Ray Stedman reminds us Christians about having God in the home and the good
it brings. We should keep God central in all parts of our lives which also
includes the home environment. There are forces at work trying to corrupt
the family atmosphere and in some areas it's succeeding, but if a family
keeps God-centered, such attacks against them fail. Ray Stedman's sermon on
this is encouraging and worthy of reading even if you're not a parent.
May God bless,
Carl
website -- http://www.nettally.com/saints/
blog -- http://www.anniemayhem.com/cgi-bin/wordpress/
---
FAITH AT HOME
by Ray C. Stedman
A man once asked some of his friends, "What are the three most wonderful
words in the English language?" One unmarried young man said, "To me the
most wonderful words in the English language are, 'I love you.'" A married
man said, "The three most wonderful words are, 'Home Sweet Home.'" The third
man said, "To me the three most wonderful words are 'Enclosed find check.'"
I do not wish to make too much of the story except to say it may be
symptomatic of an age in which materialism has become the strongest factor
of our day, eclipsing even "Home Sweet Home" or "I love you."
This message begins a series on the general theme "The Christian and Moral
Conditions" in which we shall take a square and forthright look at the moral
conditions of our day, the powerful forces behind them, and what the Bible
has to say on this theme. I hope this will prove to be practical,
enlightening, and helpful. I shall begin with what I consider to be the
heart of the whole matter: The home.
Never before in all history has there been such a concerted, world-wide,
all-out assault upon the home. As an amateur student of history, I know
there have been many times in the past where conditions as we see them today
have combined to destroy the home life of a nation, but never before on such
a world-wide compass has this taken place.
The family is the oldest institution known to man. It is coexistent with the
human race, and predates by considerable time the other great institutions
of humanity -- human government, the school, and the church. There seems to
be no question in the minds of thoughtful biblical observers of the
present-day scene that the Devil has launched an all-out campaign to destroy
family life. This concept is central in the demonic philosophies of
Communism. The Communists are trying to break down the discipline and unity
of the home and to replace it with the dormitory, which they call the
commune. They are having considerable difficulty in this because these ties
are very strong, but, nevertheless, they deliberately try to undermine the
basis of the home.
Even in America we find these destructive forces powerfully at work. Home
used to be "a place where you hang your hat." Now it has become a place
where you hang your head! Sex parties, drinking parties, wife-swapping
orgies, and poker dens have all moved out of the saloons and the brothels,
and are now found in the homes of America. Even in Christian homes unhappy
conditions prevail. Often a spirit of anarchy and rebellion enters the home
and there is fighting and shouting and physical attack. The atmosphere is
often one of nervous tension, or, at best, an armed truce. All of this, we
must recognize, is part of a Satanic strategy, a deliberately planned attack
to destroy what has been one of the bulwarks of morality, religion, and
faith -- the atmosphere of the home.
An attack like this calls for an intelligent counter-attack. We cannot sit
supinely by and allow our homes to be destroyed, as they certainly will be
unless there is a counter-attack. But we must also recognize that the
weapons we employ must not be the weapons of the world. The Apostle Paul
writes, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal," {2 Cor 10:4a KJV}. They
are not fleshly, they are not the usual means the world employs, but they
are "mighty through God unto the pulling down of strongholds, bringing into
captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ," {2 Cor 10:4b-5 KJV}. We
wrestle not against flesh and blood. It is not by that means we shall win,
not by the usual methods of the world -- psychiatric counseling, police
supervision, new legislation -- these things have their place but they are
not the weapons that will win this battle. No, this calls for a return to
the wisdom of God and an understanding of his principles for the home. If we
come back to these we shall discover weapons of mighty power that can
counteract the strong forces that are at work to undermine and destroy our
homes.
I am speaking largely to parents, but I would like especially to invite
young people to listen attentively and quietly to this message, not only
because you will some day yourself have homes of your own, but because you
already are involved in a home, and your understanding and cooperation in
what makes a home work is a very important and necessary ingredient. I urge
you, then, to listen carefully as we look together at the key passage in all
Scripture on this subject, Deuteronomy, chapter six, verses four through
nine.
