Family and Godly Blessings

We live in a society where we want to childproof our homes. You know, I can remember childproofing our home for our little ones, you know, making sure they can't stick their fingers in the light sockets and putting things up that they can't reach and pull down on top of them.

And after the first one, you start to realize that maybe you're overdoing it some. You know, you can't protect them from everything, but we still want to protect our children. We live in a society in which there is an obsession with protecting our physical, you know, the physical lives of our children. We have all these car seats and so forth for cars. I'm not taking it bad. I'm just saying we're obsessed with it. Immutusizations, you know, trying to protect children in some places in California. It's actually against the law for children at school to play dodgeball. I played dodgeball as a kid.

Never someone would get permanently hurt. I went home with something that welts on me every once in a while. You know, that this fear that somehow we don't want to get hurt. We want to protect them. And yet, we live in a society in which spiritually and even emotionally our children are protected at all. We live in a society in which our children are taught a set of values that are incredibly destructive, in which they learn ways that will only lead to dysfunctional lives and unhappy lives. And it's just it's part of our society in which God is not the center of their lives.

And so they learn that, you know, entertainment is more important than work, that personality is more important than character. They learn that what they call self-esteem, which is a misused, twisted sort of word, that self-esteem is more important than understanding who they really are before God. And so they grow up with very little spiritual guidance in which, you know, we talk about the obesity problem we have in this country. What part of it is, is children who eat nothing but junk food and then spend their time playing video games.

And so it's actually destroying their health, but more importantly, is damaging their mental, emotional, and spiritual development. Now that's in society that you and I live in. And I'm going to bring a couple concepts together here today. And I want to start with what Jesus did that's part of our tradition. I say it's part of our tradition. There's no command in the Scripture that, you know, on a regular or once a year we're supposed to get together and do this. And I'm sure Mr. Keller will tell you plenty of stories too, or someone will call and say, could you please come bless my child? And we'll go do a blessing on a child. Maybe they're just born, maybe they're new to the church, maybe they're not even in the church.

And I'll say, some of these come bless my child. But our tradition is that once a year we have a public blessing of little children. And it's based on Matthew 19. Let's go to Matthew 19. This wasn't part of a Sabbath service. This wasn't part of a temple service, but it is profound in the understanding of giving a blessing. Matthew 19 verse 13. Then little children were brought to Him, brought to Christ, that He might put His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuke them. But Jesus said, Let the little children come to Me, do not forbid them, for such is the kingdom of heaven.

And He laid His hands on them and departed from there. Now we read that. We say, well, that's a nice sort of little custom that we should do. But you understand in the ancient world, the giving of a blessing wasn't something like this context. It wasn't something that you just did, like you said to a child, you have my blessing.

This was the giving of a blessing that came from God. It was a very, very important thing. That's why He laid hands on them. You know, when people are married and they receive the blessing from God to be married, we lay hands on them. It is a blessing that comes directly from God. He prayed and He laid hands on them. And in this public setting, this would have been a very, very important thing.

Everybody would have stopped to watch the rabbi give a blessing on this child, on these children, because it was a very, very important thing. God was doing something special with those children.

And so we look at this blessing and we ask for a blessing on our children. And we do that traditionally once a year. Well, I want to tie this into a number of different concepts. I want to talk about a blessing that each one of us has received from God.

A blessing that each one of us has received from God. And then I want to talk about how you and I can give a family blessing to our children and our grandchildren, or even in the context of the church. We're combining two things here, a family blessing and a blessing we received from God, but you're going to see hopefully by the, you know, an hour from now how these fit together, why they fit together. Let's start with the patriarchal blessing. In the Old Testament, we read that God gave to Abraham a blessing. We're actually going to look at that blessing in a little bit. And he told him that blessing would be to him and his descendants. Now understand, there came a time in the life of Isaac where he said to him, the blessing is on you. And he gave the blessing to him. The blessing God gave to me is formally and officially given to you. We see where Isaac did it with Jacob. Now we all know the Jacob-Isaac story because of Esau. Esau is a firstborn. You would think, well, Esau is the one who's traditionally supposed to receive the blessing. And in Abraham's case, the firstborn didn't receive it either. Ishmael is the firstborn and he did not receive the blessing. The secondborn did. Well, here we have a case where God chose the secondborn to receive the blessing. Now Jacob, being the personality that he had and sort of the character for all that he had, didn't always trust in God to work things out. So he was always trying to work it out himself, usually creating all kinds of problems. Well, you know what happened. Esau did not value his blessing. He did not see it as really something from God that was absolute value. At least he didn't when he was younger. He would later. And because of that, he sold it to his brother for a bowl of soup, thinking probably, so what? I'll get it when my father gives it to me anyways. And so he sells it to him. Now comes time for Isaac to give the blessing before he dies. Now Esau and Jacob are children, and they're not teenagers. These are grown men. That's what we have to understand in this story as we read it, how important this blessing is. They are grown men. And Jacob and Rebecca decide they're going to trick poor old Isaac. He's blind. And so they take Jacob and they put on him some skins because his brother's hairy. He must have been real hairy because they put some animal skins on him and he make him smell. And he sort of probably... That's how there was his voice, where he sort of sounds like his brother. And he goes in and we see what happens. So let's go to Genesis 27. So this is a third generation of the passing on of this blessing that have been given to Abraham by God. You are a recipient of this blessing. And I'll show you how in a few minutes.

