[Mike Iiams] And you know the name family gets tossed around quite a bit. And over the years as we had family in our house and we would sit around the table and before or during the prayer, we would often say thank you for our families sitting here at the table. And then they started leaving the table and then they all left the table. And then it was just, we were empty nesters and then one comes back and other comes back. And so I've given a fair amount of thought to what this concept of family is to me because it keeps changing.

And I surmise, oh, by the way, do you realize that about one in five of all of us sitting here today is either a teen or a young adult based on the numbers? And what I've seen at the various activities, my calculation is about one in five of you are either teen or young adults. And that tells us, I don't know, maybe they planned it that way. Maybe more young adults came here because more young adults were coming here. But they have ways of doing that, you know. But I surmise that nearly every young person, every teen, every young adult has the intention that someday they're going to have a family of their own. Maybe not yet, but you know, the years really do fly by. As time races along, if you're a teen or a young person, you'll be surprised how often this topic comes up either in camps or in your house or at church, probably more often than you would expect and probably much sooner than your parents would like. But the topic of family does come up. And if you're a young adult, you've probably given it a lot of thought.

How's it going to take place? Who will that person be? Where will you live? What will you do? How will you make a living? Do you have many friends in church? All this one in five? I mean, we all have friends in church, but there's a community of young adults and young people and they're friendly and they know each other. And maybe they look at each other and go, "I wonder if that person is the right one," and or, "I wonder if that one." And then, you know, sometimes, you know, there are 8 billion people on earth now, you got a lot of choices out there.

I thought then maybe I should define family since, you know since it's on my mind. And so I went shopping for definitions. I thought this would be fairly simple. I'd come up with a definition for family and it would be nice. So I found a book by Scott Haltzman, The Secrets of Happy Families. And he noted in his book that the definitions of family are changing rapidly in recent times. But before I go into those definitions, I want you to think about the family model that has the best chance of success, the best chance of success, the model that we should learn about and strive to attain because we all want to be successful. We all want to be happy. 

Many current family models are not ideal and I don't expect to see them in the Millennium. Many family models have broken relationships. They have kids without dad or mom or husband without a wife or a wife without a husband and many other relationships. Even in the Church of God, we do not model family as well as we would like to. And many times it's difficult because circumstances seem to get out of control and suddenly we find ourself a statistic rather than setting the example. So it's very difficult for many families. And I know because I know this audience that it is difficult for many of you and nobody needs to feel badly about that. It's the reality of this human life and this human condition that we are not perfect and we do not model everything in a way that is the way we would like to. 

But I would like to compliment all of you who are dealing with families that are not ideal because it takes a great amount of courage to raise a family inefficiently. It is not ideal to have broken homes or to have grandparents raising kids or many, many other situations that we end up in. And it is not easy. But I know you cannot unring a bell and I know you can't change what has been done to you that you had no control over. And again, I don't want anybody to feel bad, but if you had a choice, if you have choice, if you had a chance to do it over, and if you're going to teach how to live in the Millennium, I hope that you've given thought to what the ideal family would be, what works and what doesn't work. I hope you think about this because you in the Millennium need to teach what the ideal family model is.

So before I go into these definitions that I found, I want you to be careful how you rate your situation because if you're in a decent family, do you have any idea how fast that can change? And so we need to be very careful how we look around and judge other people because except for the grace of God, there go we. And we need to be able to empathize and intervene where we can to make sure that the wrong ways of this life are not promoted and carried on and that Satan does not get control of our life and our family members and our church and the people that we have influence over. 

So that being said, here are a few of the definitions that Mr. Haltzman described in his book. Mr. Haltzman is a secular writer. To my knowledge, he's not affiliated with the Church of God or any church. He's just a man doing research and he's analyzing what's going on in this world. So here are some definitions. The nuclear family, this is where you have parents, a father, a mother, a married couple, and their biological children living and functioning together. Second is the single-parent family, one parent and the children for any number of reasons. It could be death, it could be divorce, it could be children out of wedlock. Many reasons that we end up with single-parent families. Number three is the extended family. That's when either of the previous two categories live with other family members, either grandparents or in-laws or adult siblings. So you're trying to take something that's happened and keep the family together.

