to love Him. Jesus said that if we love Him we will keep His commandments. Sound familiar? Jesus commands the same thing as the Father. In John 10:30, Jesus says, “I and my Father are One.” What God the Father commands, God the Son commands. So, if you’re going to say that you love Jesus, then you’re going to obey His commands. You are going to build your home as a place of family faith. So, why should your home be a place of family faith? Because of who God is and because of what He commands. But that brings us to the second question we need to ask. We know why. Now the question is, how? How will your home be a place of family faith?