Genesis 27, verse 26. Then his father Isaac said to him, Come now and kiss me, my son. He came near and kissed him and he smelled the smell of his clothing and blessed him and said, Now, I want you to think about the enormity of this blessing because this isn't just coming from Isaac. It started with Abraham. They do. Grandpa received a blessing from God and our father received a blessing from God. And both of the brothers said, One of these days I get that blessing. So he says in verse 27, Surely the smell of my son is like the smell of the field there which the Lord has blessed. Therefore, may God give you the dew of heaven. And we can go through what this means, that it just riches, it's blessings from God. May He give you the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and loin. Let people serve you and nations bow down to you. The master over your brethren, and let your mother's sons bow down to you. Curse me everyone who curses you and bless me those who bless you. And this wasn't just to be in his lifetime. It was to be for his sons and their sons and their sons and their sons and their sons. And this did not come from Isaac. It came from God and it was now being passed down. Esau shows up. Esau wants his blessing. And he thinks, well, oh, come on, that's a nice thing. But you have to understand that this blessing was so important that Jacob was willing to lie to his father and then run away thinking he may never see his father or mother or even his homeland the rest of his life. Which is what he did because he thought Esau was going to kill me. Because this blessing is that important. He knew the value of it. What he didn't realize is God had already given it to him. He had already sold him. His brother already said, I don't value this enough. So what happens in verse 30? That it happened as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob. And Jacob had scarcely gone out for the presence of Isaac, his father, that Esau, his brother, came in from hunting. He also made savory food and brought it to his father. And he said to his father, let my father rise and eat of his son's game so that you may bless me. We're going to go through this. We're going to see that psychologically and emotionally this was overpowering. You must bless me. You must give this to me. This is what my life is all about. My life is about this blessing.

And his father said to him, who are you? He said, I'm your son, your first-born Esau. And Isaac troubled exceedingly and said, who? Where is the one who hunted game and brought it to me? And I ate of it before you came. And I have blessed him. And he shall be blessed. He said, I already gave it to somebody else. God gave this to me. I gave it away. I already gave the blessing to someone. When Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with an exceedingly great and bitter cry. And he says to his father, bless me, even me also, oh, my father. You must give me a blessing. I am nothing without a blessing. You know, the descendants of Esau are among the Arab nations today.

This is so powerful that those people still ache for a blessing from God.

They still ache for a blessing from God. Just like the descendants of Ishmael, they want that blessing. Now, they will receive it, but they're going to receive it the way you and I receive it. And he says in verse 35, but he said, your brother, king with the seed, and just take it away, your blessing. Look at verse 38. And Esau said to his father, have you only one blessing? He said, all there is so that my life has... Now, this is a grown man.

This is a grown man who is successful in terms of what he does, you know, as a hunter and gather. He's a grown man and he's very successful. A leader of men. As if you studied the life of Esau, he said, a leader of men. Have you only one blessing my father? Bless me, even they also owe my father. And Esau lifted his voice and wept. He breaks down. He just collapsed. My blessing is gone. What use is my life? Then Isaac, his father, answered, has had it. Behold, your dwelling shall be at the fatness of the earth and of the dew from above. By your sword you shall live and you shall serve your brother and shall come to pass when you become restless, that you shall break his yoke from your neck. In other words, you and your brother are going to fight on and on and on and on.