May I deal quickly with whatever objection may be in the minds of any who
say, "Why turn to the Old Testament? We are not under law, but grace. Why
look at an Old Testament passage for us today? -- The answer to that is that
the great principles of God's workings among men never change.
Dispensational distinctions (and there are some) largely deal with external
things, with the processes, the methods of God's working, but the great
principles by which he works never change. These Old Testament passages are
as valid and needful for us today as any in the New Testament. I do not
hesitate to say that this passage is one of the greatest Scriptures in the
whole Bible.
"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your
might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your
heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall
talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and
when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon
your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall
write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." {Deut 6:4-9
RSV}
The passage falls into two simple divisions. There is first the statement of
the greatest truth that man can ever discover in life -- the centrality of
God -- and then the statement of man's relationship to him. This is the
process by which the principle can be applied. The great principle is God
and the process is love. Here we have an unrivaled principle and an
unfailing process.
The unrivaled principle is the declaration of the nature of God. I would
like to borrow the title of a little book by Norman Grubb, and call this,
The Key to Everything. Here is Christianity in a nutshell. This is a day of
concentrates; we have many of them on our kitchen shelves. Here is truth,
concentrated! From this statement of the nature of God and our necessary
relationship to him, all the teaching of Scripture grows. There is the
revelation of the one true God:
"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord."
And then the necessary relationship to him to make our humanity make sense:
"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might."
The greatness of this declaration is confirmed by the Lord Jesus who once
quoted these words, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your might." He said, "This is the
first and the great commandment, and the second is very much like it, it
grows out of it. 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two
hang all the law and the prophets," {cf, Matt 22:38-39}. Here is the sum of
all that God has entered human life to teach us.
If you were of Jewish background you would be familiar with the first
statement as the Shema. Jews repeat this frequently as the central truth of
their religion. It is called the Shema because it begins with the Hebrew
word, shema which means "hear." Shema Yisrael Yehowah Elohaynu Yehowah
Achadh is Hebrew for "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord." They do
not say "Yehowah" which is "Jehovah," but they say "Elohim" for they believe
the word "Jehovah" should never be uttered by the human tongue. It is the
ineffable, the unspeakable name of God. Though they read "Jehovah," they say
"Elohim." The word "one," marking the great statement of monotheism, "our
Jehovah is one God," is a word which indicates a compound unity. Even in
this great statement of the uniqueness of God there is a very strong hint of
his trinity, that God is not a single, isolated unit but a compound unity.
So here we have the revelation of the trinity, the one true God.
This is the great secret behind all things. Back of every exploration that
man can make in the realm of science, psychology, or sociology, lies the
ultimate reality of the one true God. Every road leads to him, every
exploration must start with him. He is the explanation of human history.
This is why the Scripture says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom," {Psa 111:10, Prov 9:10}. Unless you start here you will run in
endless circles of thought and eventually lose yourself in the swamps of
relativity where you can never know the beginning from the end.
The only proper response of man to a God like that is to love him with all
his being. "You shall love the Lord your God." Not serve him, or slavishly
obey him, but love him. Those other things are all involved in loving him
and if you love God everything else in life will fall into place. Jesus said
so. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all other
things shall be added unto you," {Matt 6:33 KJV}. This is the key to life:
to love God. This is the whole story of Christianity, the whole story of
God's redemptive love: the cross, the resurrection, the coming of the Holy
Spirit, the preaching of the gospel throughout the world, the believing of
it, the receiving of the Lord into our own hearts; all this is simply the
way by which God has made it possible to obey his word and love him.
By natural constitution man is made to love. There is never a man made who
does not love something. Put a prisoner in a cell in solitary confinement
and he will find a tiny flower growing in a crack in the wall and love that.
