Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

After a great weekend of studying God’s Word as a church body and engaging with Pat about discipleship and evangelism strategies, it’s timely that our BFM study takes us tonight to the article on the Family.

I’ve shared this statistic before but it bears repeating tonight: If you are able to “catch” a child and they begin to faithfully attend your church, you have a marginal at best chance of “catching” the rest of the family.

Many parents are content with dropping their child off at church and coming back a couple of hours later.

If you catch a mom, you have a 13% chance to catch the rest of the family - maybe you’ll catch a child or two if they have them, but many father’s are content with their wife taking their kids to church so that they can have peace and quiet for a few hours or because they’ve been burned by a church in the past.

Here’s where statistics get crazy.

If you can catch the Father… If you get Dad actively coming to church on a consistent basis then you have a 90% chance of catching the rest of the family.

If dad comes, participates, worships, and serves, the family usually follows.

What we are seeing in our country and in other countries around the globe is a shocking development of men who don’t attend, participate, or care about church.

Back in 2005 the statistic was that 35% of men in the United States attended church.

In the 17 years since, that number has nearly slashed in half and those totals don’t include people who actually attend but only those who claim that they attend regularly - you and I both know that people overestimate things at times.

The fact of the matter is that we are living in a world where God designed men to lead their families to study Scripture and worship with God’s people and men left and right have dropped the ball and, worse, don’t think there is anything important about church in the first place.

This is true in the United States, it’s true in Europe where less than 5% of men attend church, and it’s true in Guatemala where we ministered to many families where the men were absent from church.

What has happened?

For all we talk about how good things are in our society and nation, our society and nation has led the nuclear family astray and nearly to the brink of collapse.

In a world where over 60% of adults have ever or are currently cohabitating with their significant other, marriage is often thought of as selling oneself short.

We’ve all heard the statistic of half of marriages ending in divorce - Barna research shares that for committed Christians that percentage is actually closer to 30%.

We might think that this isn’t a big deal because it only impacts grown adults… Stats reveal something far worse: Nearly 40% of students from 1st-12th grade in our country grow up in homes without their father.

Those students are 4x more likely to end up living in poverty as they get older than households with a father and mother.

Church, the family matters!

God’s design isn’t outdated… In fact sociologists, even atheist sociologists, share that the best way to help your child succeed is to put them in a home with a father and mother who will love on them and encourage them as they provide needed structure and guidance as they grow.

It’s almost as if God’s plan is perfect.

The family unit is changing, but it is of utmost importance to us as Christians and to our society as a whole.

We must hold fast to what the Bible tells us about the family and the roles in the family.

Let’s read the BFM article (number 18) and then turn to Scripture to help us see the purpose of the family and the roles within the family.

“God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society.

It is composed of persons related to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.

Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime.

It is God's unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.

The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image.

The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people.

A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church.

He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family.

A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.

She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.

Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord.

Parents are to demonstrate to their children God's pattern for marriage.

Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth.

Children are to honor and obey their parents.”

Let’s spend some time looking at the Old Testament to see God’s design from creation and then look to the words of Jesus and Paul in the New Testament

There are numerous other Biblical places that talk about the family unit and the responsibilities that every party has and we’ll address another key passage in a little while, but as we see in Scripture, God has a design for the family.

His design, just like His creation, is good - it’s unimprovable and perfect!

We must take God’s Word seriously whenever He lays out His design and command.

Let’s begin by looking at the roles within the family as given in Scripture.

The Roles in the Family

We look around our world and we see the family in disarray and some in depression.

We see others who have attempted to change the definition of the family in the first place to be something that it was never designed to be.

So often we think that we know better than God or that we’re the exception to the rule.

Take creation, for example, Adam and Eve sinned against God in the Garden… Why?

Because they wanted to be just like God.

We like to think that we’re different, but we’re not that different.

We continue to think that we know and that we’re the exception.

We value our thoughts and feelings above everything else.

Here’s the problem that brings: God is perfect.

God gave us His Word.

His Word is perfect.

Meaning this: If God says that marriage works this way, your opinion or feeling about the matter is irrelevant - it’s true because God created it that way! Do you think that an omnipotent, sovereign God knows what He’s talking about whenever He said that marriage is to be between one man and one woman?

21st century secularists would argue that God is a bigot and intolerant because that’s not very compassionate toward the feelings of other people who disagree… The God of the Bible has some strong words for people who disagree with Him

So many think that they get to define the boundaries and rules and guidelines but that’s simply not the case .

The God who created all things sets the boundaries.

He gets to define what good is - not us!

Why?

Because He has all authority.

Think of it this way with school starting this past week.

What if a 5 year old went to their teacher and said that 2 + 2 = 6.

The teacher encourages the student to think through it again but the boy is adamant that 2 + 2 = 6.

The teacher corrects the student and says that 2 + 2 = 4 but the little boy says that the teacher is wrong and that he is right.

Sure, we know that the teacher is right and the boy is wrong… But how do we know that the boy is wrong?

How do we know that that won’t change?

Because there is order in our world.

2 + 2 has always = 4 and will always = 4.

You can’t change something just because you don’t like it or just because you want to do it your own way… There is order in our world and that order is good.

The teacher has the authority in the classroom to correct the boy and inform him of the right answer.

See, you can think that marriage can be between 2 men or women, just like a 5 year old can think that 2 + 2 = 6, but just because you feel that way it doesn’t mean that it’s accurate.

Why?

Because we’re not the one in a position of authority to get to define it.

God alone has that authority.

Therefore, we simply stand on His perfect design.

We simply stand on God’s Word as it proclaims clearly that the family is one man and one woman and God’s design is that it would be a lasting relationship that would span the entire lives of those involved.

That is God’s design in both the Old and New Testaments.

Inside of that family unit there are respective roles that have also gotten tossed to the wayside.

The BFM shares with us that you have several parts in the family: Husband, Wife, and Children.

This is what we find in the Bible and there are roles for each person.

Contrary to our world, a man is not a woman and a woman is not a man.

They are unique and have separate roles and responsibilities.

This doesn’t mean that a man can’t care for his kids or make dinner, destroy those secular stereotypes for the glory of God and this doesn’t mean that a woman can’t have a job or mow the grass, destroy those secular stereotypes for the glory of God.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at a man and woman and realize that there are some differences.

This isn’t a bad thing - it’s a beautiful thing!

Just because man and woman are different it doesn’t mean that they are of different value before God, either.

Did you know that in other ancient religions, often there was a distinction between the value of a male versus female?

There were cultures who so valued males that they would essentially discard unwanted females because they believed that one was more valuable than the other - this isn’t what we see in Scripture though.

In the Bible men and women have different roles but are of the same value!

We read in Genesis 1 that humans are made in God’s image - that includes males and females.

We are equal in God’s eyes.

Just because we’re equal doesn’t mean that we don’t have different roles and responsibilities, though.

What are these roles?

The Bible shares with us that the Husband is responsible to care for and protect the family.

He is to lead the family to be like Christ.

In reference to pastors in 1 Timothy 3, Paul shares this

The Wife is responsible to care for her family.