Number four is the blended family. This is a situation where maybe you had a second marriage and there are his, and hers, and ours, and stuff and children and furniture and combined households and again, people trying make it work. Number five is the adoptive family. It's where the child is adopted by someone who is not a blood relative. It's either a single adult or a couple would adopt a child and become the parent for that child. Number six is the foster family. This is typically a case that I've seen where it's with government intervention, a family takes in children. They can either do this on a temporary basis or permanent basis until they can find a family for the children to live with, generally not a biological family or parents. So you have children living in typically, a situation that they don't necessarily like, but the adoptive parents are very generously trying to make it work and trying to help these children have a good life. 

And then there is the alternate number seven, families with pets. Because in many families, in many households, there is a pet. I've seen this a lot where a single, maybe a widow, widower has a dog, a cat. I haven't seen any giraffes, but it gives the person something to fuss over and to take their mind off of their loneliness. And then there are many other arrangements we don't need to talk about. But I think these six definitions and maybe the seventh one sum up the people that are sitting here, the people that are watching, the people that are in God's church typically fall into one of these categories.

And the one that's kind of left out, you think, well, I'm a single widow, or I'm a widower or I'm a single person living on my own. And I would say that those types of categories fall into one of the other categories because in general, our categories can be either a snapshot of our life like either at a particular time or many people live in various of these situations throughout their lives. So there are many, many different little scenarios, but those six pretty much covered the most people.

I'm actually surprised when I looked around and talked to people, how few people live in the nuclear family. There was a day, I think maybe when I was a kid, that most people were in a nuclear family. But now it's seems to be the opposite. And I again, don't think that anybody needs to be proud of… not proud of it… Things have changed over the last 50 years. Let's just say that. Furthermore, we are gathered, it's almost like fragments sometimes. We're gathered as God's family together and we come from all these different backgrounds and all these different individual family situations and we come together as God's family and God is merging us, right? He's taking those fragments and we kind of come together and we're collectively trying to live and produce and function as God's family. And it's very important that we try to do that and we take the lessons that we've learned in our individual families and we try to harmonize and get along and work things out and keep God's family together. And that is something we need to do. 

I've read with almost a humorously, Matthew 1 and Luke 3 and we read about the genealogies in the Bible where it's so-and-so begot, so-and-so begot so and so. And these family trees in Bible times were fairly straight forward. And then there were some guys who had multiple wives, which didn't work so well either. But it's the family trees are fairly simple overall. And in today's life, it's very common for children going to school to say, ''Well, who's your mommy? Who's your daddy?'' These things are very complicated today. And I feel sorry for those who are trying to trace their genealogy because it gets very complicated. But the question is, what models should our brethren follow when the time is right to start a family? 

So I've read six definitions. Which model do you want to follow when you want to start a family? What model will people in the Millennium be expected to follow? Since we're all going to bound by one law and one Word, and what are we going to teach in the Millennium? What model should we be? So my SPS today is to firmly fix in your minds what the biblical model of a family is the one that will be taught and lived and practiced in the Millennium. So there are many models of family in this world, but there is only one biblical family model. And today I want to talk about that. 

So if you want to have a successful and happy family and a godly family, you need to follow the biblical model if you want to have the best chance of success. And sadly, even in the Church, families get broken up, but no one starts out having a family expecting to get broken up. That doesn't mean the model is wrong. That means that we're flawed and we don't do everything right and that things get out of control sometimes. But we need to do our best. Put every ounce of energy we can into making sure the model is followed. The Biblical model. And I say there is a biblical model, and the One who said "leave and cleave" had a biblical model in mind.