Man must love, that is what he is made to do. He can love either a person, a
place, or a thing. The tragedy of humanity is that without Jesus Christ the
fallen heart of man loves something less than God, and what fallen man loves
in place of God becomes a god in his life. Man must have a god and it is
always what he loves supremely. It might be a sports car, it might be
another person, it might be an idea, it might be fame. it might be wealth,
it might be power, anything that is less than God. But in the gospel we
learn for the first time that it is possible for man to love God. This is
the central reason for living, the answer to why human beings are on
earth -- to learn to love God. Daniel Webster was once asked "What is the
greatest thought that ever entered your mind?" And he answered immediately,
"My accountability to God!" This is the great thing.
If this is true, then it follows that the man or woman who knows how to love
God will never go astray in life. And the child who learns to love God will
be kept through every testing, every trial, every danger. In fairy tales
when children left home their parents would often give them a magic
talisman, with the parting instruction. "Anytime you get into trouble, or
need help, or are in real danger, rub this and everything will turn out all
right." That is a fantasy representation of the truth. There is a magic
talisman -- it is love for God! If we learn to love God everything else will
turn out all right. That is the central truth of life.
Now, I want to ask a question of you parents. If this is true (and I do not
doubt for a moment that you agree with me that it is true), and you could
have one wish above every other wish, would it not be that you wish above
all things that your children might learn to love God? Surely you would.
Then listen carefully to the Holy Spirit as he goes on to teach us the
unfailing process by which this can happen. In the verses that follow,
beginning with Verse 6, we have four steps clearly outlined that must occur
in a home if children are to learn this mightiest of all secrets: How to
love God.
Note that step number one begins with you.
"And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart;"
{Deut 6:6 RSV}
There is parental priority. It begins with you. God must be all-important to
you or he can never be important to our children. Your heart must be right.
The heart, here, is a metaphor for the will; your will must be right. Now I
am not talking about perfect performance here, I am talking about perfect
desire. You may be very conscious of failure in your life, as I am in mine,
but the note on which this begins is:
"Do you want to love God with all your heart?
"Is this the supreme thing in life to you?
"Do you want to love God and do you want your children to love God?"
There is where you must begin.
If you do not, I suggest it would be better for your family if you were not
there! I can tell you honestly, I know some Christian families in which the
best thing that could happen to the children would be to lose their parents.
In one of the most sobering passages that ever fell from his lips, Jesus
said, "It would be better for you that a millstone be hung about your neck
and you be cast into the depths of the sea, than that you offend one of
these little ones that believe in me," {cf, Matt 18:6, Mark 9:42, Luke
17:2}. Then let us begin there. A heart that wants God, that is the first
step.
The second step is in the first part of Verse 7:
"and you shall teach them diligently to your children," {Deut 6:7a RSV}
Here is personal instruction, i.e., imparting information about God to your
children. This introduces the whole range of Scripture, for this is the book
which teaches and informs about God. Here is declared the responsibility of
parents to instruct their children in the revelation that God has given to
us about himself. We can never love someone we do not know, so the first
step in teaching how to love God is to know God.
Notice the pronoun that is used. "You shall teach these diligently to your
children," not they, you! This is not the job of the Sunday School, this is
not the church's responsibility, this is your task! The Sunday School and
church cannot substitute for the parents in this realm. At best they are a
supplement. Here is a responsibility that is nontransferable. This is not a
new truth. Over twenty-three hundred years ago, wise old Socrates in Athens
said to the people of the city, "Could I climb the highest place in Athens,
I would lift my voice and proclaim, 'Fellow citizens! Why do you turn and
scrape every stone to gather wealth, and take so little care of your
children, to whom one day you must relinquish it all?'"
The third step is perhaps the most neglected. Most of us parents have
answered, "Yes," to these first two steps. We want God. We have recognized,
at least to some degree, our responsibility to teach our children. But here
is a third step:
"and [you] shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk
by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." {Deut 6:7b RSV}
What is this, but unforced application? These words, "talk about them when
you sit, when you lie down, when you rise up," do not mean that parents are
to moralize or preach at their children. Please do not read it that way.
