A God-Centered Family

When God gave the Ten Commandments the basic building blocks of all relationships, a relationship with Him, a relationship with each other, it's not everything, it's just what you start with. When He gave the Ten Commandments, there were two of them it had to do with family. One was, Thou shalt not commit adultery, which teaches us the holiness of marriage. And the second is that you are to honor your father and your mother, which teaches the holiness of parenthood.

Parenthood is an easy thing to do, and you can create a baby, but that's not parenthood. Parenthood is a God-ordained position in society, among His people, among humanity. And it was ordained for holiness. And so it is a sanctified position that we have when we have children. It's given to us by God. Fifteen hundred years or so after God gave the Ten Commandments, the Apostle Paul wrote about that commandment.

Let's go to Ephesians 6. One of those little passages we hear all the time. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. So here we have a command from the Apostle Paul. And so all the children are like, oh no, another sermon on obedience. Well, it is partly about obedience. We're going to talk about a lot of things today. Children, so it's a direct... He wrote this directly to children, which in their society was anyone twelve and under. At twelve, you became an adult. We see that differently in our society today.

We look at what we call teenage years as still a development time. So you're not a complete adult. But then you're basically an adult at twelve. In the Jewish society, you had your bar mitzvah as a boy at twelve, which you took your place among the men. So he says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and that you may live long on the earth.

He said, You'll have a better life if you can honor your parents. In other words, this is so elementary, built into the whole human condition, that it's one of the things that gives us a better life. Honoring parents helps us as we become adults. Now, there's a whole other subject here that I'm not going to cover today. I've been working on it for a while, because there's actually three sermons this ends up being. And one is, how do we deal with life when we've come from a very dysfunctional family?

There is no perfect family, by the way. If you grew up watching the Waltons, they don't exist. There's sort of a bell curve between the ideal family and absolute chaos. And most of us, with God's help, find ourselves somewhere in the middle. Not an absolute chaos, but we're not the perfect family yet, but God's working with us. Because it's part of who we become. It's part of our lifestyle. So that's a whole other subject.

We'll have to talk about that, because that's a very difficult subject, because to tell you the truth, most of us haven't come from very functional families. I look back on mine, and I'm so thankful it was. It wasn't the Waltons, but it was a functional family, which lays the groundwork for so much in life.

And that's what he's saying here. It leaves the groundwork for life. So how do we then begin to understand this command? Honor your father and mother. I mean, let's face it, if you ever yelled at your child, you need to honor me and respect me. What usually happens is they don't respect you anymore than they did before you yelled at them. If you punish them, you're going to respect me.

When you're done, they may respect your power. They may not respect you in the way that you want them to respect you. They respect the fact that you're bigger than them. And that's not the message we're trying to give to people. That does mean, though, there are times when you may raise your voice at a child, and it's proper. And there's a time when you may punish a child, and that's proper. But those things of themselves, that doesn't create honor. It doesn't create respect. Those things are tools in teaching them certain things. In fact, sometimes what we find is the more we try to force our children, especially as they get older, to honor us, the more they dishonor us.

Especially when they go through times as teenage years where they can be very...we can see them as very rebellious. And many times they are. It's because they're coming to grips with their own ideas, their own desires, their own way of doing things of, Why do you still have power over me? The more honor that they develop as a child, the easier that stage is, by the way. It's not always easy, but the easier it is. It is concept that we must honor our parents. So we want to look at some ways in which we can teach children about what this means as honor your parents.

Because it's actually a very huge concept throughout the entire Bible. The second sermon in this series, when we get to it, is going to be the behavior of children and teens who are honoring their parents. Maybe not the emotional process yet, because that takes time to develop. But at least the behavior is honor. So what is the behavior? Well, we'll get to that in another sermon.