When the right model is chosen, your chances of success are boosted by being in God's Church, by living according to His Word, by using his Holy Spirit. Use the Holy Spirit to work out the challenges that arise between people and treating your family, your wife, your husband, your children with the love and compassion that would be something that would represent God well. And yes, it takes work and it takes guarding your tongue sometimes, it takes being patient. It takes being… you have to have self-sacrifice and endurance. There are many things but anything worth having is worth working for. So that shouldn't put you off. So I believe you can have a happy, well-adjusted family, but you need to employ the biblical model. 

You know, in the Bible there are many biblical examples of how life started off, their marriages or their life together started off employing the biblical model and then things changed. I think war is one of the biggest, is a very large component. Maybe in Bible times, they'd go out and fight and thousands of men typically would be killed and that would have wreaked havoc on the family at that time. I think of the touching story of Ruth and Naomi, you can read about that in Ruth and their losses and how they dealt with that. And I also was either learned it or realized it that Esther in the book of Esther was both fatherless and motherless when the story of Esther was written. She was raised by Mordecai who was the uncle's daughter. You can read about that in Esther 2:7, to be exact. But one aspect of our loving Father's character is that He wants us to take care of the fatherless and the widow. 

If you'll turn to Psalm 68, I want to remind us of this because there are many in our congregations and in our hearing and in this room that fall in this category. Psalm 68:5, Psalm 68:5 says, ''A father to the fatherless, a defender of the widows, is God in His holy habitation.'' God sets the solitary in families, and even if they're not in a physical family, when they come together when the widows and fatherless come together into our midst, they need to feel like family and they need to look forward to coming together with us because they are treated well. They're treated like family. They're given respect. God sets the solitary in families. He brings out those who are bound into prosperity and sometimes it is, you do feel bound when you're alone, you feel trapped. And so you can also, you're probably familiar with James 1:27 that, "Pure and undefiled religion is to visit the fatherless and the widow in their time of trouble." So God's ideal or God's intent is that if people are not in a family, then they need to be taken care of and most often, that's by other families.

As with most things in the Bible, it's when you're trying to prove and go to it through a topic. It's here a little, there a little, line upon line. Then as you study and you pull out nuggets of truth, you realize that the Bible is additive. When you find a scripture here and a scripture there and a scripture there, it's additive and you put these things together and you get a much clearer vision of what God is trying to do. So let's go get a glimpse of how it started in Genesis 1:26, Genesis 1:26, not an unfamiliar verse. God in creation week is putting things together and building the earth the way He wants it to be. In Genesis 1:26, ''God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.’'' So it's more than a one. It's at least a two. ‘''Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.'' Verse 28, ''And God said… or God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.''

So the model is started out that there's a man and a woman and that they are supposed to procreate and fill the earth. So let's just go across the page now to chapter 2 and verse 24 and Genesis 2:24, ''Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,” the beginning of marriage, “and they shall become one flesh.'' And it goes on verse 25. And in this scenario, in this situation, there was nothing to be ashamed of. There was a man and a wife and they were the beginning of the biblical model. There was nothing to be ashamed of until sin entered in.

Turn next to Colossians 3. This is about as succinct of a definition. This I can find because this definition is interesting and that is not just a definition. It also has a description of what the model family needs. And it's not just a matter of having the model and having a husband and a wife, it's a matter of how everybody is supposed to work together to make this family work. Colossians 3:18 says, “Wives,” so that's a component. ‘'Wives, submit to your own husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.'' So you'll find here that God gives them the… kind of has to tell them the difficult things to do because those are the things I need reminded of. So “Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord." And husbands, we have a job to do. “Love your wives and do not be bitter toward them.” So we have male and female, different characteristics. So a man thinks one way, a woman tends to think a different way. It doesn't mean either one is right or wrong, it means we're different and we need to complement one another. And the hard thing for husbands to do is to love the wife and not get bitter towards them. So it's something we have to work on and something that takes effort. And it's not always fun because we have to build godly character. 