And it's thousands of years later and in the sentence of Jacob, the sentence of Esau, continue to fight. Now this is an important lesson about blessings. Now you and I can't pass on the Abrahamic blessing. This is part of the Abrahamic covenant. But I want you to really look at Esau's agony because we're going to tie that into not only the blessing God was to give us, but the family blessing that we're supposed to pass on inside our own families. Gary Smalley and John Trent, they're both professional marriage and family counselors, have written a number of books over the years, probably for about 30 years, on the biblical concepts of marriage and family. And in one other book called The Blessing, they go through patriarchal blessings. And they come up with a list of five things that would have been profound to the person who was receiving the blessing. Now what was it like to receive this blessing? Why did these two men fight over the blessing? Why did Ishmael just...but I'm supposed to receive the blessing. Well, actually, Ishmael didn't say that. Abraham did. If you go back and look, Abraham said, oh Lord, can He be the one? Can He be the one? And the guy said, no. He was the one I chose. And so they understood God was giving them a generational blessing that would go on and on. Here are the five things they came up that were very meaningful in this. First was meaningful touch. You'll see in a number of the cases, and even mentioned specifically, I mean, you think about a Jacob blessing, Ephraim of Manasseh, he laid hands on them. The laying on of hands was part of the passing of the blessing. There was a meaningful touch when that young man felt those hands on his head, and they were his father's hands. He knew that touch was unlike anything else. That was him giving him something that God had given him, and he was passing it on. Also, it was a spoken message. It was verbalized.

He declared what the blessing would be. It was a verbalized blessing. Three, there was an attachment of high value.

You were valuable because God gave you a blessing. A blessing is a gift. A blessing is just a gift. That has to do with the concepts that we have of grace. It's just a gift. So God gave them this blessing, and they would do anything for it. Because if I have that blessing, God gives me high value. It all went back to God. The value came from God. Four, it pictured a special future.

These were generational. Nations will come bow before your descendants. Wow! Long after your life. You know, your life has meaning, but to receive a blessing that says, a hundred generations from now, people will remember you, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Because of the blessings, He would pass on to them. And then the fifth was an active commitment to see the blessing come to pass. If you look at Abraham, God says, I chose Abraham because He will teach His children. There was an active participation in the entire family to understand the blessing has to be passed on at preparation for the Son to receive the blessing.

Now, how could we use that model to understand something about our child ring? I'm going to come back to the patriarchal Abrahamic blessing and how you and I received that. But I want to step aside now because we're laying these two things on top of each other. How could that help us in our child ring?

Now, let me ask you something. Think about this. Because did you receive meaningful touch in your relationship with your parents or a spoken message, a spoken message about a blessing that they gave to you? Did you receive a belief that you had high value from God because of your family? Did they help you picture a future that God wanted for you? Were they active and bring that about in your life? Now, for many of us, we could say, yeah, some. Some could say, yeah, a lot. Some could say, not at all. Some of you, that didn't happen at all. The only beautiful touch you got was a slap across the face. Right? So you got. No one ever said, let me verbalize the blessing. What was verbalized is you're stupid. You tell the child, stupid, long enough. It doesn't matter how smart they are. They will act stupid because they believe it. How many of you had ever received that kind of family blessing? When we take this model, go through it again in a little bit, and we start to see how we could use that as part of our childbearing, part of what we do as parents, part of what we do as grandparents, and part of what we could do as members of the church, even if you don't have children. Tomorrow, we can see how we can pass on a family blessing to the next generation. You see, family. Family is one of the ways in which God passes on blessings.

This is the great travesty of gay marriage. It's the absolute destruction of how God passes on blessings. Homosexual marriage will bring a curse on the next generation. Absolute curse. God brings blessings generationally through families and how we teach and deal with our children. When a child receives a family blessing, a family where you have some stability, they feel loved, they're encouraged, they're corrected properly, it tends to have a great change in their lives. For one thing, they tend to have much lower divorce rates. They tend to have much lower divorce rates. They tend to have a much higher commitment to their own children. They tend to be much more productive in society. So someone who has received a blessing from their family tends to pass that on, not only to their children, but they tend to pass it on to society. It becomes a blessing. So we are to pass on a blessing through our families. Now here's the problem that many are thinking through right now. I didn't get a chance to do that with my children. Or, how in the world am I supposed to do that? No one ever gave me a family blessing. Many of you never received a family blessing.