There is nothing more deadly than continual parental moralizing.
I stayed with a family once in which the grown children confessed they were
determined to let their own children leave food on their plates at the
table, because, during their own childhood, they so resented hearing their
mother inevitably say, if they left a scrap of food on their plate, "Now
think of the poor starving children in China!"
No, when Scripture says, "talk about these things when you stand up and sit
down and walk by the way and through the day," it does not mean you are to
take the occasion to preach a moral sermon about everything that happens. It
means, of course, that the truth of God relates to everything in life, and
the challenge to parents is to find what that relationship is, and use it to
illustrate when the occasion demands. Do not do all your teaching about God
from the Bible, do it also from life. Life itself is a tremendous
illustration resource, a living visual aid for teaching.
Jesus himself wonderfully exemplifies this. Read through his messages and
see how he draws his illustrations from life around him -- the birds, the
trees, the flowers, the process of sowing and reaping, the animals around
(sheep are always a picture of one particular thing, wolves are another,
pigs another). He did not use only the lower kingdoms, he turned also to
human life. Here is a stuffy, pompous Pharisee, and Jesus draws a lesson
from him. Here is a timid, weak woman and he illustrates a point with her.
Here are fresh, unspoiled children and he sets one in the midst of the
disciples and teaches a great truth. The whole of life was the resource from
which he drew his lessons.
Let me tell you this, if, as a parent, you seek to teach this way you will
find yourself driven to prayer that God will open your mind and eyes and
help you to see how life can make truth clear and vivid.
I will add one other thing: Such teaching will also include humor. There are
Christian homes in which religion is grim and repelling. To look at some
Christians you might think they had been soaked in embalming fluid! There is
never a moment of laughter in their lives, everything is so serious, so
solemn. I am convinced that many of the figures Jesus used, which we stumble
over, were intended to be humorous, and often we fail to see the point. When
he talks about a camel passing through the eye of a needle, that was
deliberately designed to be a humorous illustration of an impossible thing.
When he talks about swallowing a camel with great ease, but straining at a
gnat, it was designed to evoke a laughing response.
I have long suspected that God has a great sense of humor, and he
deliberately displayed it in the making of animals. There is no animal more
funny than a camel -- the only animal that looks like it was put together by
a committee! Perhaps this is why the Lord used it so frequently in humorous
illustrations.
When he talks about the beam in your eye, and the difficulty of trying to
extract a splinter out of your brother's eye while you are batting him
around with this log sticking out of your own eye, he is being deliberately
but pointedly humorous. Do not be afraid to employ humor in your home and in
your life.
If you will forgive a personal illustration, our family was seated around
our table some time ago to have a time of Bible reading. We had been reading
through the epistle to the Ephesians in the Living Letters translation and
had come to the fifth chapter. As I began to read I noticed the first words
of the chapter, and read them out in loud, stentorian tones "Children, obey
your parents, for this is right." Then I came to the next section, addressed
to parents, and I read it quickly through in a barely audible voice,
"Fathers provoke not your children to wrath," and we had a good laugh
together over the natural tendency in all of us to avoid that which speaks
to us, and to emphasize that which speaks to another. Our family has not
forgotten that passage -- at least I have not.
Here, then, is the main failure in Christian homes, homes that intend to do
the best by God, but have not yet seen this simple secret. Do not most of us
parents try to impart scriptural truth by moralizing? We make a club out of
a Scripture verse and beat our children over the head with it until they
give in, or rebel. But it should not be that way. There must be an unforced,
natural application of truth to life, and life to truth.
May I say something else without being misunderstood on this?
The greatest enemy to real faith in your home might well be family worship!
Now, I am very much in favor of family worship, the family time together,
reading Scripture, etc. But it can become the worst enemy to real faith if
you let it be the only time you are religious, and the rest of the time life
goes on on quite a different level. The family altar is often the
compartmentalization of faith, the time when you are religious while the
rest of your family life is lived as the world lives it, as though God did
not exist. If that is the case, your family altar can be deadly.