Verse 20, oh boy, ‘'Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is pleasing to the Lord.'' You mean children have to have responsibility in the family to make it work well? The answer is yes because things go better when the children obey their parents. And I know as a child, I didn't want to obey my parents. I wanted to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it. And that didn't always go so well for me. And over time, you get through it and you do what you're told. And then it goes better for you “for it is pleasing to the Lord.” And here's another difficult thing. Verse 21, ‘'Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.'' And I will have to say that I think this is tough for guys. You know, I kind of grew up in a house where dad was dominant and I did not care for his help.

And I do think I was discouraged and we were trying to get it right. You know, the family model was there, but it is easy for a father to, I'll say, nitpick, you know, you want to say at once and don't want to say it again. And the women or the wife tends to be more… she can say things 10 times and then dad wants to say at once, "Pick up your…” whatever. And so fathers have to be careful, as part of the family model, not to wreck it because by provoking their children because if the children get out of… if they become discouraged, then everybody's upset. So each part of the family has a challenging responsibility.

Turn over to Ephesians 4 and we'll touch on a different part of it. Ephesians 4, said that Ephesians 6:1-4, Ephesians 6. Everyone has to put in good effort. The father has to do his part, the mother has to do her part and the children have to do their part. Again, if there's an imperfection, if there's a problem, it's not a problem with the model. It's a problem with those in the family in the way that we want to selfishly do what we want to do. We don't want to pick up our responsibilities and carry our burden the way we're supposed to, but God, the Father and Jesus Christ set the example for us. They're in perfect unity and we can look to them and see how things should be done in unity and we can try to emulate that and make sure that we're trying to do our best to live in a household in unity.

Ephesians 6, soon as I get there, Ephesians 6:1 says, ‘’Children…'' not picking on children today is just, it's in the Bible. We can read it. ''Children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother.’'' And notice, children, this is a very important thing that you really, really need to remember when you don't want to obey your parents because you just feel grouchy that there's a reason that we do this. “‘Honor your father and mother,’ which is the first commandment with promise: that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. So the fifth commandment is the first commandment with promise and that it can be well with you. Things go better when we obey our parents. And again, we're reminded, ''And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.'' So the male should be taking on the responsibility of teaching, bringing the children up in the admonition of the Lord. That's not always easy. We will much rather be a couch potato or go do our own thing and go to our man cave. But we need to be involved with the children and taking care of them and teaching them. 

How can you get to the point where Colossians 3 or Ephesians 6, how can you get to the point where this is going to work? This doesn't come naturally. So turn back to Deuteronomy 11. I'll choose Deuteronomy 11 because so many people use Deuteronomy 6, but I'll use Deuteronomy 11 because I'm different. Deuteronomy 11:18, Deuteronomy 11:18. It's on page 192 in my Bible. Deuteronomy 11:18, ''Therefore you shall lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul.'' So it has to be in the parents' mind and heart. If it's not there, you're going to have a hard time passing it on. And “lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and bind them as a sign on your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.” Meaning it has to be at the forefront of your mind. It has to be something that you think about that is a part of you, that it's a way of life for you. Verse 19, ''You shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.''

So talking about God's way of life, looking at the flower as you walk by, looking at the Three Sisters out there with snow on them and it's like, “How did that happen? How come its only snow on the upper part? How come there's no snow down below?" It's not like you sit down… Yes, you can sit down and have all, “Okay, we will now have a Bible study.” Like you can study about God walking through the yard, walking to church, looking at pictures, whatever it might be. But it's a way of life of teaching the children and speaking to them. When you sit down, when you walk, when you lie down when you rise up “And you shall write them on your doorpost of your house…” we typically don't do that because you're not supposed to touch the paint. But I can see lots of refrigerators that have commandments on them, there are plaques around the house, there are things that say, "This household keeps God's Commandments.” “That your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give them, like the days of the heavens above the earth. For if you carefully keep all these commandments which I command you to do— to love the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways and to hold fast to Him.” So if you do all these things, I love the if thens in the Bible. If you do all these things, “then the Lord will drive out all these nations from before you, and you will dispossess greater and mightier nations than yourselves.” So they were going into to the Promised Land and we read this and we'd go, “Oh, that just applied to them. You know, what's God going to do for us if we keep these things?”