So we're going to look at five ways that parents need to teach, and these are very broad concepts here, that we need to teach children about how to honor you as a parent. But that's a bigger concept. Because the first one is that the first thing you must do to teach them to honor you is become a perfect parent. No, you can't do that because that's impossible. So what do you do? The very first thing that we must do to teach them, because they watch us, they learn everything from us in the early stages.

I mean, they still have their own personalities. You can see it. I mean, how many times have you looked at a three-month-old and said, Oh, that's going to be a stubborn child, bless her heart. Those poor parents, bless their hearts. Because you know that's going to be a stubborn child. You can see it already.

But the first thing we do, and this is so important if we're going to follow the command, is that we have to be examples as parents, as grandparents, as other members of the congregation. Because children watch everybody, by the way. That's one of the reasons why it's so common here, a 15-year-old says, Oh, they're just a bunch of hypocrites. Because they look at each one of us and figure out all of our faults. And they say, We're all just hypocrites. Now, that's actually hypocrisy if they understood what it means. But I understand how they feel. We're not talking about a thought process that has to develop in us. It's still based on feelings, even at that age. The first thing we have to do is we must honor God.

We must live lives in which they watch us and they hear us talk about. And our actions are, we honor God. You say, Well, I'm not perfect. That's part of honoring God. When you say, No, I'm not perfect. I'm trying. And God helps me. You know, sometimes you say to a child, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that. Well, now they'll never honor me. If you have a right relationship with a child, they'll actually honor you more. Because there's a sense of security there. Oh, good. They know when they're wrong. I don't know when I'm wrong, but they even know when they're wrong.

And so they learn about honoring God, first of all, by how we honor God. And that means that our homes, and this is probably more difficult. Well, it is more difficult if you're a single parent. It's more difficult. But it can be done. The thing is about all of this is it can be done because God will do it. God will do things as long as we have Him we're submitting to Him. We're honoring Him by making our homes a God-centric home.

So much of the time, our homes to children is what? Mommy and Daddy work. Mommy and Daddy do things. Mommy and Dad are running back and forth. Mommy and Daddy are doing this and doing that. And we just love it when they show up. And take care of us, right? They don't understand all the things that we have to do as adults just to make sure they get shoes. But God has to be not just a Sabbath thing. Oh yes, the Sabbath is starting and God says we're not going to watch cartoons right now.

It's like, where's God the rest of the week? God is pretty mean to have me turn off my cartoons just because the sun's going down. It doesn't always compute. What we have to do is we have our whole lives are centered around God. And not because we're preaching to them all the time. It's just because that's the way life is. They understand our lives are based on a totally different set of standards. And you know when you really start to figure that out? I started to figure it out somewhere in 5th or 6th grade.

You start to look around and say, Oh yeah, everybody else is having an Easter party. And I took this old note to the teacher and the teacher said, Oh Gary, you can go to the library this hour. Okay. And I figured out I'm not keeping the Easter party and that's okay. You start to figure out there's something different. So we have to have a God-centric house. And that has to be more than the Sabbath. Here's the two mistakes we make that will hurt. It can actually help create a dysfunctional family when we talk about that subject.

One is we have a parent-centric family. The entire family is driven by basically the desires and the needs and the emotions of the parents. So every time they do the simplest thing, but it's the fifth time that day, you know, they've played with their peas or spilled their milk or didn't pick up the toys when you told them to.

I mean, they haven't killed anybody today, right? I'm not saying you ignore those things. I'm saying you, we understand there's different levels of wrong here and you just explode because why? Because you emotionally are distraught and can't take anymore. Now, I'll take a deep breath. You say, oh, I'm a terrible parent. That's not what I'm saying because, you know, every parent's done that. Everybody. Well, I can't say everybody. Every parent I know that I've ever talked with or watched, including myself, has done that. Okay. The point is it's not... it has to be not your normal behavior.

They have to understand this is not... okay. Well, mom, dad's having a bad day. I can... I better just help. Or, you know what? Sometimes they'll do... and it's always a little bit humbling. It's when they come over and give you a hug. It's like, I'm being comforted by a child. This is wrong. I should be comforting the child, right? Now, they're not doing it for the same reason. They only know, I want you to be okay so I can be okay.