Family worship must grow out of a permeation of Scripture throughout all of
life.
It must be an expression of that which is true in all areas of your home
life.
Now, to pass on quickly to the last thing, and the important thing. The last
principle set before us in this great process is a description of the ground
of authority in the home.
"And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as
frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the doorposts on
your house and on your gates." {Deut 6:8-9 RSV}
Do not take that literally, as the Jews did. They actually made little boxes
in which they put the Scriptures and then bound them around their hands and
put them on their forehead between their eyes and bound them on their gates
and on their doorposts. There are orthodox homes where you can find those
things yet today. But remember, "the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth
life," {2 Cor 3:6b KJV}. It is the spirit of this passage which is the
important thing.
The writer says this shall be a sign, and what is a sign? A sign is
something visible which compels belief. When Jesus performed signs he did so
to compel belief in him as the Messiah. A sign, then, is that which
establishes authority. Are you one of those parents that say so frequently,
"My words seem to fall on deaf ears with my children. They pay no attention
to me. What I say seems to roll right off them like water off a duck's
back." Then you lack the sign of authority! This part of Scripture has never
been fulfilled in your home.
What is this? It is the visible evidence that you, yourself, practice what
you preach!
It is to be "a sign upon your hand," i.e., what you do, for the hands are
the organs of activity. Your deeds are to reflect the fact that you love
God.
It is to be "a sign between your eyes," i.e., your thought-life. Your
attitudes are to display the fact that you love God. Your thoughts and
attitudes are to be controlled by love for God.
It is to be "upon the doorposts and the gates," i.e., the avenues of contact
with the world around you, your neighbors, your friends, and others.
Your children, watching you, are to see that your love for God is reflected
in your attitudes towards your neighbors and your friends. That is the sign
of authority. You do not have any other.
If that is not your authority, you cannot work up another. That is our
problem. It is failure here that makes us try to shore up our sagging
authority by rigid controls, dire threats, and by begging, tearful
impotence. But our visible obedience is to be the basis of authority.
Did you know that is the basis of authority which Jesus Christ claimed for
himself?
In John 10:37 {RSV}, he says to the Jews who were questioning his authority,
"If I am not doing the works of my Father then do not believe me." "You have
been listening to my words and if what I am doing does not agree with what I
am saying, then do not believe me."
How many of you would dare to say that in your home?
But that is the basis of real authority; the authority of obedience to the
principles you are declaring. If you have this, you do not need any other
kind of authority. If you have this, you will discover that, as your
children grow, you can relax the rules so that as they come into early
manhood and womanhood (eighteen or so), you can trust them and treat them
like adults. They will be what you hope they will be, because they cannot
deny the authority they see in your life.
Now, this kind of a message is either very encouraging or very discouraging.
We either react by saying, "I am on the right track, I just need to keep
on," or we say, "Well, it is too late." But let me say this to you. No
matter where this message finds you, start where you are. Start right where
you are. There is no need to look back in vain regrets over the past. Begin
right now. Such is the grace of God, such is the glory of his nature and his
character, as the God of the impossible, that he can do wonders no matter
when or where you begin.
Begin right now in your home to put these principles into practice.
And ask God to make this passage become a living, glorious reality in your
life.
Prayer
Our Father, surely there is not a heart among us here that does not echo the
prayer that we might learn what these things mean, and see them wrought out
in our own lives. Teach us to begin where you began, Lord, with us. Help us
to see that we who are parents set the tone of our homes, quite
unconsciously, without realizing it. Teach us to begin there, Lord. In
Christ's name, Amen.
Title: Faith at Home
Series: The Christian and Moral Conditions
Scripture: Deut 6:4-9
Message No: 1
Catalog No: 78
Date: January 10, 1965
Copyright © 1995 Discovery Publishing, a ministry of Peninsula Bible Church.
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