I'm an employer and I want you to think about the scenario of, okay… Mr. Richards talked about what happened when they had a club and speech club and they decided they were going to give an offering. And so things just happened to work in such a way that they ended up with whatever it was $950 or something. And it was just like, it was here little and they're little and like nobody did anything really spectacular. It's just they ended up with all this money and they hardly knew where it came from. So, you know, God can work your life the same way. Have you ever thought about what it would be like to walk into your potential employer and say, you know, you have this some somewhat of a conversation and the employer goes, “You know, I'm not sure, I got to learn something about… tell me about yourself.” And you say, ''Well, I don't have any DUIs. You can check my blood anytime of the day or week or year because I've never done any drugs. I can have a mature conversation with most of your customers. I just have to learn what I'm supposed to say. I come to work on time. I get my sleep at night. I'm a decent human being.'' And the guy goes, ''You mean you don't smoke and you don't drink and you don’t… you're going to actually come to work? I don't have to stop and pick you up on the way to work to have a day's work out of you?'' You laugh. But there are lots of people that have to have somebody stop and pick them up. I had an employee that worked for me for something like seven years and he could never get his record clean enough to drive one of our vehicles, good worker. I don't know what happened after 5:00 or why his foot got so heavy on the accelerator. But it's a wonderful thing to be in an environment where you're expected to not just follow the rules for the sake of the rules because everybody gets along better when the rules were followed.

So this is a life of faith. You have to do your part. It's not just, you know, sometimes it's, it's a character thing. You know, what kind of a person are you if you're going to have a family, you're going to have to be a person of character and there will be some things you're going to have to learn and there'll be some things that you're going to have to do. But God can bless you in unexpected ways. If you trust God and do your part, God can be there. 

Let's turn over to the Deuteronomy 31. Found this to be interesting also. You don't think of going to the Feast of Tabernacles and doing this, but Deuteronomy 31:9, my heading says the law to be read every seven years. ''So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priest, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying: ‘At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read the law before all Israel and their hearing. Gather the people together.’" Notice all people, "Men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law.'' Verse 13, ''And that their children, who have not known it,'' children who have not known it, ''May hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you crossed the Jordan to possess.'' Isn’t that something, the children are expected to learn God's law.

So if I can help young people think ahead because young people typically want to have a family, you have the opportunity to do good things in this life, good things that life has to offer you. And you do it within God's law and you do it under the watchful eyes of your parents and godly friends, the Church, camp activities and such things as this and people who love you for what you are and hope and trust that you're going to grow into upstanding adults. And so it's important that we learn at a young age so as we grow up, we're not suddenly learning something new. It's important that we're learning it as we go. 

Large numbers of you are growing into an age where you were going to think about how you're going to live the rest of your life and nobody wants to live an unhappy life. So your daily challenge is to do the things that are right and doing right things is hard sometimes. It's not always easy. You maybe dream about a life that seems… We do our best to think ahead and figure out what we want. And then it's challenging to figure out how to get there. But the way you get there is you make one decision after another and do it correctly and you take steps towards having the godly family that you would desire to have. 

Nobody starts out trying to have a train wreck of a family. And that's very sad when you watch people in the world and sometimes you expect it in the world, but we have to do our part to avoid it in the church. But it takes some difficult decisions and my advice is to do the right thing and do the right thing over and over and over. And before you know it, life has a way of rewarding you and just like the scriptures we've read, God has a way of rewarding you in subtle ways, in ways that you can't really put your finger on. Like “how did that happen?” “Oh look at that. I was blessed because of this. I was blessed because of something else.”

Can you project in your mind 5 or 10 or 20 years down the road, living life the way you see lived in the world, following youth culture, following the songs that are sung and following the things that are promoted in movies. Can you project how that life, the life, how your life would turn out if you followed those kinds of steps? Maybe you can't exactly, but can you project it in your mind if you lived, 5, 10, 20 years down the line, if you're living God's ways and what you expect life to turn out to be like? And I think you probably can. I think you can know that if you're living according to God's laws and resisting the ways of the world, resisting youth culture and the things that are thrown at us on a daily basis, that you can project that life will go much better if you live God's way.