Okay. You have to... they're processing this differently. You do it to the child because you want them to be okay. They're doing it because they want them to be okay. The only way they're okay is if you're okay. Because their little world is real small until they even... even into the mid-teenage years. That's part of the problem you get in 15, 16.

Sometimes they can be so self-conscious. You know, they're just... all they think about is what I look like and what I smell like and what... but yeah, because you realize I'm in the middle of all these other people, these other events. And when you're real small, all the basically events usually spin around your parents in one way or another. And so you have to be okay for them to be okay. We can't... we have to make sure that our homes aren't always driven by the parents' emotional needs. It has... that... their development has to be a priority.

Their development has to be a priority. We also can't create a child-centric home, where the whole purpose of the family is to help them be happy and have no problems and get what they want and then you wonder why your child is selfish when they grow up. You can't have a child-centric family, because they're not the center of the universe. You make them believe they're the center of the universe and they're going to be unhappy until they figure out they're not maybe 40 years old before they figure that one out.

They're not the center of the universe. So a God-centric family is, there is something bigger than us that this family is based on. This family is based on something bigger than mom and dad and children. And that is the glue that helps bring this family together. It's a God-centric family. And for us, that means the scripture. This Bible tells us what God wants and how God wants us to be.

You know, there's a famous person in the Bible who made his children. His family was children-centric. Look at 1 Samuel chapter 2.

1 Samuel chapter 2.

You know the story here, but it's worth reading again because of what God said to him. 27. Starting in verse 27. Eli is the high priest.

That means he was personally chosen by God to be God-centric. Everything in his life as a leader to the entire nation was to be God-centric. And that means his family was supposed to be God-centric. And so his sons became leaders in the nation.

But he did not lead them, and he did not teach them God's way and hold them responsible. 28. Then a man of God came to Eli and said to him, Thus says the Lord, Did I not clearly reveal myself to the house of your father when we were in Egypt and Pharaoh's house? He said, What have I not shown you? Don't you remember your people came out of Egypt? Everybody knows it. It's been passed on from generation to generation. We still have the Ark of the Covenant that was built during those wonderings in those years. It's still here. He saw it because it was in the tabernacle where he served. 29. Did I not choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to offer upon my altar, to burn incense, and to wear an ephod before me? Did I give to you the house of your father all the offerings of the children of Israel made by fire? He says, Think about the lifestyle you live. He says, You live a pretty nice lifestyle. You get to eat the best food of anybody. The best food that comes in to be offered, the meat, which meat wasn't as much of a staple. I mean, it was to a degree, but not like it is in the United States. And so to have meat constantly, which just, you know, only the very, very rich could do that, or if you're a priest and you're working in the tabernacle. He says, Why do you kick at my sacrifice and my offering, which I've commanded in my dwelling place, and honor, here's the word honor, the respect, the awe, the giving them preference, the esteem? He says, You esteem, you honor your sons more than me, to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel, my people. And he says to him, therefore, in verse 30, The Lord God of Israel says, I said, indeed, that your house and the house of your father would walk before me forever. He says, this was the promise I'd given your family, that they would, generation after generation, would serve me in this tabernacle. But now the Lord says, Far be it from me, for those who honor me I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. It's interesting. He says, I won't despise them, but they won't receive any honor from me. He says, You despise me.