You don't even know what that is. So how in the world can I, you know, I look at what the patriarchs did, and they're passing on this blessing God gave Abraham. And then I see how God designs the family and how blessings are supposed to be passed on from parent to child, to child, to child, to child, as each one becomes a parent. But that's not how society works. That's not the way most of our lives work. So what do I do? We have to go back to the Abrahamic covenant. What was the core of the blessing? Because there's the answer. The answer to this need for this blessing, because each of us need the Abrahamic blessing as much as Esau did. But if we really understand what it is, he did not. We understand what is at the core of the Abrahamic blessing. And you and I have the same need that Esau did, that Jacob did, where Jacob thought he'd do anything to get it. Genesis 12. Let's look at the blessing that was given to Abraham. Verse 1. So you're with me so far? I've worked with two different concepts. You said I'm doing it, but I'm placing one on top of the other so we can understand for both of them. The family blessing is supposed to be passed on. Many of us did not receive that. And even if you had the most perfect parents alive, you didn't receive the Abrahamic blessing. You just received a family blessing.

Ideally, we've got to receive both.

Now the Lord said to Abram, Get out of your country. This is verse 1 of chapter 12. Get out of your country from your kindred, from your father's house, to a land that I shall show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you. I'm going to give you this gift. You're going to become a great people, a great nation. And make your name strong. And you shall be a blessing. So you yourself will bless people. And I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you. And the last part of verse 3 is very, very important. And in you, in this promise he's making the hymn, and you, all the families of the earth, shall be blessed.

Not just the descendants, not just the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Jews. Everybody is blessed because of a promise God made to Abraham. What is that blessing? Anybody. What is that blessing that everybody is blessed by? Jesus Christ. Now we can put together that. Maybe I'll do that sometimes as a sermon. You can put that all together. It's all laid out. It's all laid out in Scripture. From his descendant was going to come the one who would bless every person, every tribe, every nation, every family. So you see, you've already received the Abrahamic blessing.

God already showed you who his son is, and his life and death and resurrection, which allows you to go to what? The father. You ever know the father, the son? We're now into a family relationship. So we have the family relationship that comes from our physical families, but they're all dysfunctional at one level or another. The Abrahamic blessing is to come into the family of God where we have father and we have a brother, and you and I have already come into that blessing. And that blessing is what gives us hope when you didn't receive a family blessing. And if you have a family, it's what can help you give a better blessing to your children or your grandchildren. Because you've already received the Abrahamic blessing. You've already received what was passed on to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph, Ephraim and Asa. It was passed on to all those tribes. And no matter how perfect your parents were, or any of you here that had the perfect parents, or are the perfect parents, you can't give eternal life to your children. You see, there's a blessing we can't give. But if we understand this blessing, this blessing can help us bless our children. One becomes a model for the next. The blessing of Abraham and the family of God becomes a blessing or helping a model to help us teach how to bless our own children. So how do we do that? You know, we can give our children a fine blessing of an inheritance. And the Bible says you should leave your children an inheritance. But you know, if you left your children ten million dollars, I recently read a study. It is amazing how many people who are given wealth in the second generation waste it. The first generation worked so hard to do it the second generation, and at least by the third generation. A lot of times it's the third generation just blown away. Very seldom does it get past the fourth generation.

So that's important to leave an inheritance. You know, you can leave your children as a family blessing. We should be. We should be trying to leave our children with strong character, strong moral character. That's part of a family blessing. We should give them a strong work ethic. That's part of the family blessing.

But none of that will give them eternal life.

So we try to give them this moral blessing.

We also have to realize we have to prepare them for the Abrahamic blessing. Now, let's take the five steps that Mr. Smalley and Mr. Trent came up with and how the effect that would have had on the person who received that blessing, but Jacob would have felt like, and let's apply that to our child-rearing. That you have a blessing to pass on to your children or your grandchildren because God has given you the blessing of Genesis 12. The blessing of Genesis 12. Because you are a recipient of the Abrahamic blessing.

All nations, all peoples.

That's why we're here. Because we received it. How can that help us understand how to pass on a blessing to our children? Let's look at the five things. Meaningful touch. You know, different children need different touch, but all children need touch. They need a hug or a touch. I had a daughter that when she wanted to be hugged, she'd be hugged, and when she didn't, she'd just do this. Sometimes she just did not like to be hugged. I had another child that you couldn't hug enough. But the important thing is that they received that meaningful touch. Just like, God could have had that passed on without laying on His hands. You ever think about that? God could have had them sprinkled with water. I mean, God could have done anything He wanted to do. And so this is how we're going to pass on the blessing. But He didn't. He had them touch them. And that touch was enormous to the person receiving it. Well, we can apply that same principle to our chattering. We can give them meaningful touch. A spoken message.