There are many scriptures that give you hints of how to have a biblically godly family and how to build the family model in a biblical way. I just want to throw out some scriptures towards you. I don't expect you to look them up right now. You're pretty familiar with them. Proverbs 18:22, ''He who finds a wife finds a good thing.'' 1 Corinthians 7:2, ''Let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.'' 2 Corinthians 6:14, ''Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” Because it's not the Biblical family model.  Ecclesiastes 9:9, ''Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your life.'' Proverbs 19:14, ''A prudent wife is from the Lord.'' And Psalm 31 is a wonderful chapter to read as you're thinking about what the qualities either of a woman or what you're looking for, you know, in a wife or as a woman, what you're trying to become as a wife. Proverbs 5:18, ''Rejoice with the wife of your youth.'' Many wonderful biblical passages that remind us how to build the family modeled in a way that works is not just knowing the model. It's like, okay, it's husband, wife, kids. It's a matter of everybody doing their part, husband doing his part, wife doing her part, children doing their part. Sometimes, I think life feels like you're walking through a minefield. Mines are like little bombs they plant in the ground and so you can't see them and you're walking along, boom, you know, you step, you blow your leg off or whatever.

And it feels like if you're living the way the world lives and you're following youth culture, I think it is a life of landmines because you don't expect to have yourself blown up, but suddenly you do something and it backfires and you find yourself in jail or you find yourself hurt or broken or in some way, torn up. You'll feel like it's a mine going off. But if you're following God's ways, you're not in that minefield. You can still get yourself in trouble or quite capable of that. But you are going to avoid so many of the potential train wreck situations that it's really going to be wonderful when you look back on and you look at all the things I missed out on, which are not any, it's nothing to miss out on, is something that you don't want in your life.

So being raised in the Church again and being devoted, devoting yourself to God and his righteous ways is going to give the opportunities that are going to surpass anything that you can dream about. It's things that you will thank God over and over again as you look back, as you get into life and look back on it and you think how wonderful it is to have a wife or a husband and a family that is decent and godly and how things go so much better for you when you follow the biblical model. 

Ephesians 5 will be my last scripture. Ephesians 5:32, I think we need to put it in perspective, is not just the, I'll say, the physical family that we're talking about. Ephesians 5:32. Ephesians 5:32, and this is again in the section where he's talking about marriage and husbands and wives, verse 32 says, ''This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.'' And so we have to remember as we are in marriage and when we talk about families, that God has a greater plan. You remember back in Genesis 1, "Let Us make man in Our own image.” God is doing more of these, just not trying to just procreate human beings. There's something much greater than that in verse 33, ''Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.'' So this is a direct replica of what God is trying to do, is reproducing, God's in charge. The Church is the wife, they're going to be the wife. We're trying to be the Bride of Christ. And so we need to be learning and growing and doing our part as we go through that. So I've tried to be more specific here towards the younger folks, but I'm sure that the older folks are reminded of many principles that we all need to go through in life, that we need to follow. It doesn't matter what our age is, we have many things that we need to learn and it doesn't matter whether you have children or not, doesn't matter if you're in a family situation, any of the definitions, we're still going to be the Bride of Christ and we need to be learning about that. 

So it's important to remember that God loves us. He loves family. He loves your family, and He wants us all to be a part of His family. And we need to live our life in a way that we're showing not only ourselves and our family around us, that we're trying to live God's way. We are able to inadvertently to show the world what a model family should be and trying to live our life after God's, in His way, and modeling ourselves after Jesus Christ who set the example for us. We can have great reward not only in this life but in the life to come. And brethren and young people and teens, I just encourage you as you look at the families of this world and families around you, families in the Church, that your goal as you start out in life, pick the biblical family model.