When we honor God in front of our children, we're teaching them generational blessings. Unfortunately, if we live lifestyles of dishonoring God in front of our children, we're going to lead them to possible generations of suffering. You know, so much of what we are, when we talk about dysfunctional families, so much of what we are, it was developed in us as children by the families we grew up in, right? And God comes along and calls us, and we have to change, we have to grow. But we still, that laid a foundation for us in life. And when we raise children, we teach them honor by we first showing honor to God. One of my granddaughters asked me the other day, I realized it's probably true. Every time I sit down to ask a blessing on the meal, I'm sort of hungry. So it's not a long prayer. And I thank God for the grandkids being there, and I talk a little bit about today. I don't talk long. And we stopped, and she looked at me and said, how come you give the same prayer every time? I thought, I do? I probably do to a certain degree. And that little one's figuring that out. And I said, you know, that's not very nice to talk to God. Just say the same thing all the time. So I said, next to me, I'll say a different prayer. And I did. And she listened to make sure.

What are they doing? They're learning about a reality. They don't see God. They don't hear God. But she believes He exists. Why? Because we tell them. They haven't experienced enough yet to know it, like we know it. They learn it because we tell them. And we exhibit that in the way that we live. So the first step in teaching children honor, or teaching children about honor, is that we as parents show them honor by honoring God. Now, the second thing we do... Okay, okay, now he's going to tell me how to sit down and get my kid to listen to me. Now, the second thing we do is that we teach children honor by honoring each other as husband and wife, as mom and dad. You know, one thing that's interesting about kids, they figure out early on if they can play mom and dad against each other, they will. And I've mentioned this before, but I just... I used to love the look on their face when they'd come up. But dad, I'm like, can we do this? We go to someone's house, we gotta go right now, because they're leaving church right now, we have to go now, and if we don't go now, we won't get to go. And did you talk to your mom? And that look of absolute dejection. Yes. Well, what did she say? She said, come, go talk to your dad. I said, okay, I'll go talk to her and we'll let you know. Oh, it's too late then. It's too late. Oh, it's like the world's ending, you know. It's the apocalypse, the nuclear war is happening. It's terrible stuff. No, I'll go talk to her and we'll make a decision. Because they're not going to play us, because they'll try.

When we honor mom and dad, it actually gives them security. Oh, they might be upset for a little bit. There's this security in knowing. They'll test the security boundaries sometimes. They'll test it. But they know, okay, there's security. They don't just tell us to do whatever we want. There's reasons they do what they do. And all of a sudden Kim and I are talking, and then we're going over to the parents, and we're talking, and finding out the parents had no idea the kids were planning this, right? And okay, well, and sometimes it happened, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes those kids came over our house. But the thing is, what they saw was parents who did not give them control, and they learned security at that stage. Now they get old enough, you're getting control. You don't want your 28-year-old saying, hey, can I go over Jim's house? Okay, you don't want to do that. But at that stage, that security in you is so important. And it's so important. And the honor we show each other. Look at 1 Peter 1. Once again, we're not going through any Scriptures you haven't read a hundred times. But I want to put them in this context of teaching children honor. 1 Peter 3. I said 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 3, verse 1. And we read this in terms of husband-wife relationship. But I want you to think about this in a little different way here. So we're not going to hit all the details. I'm just going to pick out a couple of things. Wives, be submissive to your husbands, that even if some do not obey the word, they without a word may be won by the conduct of their wives. When they observe, your chaste conduct accompanied by fear. Now that is really an important statement.

You may win over, in this case, a pagan mate. Someone is an absolute pagan. You may win them over to God because of your conduct. He's telling the wife that. Because you represent God and you honor God, he may respond and God may work with him. So making God your object of honor while still honoring your husband may be a way that God can reach them. In verse 7, husbands likewise dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel and as being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers may not be hindered. Now, a lot of times we'll stress wives have to honor their husbands. But here it is husbands honor your wife. It goes both ways. Wives must honor their husbands. If you show dishonor and disrespect to your husband in front of your children and you do it long enough, you'll pay a price for it. In the way they treat you.

And husbands the same way. You show disrespect to your wife long enough in front of your children that they see it as normal. You'll pay a price for it. In the way they treat you. And the way they may grow up to treat the people they marry. Because that's what we learn as children. That's what we learn as children. Now, children have to know, as I said before, we're not always perfect. But they are. They're learning and they're watching and they're absorbing everything. Right?