They received a spoken message. This blessing is to you from God. We need to tell our children. We need to encourage them verbally with God is in your life or will be in your life or can be in your life. That God cares. Sometimes we correct them. We need to correct them. But we can be so correction-minded. We forget to encourage. And if you do nothing but correct a child, if you always correct a child, I mean, never correct a child, never correct a child and you'll ruin them. Always correct a child and you'll ruin them. Somewhere in there has to be encouragement. God is in your life. You are a blessed person. And so we can apply that to our chattering. When we verbally tell, we say, well, they know I love them. As men, if we think they know, we love them. That doesn't mean they do. It depends on how intuitive they are. A lot of children don't know. You have to tell them. A lot of times what children do, little children, they'll do something for you to say, I love you. And a lot of times what they're actually saying is, do you love me? They're asking a question. I love you, but do you love me? So we have to verbalize it. Yeah, do I matter? Do you like me? Attaching high value. Now, when we attach high value to our kids, this isn't the self-esteem movement. There's a problem with that. I mean, just give you an example. And I'm not saying we should make our kids feel bad about themselves all the time. That's all God was either. But think, you know, in the United States, look at science and math rankings among high school students. We used to be number one in the world. Now we're the lowest of all developed nations. And ask the average kid, because I've seen surveys where they've done this, where do we rank? They always say, oh, we're number one. Because they feel real good about themselves, but it doesn't produce anything. Now, the problem is the schools can't do that. This has to be a family blessing for the schools to function. Here's the problem. The problem is in the family. The schools are getting these people already in real trouble, in terms of alerting and functioning. And you know what? Sometimes we're supposed to feel bad. Isn't that what repentance is all about?

Isn't that what repentance is all about? I mean, sometimes you're supposed to look at him and say, hey, son, what in the world are you doing?

They're supposed to feel bad sometimes, because they have to look at their own behavior and take responsibility for it. That's the whole idea of attaching high value. High value is, wait, wait, wait, that's not the way I'm supposed to be. But we attach high value to them because they're a gift from God. We have to see our children as a gift from God. They're actually His, we just get them on loan for a while. They're His, and we get them on loan for a while. The fourth thing was picturing a special future. You know what I really remember as a child going to the Feast of Tabernacles? I ain't eight, nine, ten years old. Wow! I can't wait till this actually happens. I saw a future. I don't know why I got that as a kid, but I did. I still get that feeling when I go to the Feast. Wow! Look at that. That's the future. This is what this is all about. Christ is coming. I want to be there. I want to be part of that. We have to tell them there is a future for you and have the right values. That means that fifth thing, we have to actively be actively committed to carrying out that blessing in their lives. We have to be teaching them. We have to be praying for them. Now, you can't make your child respond to God. Every human being is a free moral agent. Every human being has free will. You can't make your child respond to God. God didn't say, make them respond to me. That's not possible. What God says is, prepare them. The rest is between him and them. You and I have to prepare them. We have to say, you have a blessing, and that blessing has value. That's where we really have to drive home. To ignore this blessing comes at a cost. When God gives us a blessing, and we ignore it or we misuse it, isn't that the message of Esau? The message of Esau is a man broken down, crying before his father, saying, don't you have one little blessing for me? This is a grown-in. This is a warrior, by the way. This is a tough guy, and he's on his knees before his father, crying, don't you have anything for me? Can't you lay your hands on me and God give me something? That's the price to ignore the blessing. Our children need to understand the consequences, and that means we as parents, and we as grandparents, and we as members of the congregation, have to help them understand that blessing. And help them understand it's not good to ignore this blessing that God has offered to you.

That God has opened a door for you to see. You know, it's interesting, and we won't go there, but in Genesis 49, in Genesis 49, all the blessings are passed on to the 12 sons. And each blessing says, well, your descendants will become like this, and your descendants will do this, and almost every one of this, but they're going to have this problem, and that problem, and this problem, and in other words, you guys are going to mess this up. You guys are going to give you the blessing, and you're not going to do very well at times. Ancient Israel was destroyed. The Jews as a nation were taken to the captivity. Numerous times, all because they would not hold on to the blessing that had been given to them through Abraham. But the physical blessings through Abraham, you and I have received the spiritual blessings through Abraham. You and I have received a brother that opened the door to God as our Father. In the public appearance campaign that we're doing next week, there was some discussion. How do we explain that to people? That you have been created in the image of God to be His child. And Steve Myers came up with a great way to explain it. He said, you ever see the back of a van or something where there's kids in there, and you see the little stick fingers on the back? Father, mother, and then the kids. One has a sarco ball, one has a guitar, and it goes down to all these kids, and they've got smaller and smaller, and then there's a dog at the end.

