Road Trip!!!
Family Vacation • Sermon • Submitted
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· 25 viewsTheme: God promises to bless the nations through family discipleship. Purpose: To Disciple our family members. Good News: God's covenant with God's people is for the redemption of the nations. Mission: Building Disciples
Notes
Transcript
Introduction: Story of Hannah on Mt. Evans. and or story of giving food to homeless rapper.
Our families live among the nations.
Our families live among the nations.
- Abram was a journeyer - His entire life was one big road trip..., travelling from Ur, to Aram, to Canaan, to Egypt.
- Discuss how the nations have different world-views - When we travel part of the interest is to see and experience life in a different place.
In Abrams day we get the sense that no one, if few people followed the one true God. The exception being Melchizedek.
This passage is in the context of the Soddom and Gomorrah story. - two city states that Abram currently lived near, and that his nephew lived in.
Just like Abram, our families live among the nations…
We may feel like we are in a bubble, and the global community is closer than we think. We are more and more exposed to a variety of world views.
The tongue in cheek joke we used to have in youth ministry was that it's a complex mathematical formula to try to estimate the exact point in which two moving targets will intersect! That's exactly what you feel like many times as the average Youth Pastor in today's churches as he or she tries keep up with the very busy schedules of today's teens.
How many hours do you actually have to minister to the teens in your church if they are regular attendees? They are there most often for the midweek youth group, which gives you about an hour and a half. If they come on Sundays they are there for a couple more hours but quite frankly there is not much time for you to interact with them during these service.
According to the U.S Department of Health and Human Services, the average adolescent in America sleeps 8.6 hours a day. They are involved with school and homework 6.8 hours. Media and Communication take up 2.3 hours daily, although other studies greatly expand that number. Teen's leisure time is about 1.4 hours and they spend 1.0 hours eating and drinking. Playing sports consumes 0.7 hours. Grooming will keep them in front of a mirror for 0.9 hours. Religious activities take up a whopping 0.1hour a day with volunteering 0.5 hours. Other categories account for the other 1.7 hours every day.
This passage gives us how God is going to use those teens to bless the nations...
God promises to bless the nations...
God promises to bless the nations...
The Covenant Story...
Eden - The purpose of families to be fruitful and spread God’s benevolent image, rule over creation.
Babylon
God’s covenant with Abram - Abram follows God, and God will bless him, make him into a great nation, so that through that nation all nations will be blessed.
In this story Abram has the privilege of seeing his very existence as being a part of a vision way bigger than himself. God’s Promise to restore all creation and to reverse the curse of the fall.
This story about Sodom and Gomorrah serves to show the urgency and critical nature of Abram’s call. The surrounding nations left to their own devices have become so self-destructive and destructive to others in their evil, the only just action is for their destruction. God’s covenant with Abram is a sign that God wants to reverse Sodom and Gomorrah’s world history, and restore the nations to the pre-fall history.
By the time we get to Acts and Peter’s message. Peter reminds the people in Jerusalem that they are Abram’s family who is called to receive God’s blessing and to pass that blessing on to the other nations. - Thousands of years after Abram.
They both preserved the teaching’s of God’s way, and often turned from it, but God’s promises never fail. He has sent his Son Jesus to turn Israel back to the calling of Abram, back to the Road Trip he was on which pointed to Jesus, and Jesus would lead them the rest of the way in blessing the nations - Salvation.
So God has promised to Bless the nations, but how?
through family discipleship.
through family discipleship.
The next two sermons are more about how families can do that (strategies), this morning I want to persuade you that this is an urgent call for discipleship.
- Typically, family vacations bring fresh opportunities for togetherness through extended time with siblings and parents—like trying a new adventure, building joyful memories, and strengthening relationships. Sometimes, though, this same forced togetherness requires us to extend grace to one another in levels that our regular schedules and separation may allow us to ignore or delay. The safety of covenant, that promise of unconditional love, is where grace happens in our relationship with God and our relationships with each other—especially our family. The family bond was created by God to be a covenantal bond that displays His love to the world.
- Hopefully it is clear at this point that a Key to God’s plan of redemption includes discipleship. - Discipleship is implied in Eden, Discipleship is Abram’s part of the Covenant with God and for Israel’s history, and Discipleship is commanded by Jesus for his disciple’s.
- This is our mission, is to build disciples, and it is so easy for us to then to say as families, that Discipleship is the Church’s job, and my job will be to raise my children but not talk much about God, because I struggle with those questions myself, so I will let the Church do that.
- First, the problem with that thinking is that this is not the call in scripture. We will see that here, and in Deuteronomy, that it is the family who has the primary discipleship role to pass on the Good News from generation to generation.
Families, In Local Churches, In the Big C Church, Participating in God’s God’s Promises.
1. We Believe…Two combined influences make a greater impact than just two individual influences.
Church (Light), Home (Heart)
The Church + Home = Greater Impact
Light (Yellow) + Home (Red) = Orange
What you do for kids and teenagers is more important than anything else you do in the church. - So as a church member, are you serving in a way that prioritizes discipleship to next generations? - When we open back up, serving in the nursery, serving in Children’s Ministry, serving in Youth Ministry?
No one has more potential to influence a kid than a parent. How are you influencing your kids for Christ? How are you taking that journey with them. Are you modeling discipleships yourself? Are you spending time with God? Are you in a Life Group & Missional Community or are you just sending your kids to Youth activities because they need it, you don’t? Are you utilizing the sermon notes, take home papers to talk to your kids? Are you creating an atmosphere in the home of helping each other live out the Gospel?
A Parent is not the only influence a kid needs. - Growing Young (7 to 1 ratio - 7 adult friends).
Every kid is made in the image of God and has the potential to do amazing things for God. - Kids are you taking your discipleship seriously? You can model discipleship to your parents by intentionally making your relationship with Jesus a priority.
When we take discipleship within the family, and when we as a church disciple families, then God’s promise to bless not just our family, but those around us, the nations through our families.
Conclusion: What Road trip is your family on? Are you lost, trying to find your way finding yourself being influenced by the ways of media, the ideas, the worldviews of the nations around you? Are you ready to start your road trip with your family?