Home Work
Pt. 3 – Working Families
Over the last two week’s we have been handing out home work at church! The first week I gave the home work to the dads. Fight apathy, help your families make good decisions, set priorities, and establish godly boundaries or guardrails. We continue to have men sign up for Covenant Eyes! We dealt with Ephesians 5 which called men to love their women all out!
Then last week we challenged the women to fight misalignment. To learn that submit isn’t a bad concept, but one that brings the miraculous to bear. Told our women to understand their men, themselves and to offer support! Then we went into to Proverbs 31 to what traits a godly woman processes.
So today I want us to look at working families. Let’s get everyone involved in the home work. Dads, moms, children, cousins, aunts, uncles, and the black sheep. Every family has one right?
I want us to examine a couple of concepts here that we must understand as families.
The family unit was God’s idea. He constantly dealt with the Israelites by family units and tribes. When Achan hid the stolen loot in his tent you will remember that the solution was that each tribe and each family in the tribe was examined to discover who had sinned. God sees each of us individually. He sees you so clearly that He knows the number of hairs on your head. However, God also sees us from a family perspective too. He sees you as part of a unit of people. Your family matters to God. He is aware of it. He is concerned about it. So when we talk about your home although it is made up as individuals God also see your home as one. That is why Joshua could make the declaration that as for me and my house, even though I am speaking for more than myself, we as one unit are going to serve the Lord.
This speaks to our connectedness. You have heard me say this before, but it bears repeating no man is an island. You are not in this alone. Your life impacts and has bearing on so many others. That is why it is so important for dads, moms, kids, uncles, aunts, and grandparents to understand that everything you do impacts and affects the rest of the family unit. God connected us. What you do impacts the family. The choices you make or don’t make have dramatic impact on the rest of the unit!
So out of that connectedness God speaks to the Israelites and gives them some key instruction about their homes.
Text: Duet. 6:1-2, 5-9
1 These are the commands, decrees and laws the LORD your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the LORD your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. (by the way as a side note – I know in the NT kids obedience is directly linked to long life, but notice here long life is a foregone conclusion, but being able to enjoy it is linked to keeping God’s commands. You can have long life and not enjoy it!)
5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
(Message) 6-9 Write these commandments that I've given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates.
I believe this set of instructions given to the Children of Israel immediately after Moses has come off the mountain to share the 10 Commandments with the nation are still supremely significant and applicable to our families today!
1. The family’s #1 enemy is nearsightedness!
I think we get so wrapped up in what is happening now that we become very nearsighted and God’s view of family is farsighted. Take stock of the now in light of the tomorrow. Some of you are allowing things to go on in your home right now that you have decided aren’t that big of deal and they may not seem to be now. But you need to back out a little and ask about later. If you continue to allow this now what happens 10 years from now? What you put up with, make room for, make concession for now will only become exaggerated in their home later.
Notice the power of generations here. He gives instructions so that the parents, then the children and the children’s children remain in line with the commands of God.
I think too many of us deal with our families with an eye on now and forget that what we are doing is laying the foundation for generations to come after us. How we live, how we interact, how we spend time together, the morals established, the boundaries established, the roles established now will have long lasting, generation crossing implications. Dad if you want your son’s son to treat his wife with respect and for him to take care of his kids then you had better set that as the pattern now. Mom if you want your daughter’s daughter to refuse to be mistreated by a man then you had better stand up now. Young people in the room if you want your children and their children to obey their parents you had better set that as the pace right now.
The work we do in our homes right now as families has generational impact. That is why it is essential that you set standards, traditions, boundaries, and expectations now. That is why is so important for families to be careful what addictions, habits, and what is considered to be normal to be established or seeded into their homes. It will carry across generations. Some of you need to break some of the things that were set into motion by your grandparents, parents and start a new mold, new pattern, and a new system. Don’t become a prisoner of now to the destruction of later.
2. Working families work because the parents know everything flows down.
Moses reveals an important truth. You have to get something in you before you can get into someone else. You can’t take your family where you haven’t already gone! Get it into us so we can get it into them. That is an important step. You can’t get it into them if they see that it really isn’t in you.
If you ever have to say “Do what I said not what I do” then you don’t understand the home work. It doesn’t work that way. It has to start in you first! A love of God has to start in parents first. A love for His Word, His house, His people has to start in the hearts of dad and mom first. Then we can get it into the kids. A controlled tongue has to start in parents first. Self control has to start there first. If we want our kids to be better than us we have got to become better than us first! Everything flows down.
God says impress on your children . . . not impress your children. Too many of us trying to impress our kids, be their best friends, be the cool parent and our kids are being impressed on by our culture and our society. This word means to hone, to double up, and to go over and over again to secure an edge. We need to give our kids a repeat performance of faithfulness if we expect them be faithful. We must repeat obedience if we want them to be obedient.
What is flowing in your house?
3. Working families sound different.
Moses is clear that a working family will sound different. Notice what he does! He dictates the sound of the home. The home dialogue is laid out. “Talk about the commands wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night.”
How many of us talk about everything at home, but God? Many of us go a full week, Sunday to Sunday, and God is never even mentioned except in anger. Moses was clear . . . he says about God, His Word, His commands while you are going down the road, before you sleep, when you get up.
Moses apparently understood that frequency relates to and reveals fervency. If you aren’t talking about it your kids will understand that it really isn’t a priority or important.
Do we talk to our kids more about sports, grades, girls, guys, clothes, than we do about God? Some of your kids believe that the lake is more important than God because that is all they hear about. You have got to establish a foundation of the dialogue. Dialogue with your family about what you hear at church. Dialogue with your family about God! What you talk about matters. What you talk about influences your family’s future!
4. Working families never escape the Word.
Our homes are to be marked by His Word. Put the Word on the doorframe. It is the first and last thing you see and are influenced by as you enter and exit the house. What is the first thing you are influenced by as your enter and exit your house? Bickering? Anger? Tension? Or is it the peace of God? Love of God? Comfort? Too many of our homes are marked more by cable content than covenant content!
What marks your house?
Then when they were away from the house they are so shrouded by the Word that they actually have it tied to them. It is at the forefront of their minds. It determines what their hands do. We are instructed to hide His Word so deeply in our hearts that His Word keeps us from sinning. Could it be that our families are so easily falling into sin because there is a departure from the Word when we leave the house?
We must make God just as real at home as He is at church. We must prioritize His Word at home just as much as we do at church. A lot of us expose our families to the Word at church, but it is a Sunday only thing! If our families are going to work we must refuse to allow our families to escape the Word!
Your home will be marked by something. You had better make sure it is the Word. What can you do to make sure your family never escapes the Word?
HOMEWORK
Your home work this week is to talk about God this week.
Sit at the table and eat together and talk about God things.
On the way to work or school talk about God things. According to a TIME article, “Often the richest conversations, the moments of genuine intimacy, take place somewhere else, in the car, say, on the way back from soccer at dusk, when the low light and lack of eye contact allow secrets to surface.”