He said, okay, if God did this, that big stick figure is the Father. And what beside Him is His Son, Jesus Christ. And all these little stick figures that look like Him, but they're just little, that's us. We're not the dog. We're not the pet at the end of the list here. That's the best way I ever... I mean, that just says it right there. There's God, there's Christ, and then there's all the little kids here. That's the blessing. That's what's being offered to us. But as parents, we have to have them understand the value of what's been given to them. We have an interesting story in the Bible. Let's go to 1 Samuel 2. 1 Samuel 2. 1 Samuel 2.

Eli is the High Priest.

And Eli has been given a blessing by God to be the High Priest. And his son has been given a blessing to serve God and to serve all of Israel.

Verse 12.

Verse 16.

Therefore, the sin of the young men, verse 17, was very great before the Lord. The men abhorred the offering of the Lord. Verse 22. Now, Eli was very old.

And he heard everything these sons did in all of Israel. And how they, listen to this, lay with the women who assembled at the door at the tabernacle of meeting. They were actually seducing women who came to worship God.

Know my sons, verse 24. Verse 23 says, But they continue to do it. They absolutely refuse to listen to their father. Now, we have a problem here. Obviously, we have a problem with the young men.

But the dad doesn't do anything about it.

It's hard for us to correct our children if we're afraid. Well, it'll turn them against us. In this case, he literally would have to remove them from office. In fact, in accordance with the law, they had the death penalty over them. That'd be hard, wouldn't it? But because of this, all of Israel was sitting. They had thrown out the blessing. Now, fortunately, you and I don't face anything like this, right? I mean, if our kids do terrible things, or end up in jail, or they're not causing all of Israel to sin. So we don't have this kind of problem. But there's a point here he's making. And the point is in verse 30, because he tells Eli, I'm going to remove you, your sons, and generation after generation after generation of your family will not receive a blessing. They will receive a curse.

See, sin is generational. Blessings are generational. Cursings are generational. Now, you could stop a blessing, and you could stop a curse. How? Someone changed their behavior. But the problem with sin is it tends to create sin in the next generation. I mean, how many times do you see if you have a strong alcohol, alcoholism problem in a family, that you'll find that passed on to some of the members of the next family? And then sometimes to the next family. They'll pass it on generational until someone comes along and says, I'm not going down that path, and they'll change the curse. But you know, you can do the same thing with a blessing from God. As when Esau did, Esau would receive the blessing, but he didn't want it until it's too late. So things tend to have generational effects. We don't think in generations. Abraham did. They thought in generations. They thought in terms of generations. In terms of hundreds of generations.

Verse 30, Therefore the Lord God of Israel says, I said, indeed, that your house, that the house of your father would walk before me forever. He said, that's the blessing I gave you. He told Eli, he says, my blessing on you was you and your family would be in service to me forever. Wow, what a blessing!

But now the Lord says, Far be it for me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. In other words, his point was, you honored your sons more than me. I gave you a blessing, and you honored them more than me, which is a very good point. You and I, passing this blessing on to our children, if we honor our children more than God, we take the blessing away from them.

We take the blessing away from them.

And these are tied together in terms of the family that produces this blessing. In terms of preparing a child to be responsive, it is God who gives the Abrahamic blessing. So it doesn't matter if you were an orphan and had no family at all, you could receive the blessing of the Abrahamic blessing. And you give them a bad family, it doesn't matter. God can give you the Abrahamic blessing. But think about the opportunity we have to prepare children to receive it, because we have received it.

What is that blessing, and how do we apply it as the church? So I never had any children. I guess I don't get to really pass on a blessing. Let's just look at a couple verses that puts the Abrahamic blessing down into a very succinct concept. 1 John chapter 3.