Everything. Watch a baby when dad's not in the room for a while and dad comes in the room or he's gone all day long and they realize it's dad. Sometimes it looks like they're having a little fit. Right? Arms and legs gone and they're all excited.

And when mom's gone for very long, there's usually panic. Absolute panic. I mean, how do I survive? I mean, that's not the thought. But that's the feeling. How do I survive? She takes care of everything. She's the center of my universe. No concept of God except the mother, by the way, at that point. You are God to that child. You're a whole... everything depends on you. Children don't need perfection. What they need from us, first of all, is security. And second of all, we have to develop in them a moral compass. A moral compass. And that's why it's so important that mom and dad work together. Mom and dad work together to form that moral compass in them. Now, as adults, you all know, we can all change our moral compass. But if it's developed in you early, it's harder to change.

And that's where we work together for this. This moral compass, this understanding of right and wrong. That understanding of right and wrong. Which leads us to the third thing. And this is going to sound a little strange, but I'll show you what I mean. Parents teach children honor by honoring them. You hold them in respect. Now, that doesn't mean you give up the fact that you have a moral responsibility to teach them and to correct them. You do. You have a moral responsibility from God to punish them. And I don't mean to abuse them. There's a totally different thing between abuse and punishment. Unfortunately, what some people think is punishment is abuse. But you have the moral responsibility to correct them, to guide them, to help them. And you honor them by the way you do that. Because you don't create a child-centric home. Oh, I must honor my children so it's all about them. No, it's not. Everything isn't focused on their emotions and desires. Now, there is an understanding of their emotions and desires because they're not adult yet. So their emotions are basically... Well, there's not a lot of thought that goes into their emotions. There's not a lot of logic that happens the younger they get. Now, once they reach teenage years, there's some logic involved, which is good. But it's just an emotional response to things. So we understand that. So here's some ways that we teach our children by honoring them. First of all, you place a high value on your children.

You place a high value on them. They are important to you. You know, as parents, we sacrifice so much for them if we love them. We sacrifice enormous times our time, our resources, our opportunities. We sacrifice for them. And you sacrifice for them is an honoring of them, that they are special and they are gifts from God. And that's the honor. It's not the same honor they're giving you. They're giving you an honor as a parent, a God-ordained position in their lives. It's not like the one comedian used to say, I told my son I brought you into this world. I could take you out. Now a few of you will know who that was. No, that's not what it is. I brought you into this world because I want you as my child. And that's a very special relationship. We place high value on them, and that's why it has to be a God-centric household. Prayer, Bible study, Sabbath, obedience to the laws of God. That's all central to what goes on inside your house. We honor children by showing them love. We must show them love in ways that they will feel loved. And that's going to be different from child to child. Some children, all they want to do is hug, even when they're little babies. Just hug, hug, hug. Others don't touch me. But they may, every time you say, good job, they're ecstatic. They feel loved. We honor them as human beings by loving them. You have to feel, if I honor them, then they won't honor me. No, no, no. By honoring them by showing love, you're actually bringing them closer to you. You'll have more impact on them. We were designed to love them, and they are designed to absolutely need the love of their parents. They absolutely need it. They need it like air.

I have a book at home. I just bought it because it was just such an interesting case of a world-renowned psychiatrist. It works with children. It was case after case, describing the case. One boy they found, I think it was five or six, he basically, the parents put him in the kennel with the dogs. So when they got him, he acted just like a dog. He had to take him out, teach him how to go to the bathroom, teach him how to do more than just take commands. What was amazing was how quickly he adapted. He's a human being.

It's hard to imagine a dysfunctional family do that to a child.

We honor children because we're good parents. We honor children when we sacrifice for them. We honor children when we obey God to do what we're supposed to do. And then we dishonor our children when we allow them just to disobey God. We dishonor our children when we let them become self-centered and just live selfish lives and throw tantrums and get whatever they want. When you dishonor your children by not having the moral courage to help them develop a moral compass, you are sowing the seeds for heartache for the rest of your life. You're sowing the seeds for heartache for the rest of your life. This series of sermons is because I've had probably six people ask me to give a sermon on these subjects, so I've been working on them.

It's interesting, in Ephesians 6.

Verse 4. We read the first three verses. And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. Now, this is specifically the fathers' mothers who can have the same issue. But he says, be careful not to drive them to anger, but teach them the way of God. Teach them the way of God. The NIV translates this verse. Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. As we teach them, it is easy, especially for men, to become impatient with them.

We become impatient with them.

And we have to have great patience with them. Because at an early age, they do want to please you. Now, some are more stubborn than others. And some of them, you know, you have to work with a little tougher than others. But children naturally want to please you if you have a relationship with them. And so, we have to help them understand without driving them all the time. And this is what we can do, is we can keep answering all problems with punishment. Now, there needs to be punishment. I'm not saying that. But all problems don't have to be fixed with a punishment. We have to help them understand there is, because we have a God-centric family. There is an exact definition, or many definitions, of right and wrong in the Bible. And we live by something outside ourselves. Human beings naturally will develop their own concepts of right and wrong, based on their own thoughts, their own feelings. And a God-centric family, you find out that that's not the definition. No, you just can't go take Bobby's lunch money. No, you just can't go punch somebody in the nose. No, you can't do this. No, it doesn't matter what you feel. You can't do that. Because there are definitions of right and wrong that we live by, that's part of what we learn in life. We dedicate ourselves to the right and wrong. And that's why he says, work hard not to make them angry. You will sometimes, because they're human beings, and they don't like sometimes doing what they have to do. But, he said, work hard not to make them angry, but instruct them, teach them. And he specifically mentions fathers, because it's very easy for mom to take over much of the teaching role. And that's okay, to a point. There is a point where the father gets involved. There's a point where the father teaches. My son's not here. He was a Murphy's role this morning, so I can tell you this. You know, I did that when he was a teenager. Finally, Kim would say, taking fishing. He'd say, you two are having trouble, huh? We'd go fishing. We'd fish for three hours, and suddenly he'd start to talk. And now the real problem comes out, right? Which is something we may not even know what it is.

So we have to work hard to teach as fathers. You know, and I think back, so much of what I learned from my dad was the summers when I worked with him.

When I went to work every morning with him, and we talked in the car, and I watched him work, and what he expected of me. And I didn't like it. I thought he worked me too hard. Yeah, I was lazy. But anyways. And then, you know, after I found myself at, you know, 20 years old in charge of the entire physical plant at SEP, and this guy's what he taught me about work, we passed these things on, and especially true with men, with boys. Now, it's with girls too, but it's a little different. It's a little different. There are times, as men, instead of punishing them, we sit down with them, especially boys, and say, do you realize what the natural consequence of your action is going to be? And I'm not going to save you from it. I'll just help you get through it. You know, the natural consequence is you're going to get expelled from school for three days, and I'm not running to the school to talk them out of it, which is what happens. You talk to teachers all the time. Parents come and talk them out of it. No, you're staying home. And guess what? Your life's going to be so miserable, you won't be... You'll just... You can't wait to get back to school, because your life's going to be miserable at home. Because you're going to be working all the time. There's going to be no video games, you know. You're going to suffer the consequences of your wrongdoing, and earn back the right to go back to school. I told this story a couple years ago. Some stories are worth giving again, but this happened at a teen camp. We had taken a bunch of teenagers to Custer State Park in South Dakota, and we're intense. And we have an outhouse for everybody. And we must have had 40 people with the kids, and all the chaperones, and everything. And I had to leave the camp for something. I think I had to go down to the camp store to get something we needed. And I come back, and these men come running up, just furious. What are you going to do about this? Because I don't know, you've got to tell me what happened first. I mean, they're just mad. And what happened was, three of the teenage boys thought about this, really worked out what they thought the consequences would be. I mean, this took some time. I asked them later, and they said, yeah. And they got a rock, big, heavy rock, that would fit right through the hole of the outhouse. They lugged that thing in there, dropped it in the hole, and all looked over.