1 John chapter 3.

1 John chapter 3.

So hopefully you can see now how I've overlaid these two things over top. God has offered you and actually already given you the Abrahamic blessing. We could use that to build family blessings. And when we do, we make it easier for our children, make it easier for them to understand the Abrahamic blessing. It doesn't mean we don't accept it, but it can make it easier for them. Verse 1 of 1 John 3. Behold what manner of love the Father, and the stress here is the family relationship you and I have entered into, because through a descendant of Abraham, all nations, all peoples, all nationalities, all ethnic groups, all races will receive the blessing. 2 John 3. Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God.

Oh, you see, the Abrahamic blessing is a family blessing, too.

Think about Abraham. I mean, think about Paul. Some of these incredible arguments, like in the book of Romans, is, look, folks, it doesn't matter now. Greek, Scythian, Jew, it doesn't matter. We all become part of the family. The true descendants of Abraham, the physical descendants of Abraham, get the physical blessings, but the true descendants of Abraham are the spiritual descendants of Abraham who receive the spiritual blessing, the spiritual blessing.

And then we become children of God. 2 John 3. That we should be called children of God. Therefore, the world does not know us, because it did not know Him, speaking of Jesus Christ. Beloved, now we are the children of God. That's the relationship you have with your Father and with Jesus Christ right now. Father-brother relationship. That is the blessing of Genesis 12. Part of it. The rest of it doesn't happen until He comes back. We just celebrated tropics and atonement to feast the tabernacles, but the next stage of what He's doing happens. The next part of that covenant. Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. What John basically says here is what C. Myers was saying with the little stick figures. These little stick figures, we know exactly what we'll be like, but we'll look like Him. We'll just be little versions, but we'll be all members of the family. That's what He's saying here. That's the promise. That's the covenant. That's what has been offered to us. And you and I have the opportunity to tell that to the children.

Sometimes we've told the 15-year-olds, don't commit fortication, don't commit fortication, don't commit fortication, but we haven't told them why. What's bad for you? It is hard to convince a 15-year-old that's bad for them.

No, you have value. God, think of those five things, God gives you value. God has a future for you. God has a purpose for you. God wants to be in your life.

And you and I can teach that. We can share that. It doesn't matter, see? It doesn't matter what your background's been. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who you are in terms of your family. None of that matters. Because you're part of this family. Part of the blessing of being the children of God is a congregation. Yeah, we're all brought together. So when you get on each other's nerves, you get mad at each other. Now, just remember, the option is be without each other. I would rather be with each other because that's part of the blessing. To be not child of God, but children of God. There's supposed to be more than one of us, okay? This is what we are. This is who we are. And we can share that with children. We can make them know that you're part of this community. You're part of what we're doing. I've told this story before, but one time at the Feast of Tabernacles, there's about 50 or 60 children in the children's choir. And I'm waiting to get the sermon. And I'm standing there, and the first one that came off stopped and smiled at me. And I made the mistake of patting them on the head. And he went on, and I looked in the next one and was standing there like this. So I patted her on the head. I said, I had to do all every child. Everyone stood up and stood there smiling. Good job! Okay, that's what they... What are we doing here? I'm thinking, what's going on? I realized, oh, meaningful touch, encouragement. I'm giving them a blessing. So the sermon started late then. It started late. They all got a blessing.

And they all expected it. Nobody was moving until they got their blessing. It was that simple. And children, we want to give you the blessing. We need to slow down. We're all getting a little older here. We're a whole lot slower. I'm a lot slower than I used to be. Slow down, and don't knock me down. Just stop. We'll talk to you. We want to share with you. We want to tell you what this is all about. We want you to be part of it. We want you to be part of it. And if we have to be tough on you, sometimes we're going to be tough on you. But you know why? Because you've received a blessing, and the price of evaluating that blessing will be horrible in your life. The price of evaluating the blessing God is offering you will be horrible in your life. Yeah, so we're a little serious about it. Because we've all devalued it at times, and we're paying prices because of it.

And we would help you through it. Now in that context, let's go to Luke 18. We're going to look at another version. I'll ask all the elders to come on up. Luke chapter 18.

Verse 15. It's another version of what we read in Matthew.

Then they also brought infants to him that he might touch them.

But when his disciples saw it, they rebuked him. Well, this is silly. This is silly to have them.

He had touched these little children. But Jesus called them to him and said, well, first of all, it says he rebuked them. But Jesus called them and said to him, let the little children come to me. Do not forbid them, for as such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter into it. We can't pass on the Abrahamic blessing. We can't pass on a special blessing from God through Christ to children.