And the natural laws of physics happened. They come screaming out of there, run down, and jump into the lake. And they said, what are you going to do? They need to be punished. I said, what more can I do to them than what they've already gone through? I said, okay, I'll punish them. So I brought them over, took them out, just the whole camp's watching. And they sit there, just expecting to be just beat on. They said, gentlemen, you do realize that none of these girls will talk to you for the rest of the week. You do know that. And they're like, yeah, yes, sir. I said, well, that's your fault. What did you learn from this? And they, you know, talked about some things. I said, yeah, what you learned is, if you don't think through something deep enough, it's going to probably turn out really stupid, especially when there's three of you involved. I said, look real sad. All the men are watching. So they put their head down. They say, look like I'm chewing you out, okay? I said, I can't do any more to you than you've already done. Learn from your consequences. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And then I said, okay, go back and don't smile. Whatever you do, just go back. The man came up and said, did you chew them out? And I said, I let them know exactly what they needed to know. Their consequences were enough. What they needed was someone to say, that was really stupid. Welcome to being a guy. Now, learn from this. What have you learned? And they did. As men, sometimes we get sit down, especially with guys, with our boys, and say, it didn't work. It's really stupid. And I'm not going to take all your consequences away. God doesn't take all of our consequences away. But He helps us do it. The fourth thing, the children need to learn to honor their own bodies and their own minds. Their bodies and minds are a gift from God. And they need to honor themselves in that they are going to not... They realize that this is what drug abuse, the problem, is the problem with alcohol abuse. This is the problem being addicted to video games. This is the problem with being addicted to pornography. We're not honoring the body God gave us. And it's very difficult in the teenage years to maintain some sexual stability in all this for men and women, boys and girls. Because they're not men and women yet. And it's really difficult to maintain that. And if we're not careful, what we teach them is not to honor their bodies, but to despise their bodies. Let's go to Hebrews 13. Yes, they have a corrupt human nature, and they need to accept that. And they have a sinful nature, and they need to accept that. But they need to accept that the mind, the spirit in man, and the bodies they have are gifts from God. Their life is a gift from God. And God didn't create them because He wants them to fail.

But failure is built into each one of us because Satan got hold of us. But it's not God's desire that we fail. It's God's desire that we honor what He has given to us. Hebrews 13, verse 4, marriage is honorable, respectable, good, to be highly esteemed among all and the bed undefiled. Understand what's being said there, that inside a marriage there is a holiness and a purity to the sexual relationship.

Honorable. We need to teach them to honor what God has given to them and who they are. You know, sometimes it's so easy to say, why, this person has abilities I don't have. Don't look what God gave to somebody else. Honor what God gave to you. Look at what God has given to you. Look who you are because God made you. Okay, you'll never dunk a basketball. Yeah, I found that out very early. Except at six feet. You know what those little kids think? I could do that.

He says, but fornicators and adulterers, God will judge. But the point he's making here is, in our struggles with them and their sexuality, as they learn to honor God and honor us, they have to learn to honor who they are too. And hold that in high esteem because it's what God has made them, how God has made them. In 1 Thessalonians, Paul, it's interesting how this is thrown into 1 Thessalonians. The Church of Thessalonica didn't get a lot of correction like Ephesians did or Colossians or Romans, where there was a lot of correction.

1 Corinthians, where it was nothing but correction, it seems like. There's not much here, but there is a series of statements here that you have to put in the context of where they were in the Roman Empire at the time. In Greece, the Greece culture, like the whole Roman Empire, had been deteriorated in its concept of marriage. It's interesting, even in the early stages of the Roman Empire, as pagan as it was, marriage was seen as the highest form of human interaction and human relationships.

And it was seen as the basis of society. Once they moved farther and farther away from being a republic and more and more into being an empire, where all of its emperors were absolutely, I mean, just vile people. Murderers, perverts, in every sense of the word. You can't imagine what these people were like. The whole society degenerated. And what happened was divorce became very, very common. One Roman philosopher, I can't remember, I think it would have been around the first century, I have to go look it up, he said, What's happened in Rome is that people marry in order to divorce, and divorce in order to marry.

In other words, it was just rotating. Divorce remarriage was just rotating all over the place. So he's writing to that in Thessalonica, which would have just been common, because that's what was common throughout the empire. And this is in that context of what we're looking at, the holiness of marriage. And they should see that in our relationship. That's husband and wife. It's often been said, the greatest lesson in sex that a child can never see is when dad walks up behind mom, and either gives her a little pat, or kisses the back of her neck and she giggles.

That's the best thing they can learn, right there. That means there's something here between the two of them. I don't know what it is, but it's good. Because I feel secure. And when they're secure, they're more apt to tell us, or listen to us, when we help develop this moral compass in them. He says, verse 3, for this is the will of God, your sanctification. This is what God wants in every one of us, and we have to pass that on to our children as much as we can.

They don't have God's Spirit in them yet. But it is still what he wants in them, if they'll respond. For this is the will of God, your holiness. That's what they mean. God makes you holy, your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality. That each of you should know how to possess his own body in sanctification and honor. That's why he said you have to learn to honor your body. That's where I got this from.

You honor who God made you to be. He says, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles, you do not know God. One should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this manner, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. For God did not call us to uncleanness, but to holiness. He says, fraud here. When someone commits adultery, they commit fraud. They commit fraud against their husband or wife. They commit fraud against the other person's husband or wife. And they commit fraud against God.

That's what's so important here. We commit fraud against God, because we've been sanctified. And so we need to help them understand that sexuality is so positive. It's a gift from God, but it's in a very specific context. There's more, so it's going to take three sermons. Actually, I gave this sermon ten years ago here when I first came.

I was going to cover part two, and I thought, I'm going to go back and cover part one. So just lay the groundwork again on part one. So we have these basic concepts. Parents teach children honor by honoring God first. Parents teach children honor by honoring each other as husband or wife. They now understand what respect is, and honor is, and sacrifice is. Parents teach children honor by honoring their children. And we read where it says that. Not that we honor them as we have a position that's ordained by God. They do not. So you're not switching positions with them. That's a dangerous thing to do. That makes everybody unhappy. You can't switch positions with them. In dysfunctional families, sometimes the children take over because they have to, and that creates terrible things for a lifetime.

Parents teach children honor by honoring their children. And parents must teach children to honor their own bodies and minds before God. As we teach them this, they will begin to learn to honor and respect us. Unless they're just... There's some people that are just so rebellious as a child, nobody reaches them. That happens. They're just rebellious, and everybody can see it. And they just... They usually get out of it when their life is a mess. It's like the old Alcoholic Synonymous, have you reached rock bottom yet? Because that's when God... You can actually respond to God.

But when we do this, they will begin to learn behavior. That's the next sermon that we'll do on this subject. Between the three of them, we'll get done here by the end of summer. But the next one will be behaviors that children... And even at a... You know, an age where... A little younger than we think, they can start learning these behaviors. And by teenage years, can really start learning these behaviors. The behaviors of honoring. You say, well, why don't you teach them how to have absolute internal honor? Because they don't know how yet. They're still driven too much by their feelings. So we teach them the behavior. And say, no, this is the behavior. And they may not like it, but as they learn the behavior, it changes how they feel. As they learn the behavior. So that's what we'll do in this series, is we'll actually go over behaviors that you learned as a child. In honoring your parents.