Restoring Godly Family Values

 [Steven Britt] "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man's enemies will be those of his own household" (Matthew 10:34-36).

Happy Family Day! I'm going to get back with that heavy stuff in a second.

Thank you so much to the children and the children's choir. That was, I think, one of the most special children's choir performances I've ever heard. The fact that my six-year-old was right in the middle of it might have something to do with that. And also, thank you to Mrs. Hernandez and everybody involved in making that a success that helped facilitate.

Well, what was Jesus saying there? And that quote — that was from Matthew 10, verse 34 through 36 — that's kind of a hard saying. I mean, wasn't it basically Christ saying, "I'm coming to separate families"? You know, father against son, all that stuff.

I'm gonna tell you about the very first fight that I ever had with my family over religion. I'm seven years old, and I really don't enjoy going to church. That's an understatement. I really disliked it. I didn't like putting on a tie. I didn't like being in dress pants — they were uncomfortable. The least comfortable pants I had, least comfortable shoes I had. The dress shoes as a kid are always the ones that nobody noticed you grew out of because you only wear them once a week or less.

And really, the only thing that I did enjoy — I didn't like sitting quietly through church — the only thing I enjoyed was that my dad always had hard candies, and he would discreetly pass them to me. Like, you know, he wasn't supposed to do it or something. Usually it was Lemonheads — not the little bitty ones, but the great big ones that are individually wrapped and crinkle and all that.

Anyway, I don't like going to church. I'm seven years old. It's Sunday morning. And I get dressed, and I don't know when or how I came up with this plan. You know, I was not the kind of kid to confront my parents in any way or cause a stir. So, I would never have gone up and just said — you know, I might have complained and said, "I don't want to go today," or whatever — but I would have just done what they said. I never would have said, "I'm not going," anything like that. But what I did was actually worse, I think.

I went to the foyer, and I got the car keys. And I put the car keys underneath the dresser in my bedroom. We only had one set. My dad was a car dealer. I always drove a demo off a lot. And so that was it. And so, they're looking everywhere for the car keys, you know, genuinely thinking they misplaced them. At some point, they asked if I'd seen them.

I've never been a good liar. I'm still not. But you know, they didn't roast me over it, but they just responded in a way that I had to know — I got very nervous that they knew that I was not telling the truth. I said, "I haven't seen them." And you know, they didn't just sit there and grill me on it. They kept looking. They looked up and down the house, and I heard them go up and down the hallway a few times. I'm sitting there in my room.

And time went on long enough. I knew that somehow, they knew. And I was cooked. And so, what was I going to do? Well, my next brilliant plan — I took the car keys out and I put them in the middle of my floor. I just kind of waited. You know, I couldn't whistle, but you can imagine me sitting there, almost like whistling. Like just kind of waiting for them to suddenly find them and be so happy they found them.

And when that didn't happen right away — you know, because I'm getting progressively more nervous — so I pick them up. Next time they're going by, I announce, "Look, I found them!" Sounds cute now. But they're probably pretty frustrated at the time. And, you know, they didn't — I didn't verify this with my mom. I probably should have asked her before I gave this message to fill in the details. This is my recollection. I don't remember them really doing anything to punish me at that moment. But we did get in the car, and we went to church. No comment on whether I got Lemonheads or not that day — probably not.

But they had to be pretty upset. I mean, their son not only subverted the family plans when they were probably in a hurry to get there — probably already, you know, it's kind of a stressful thing getting out the door with young kids — but I stole the car keys. I lied about it. It's kind of a mess. I was disobeying them, keeping them from getting to church.

Makes for a fun story now. But if you take the innocence of childhood out of a story like that, where you're fighting with your family over something to do with religion, it really ceases to be funny very quickly. And I'm sure that some, maybe many of you, know exactly what it's like to stand firm for your beliefs, only to feel maybe misunderstood by your family at best. A lot of times, outright opposed by your family like the scripture Christ was saying.

You know, others might have difficulty — might right now be navigating conflicts with family members that are also a part of God's church. Because just being part of the body of Christ doesn't automatically make family relationships easy. Sorry if you're under that impression. Hate to burst that bubble. Just getting along can be really hard as a family.

And sometimes it feels like we have to work at it every single day. And maybe even sometimes something as joyful and happy as the feast can be a point of conflict. I mean, we go out, we wear ourselves completely out every single day. Everybody gets tired. We're on day six. If you're not a little bit tired by now and can edge into the grumpy side of things, tension can build. And our family — there's been a saying for a long time: we're a five-day family and an eight-day feast. You do the math. It's day six. We're doing really good this year.

God's way does cause separations, and that's what we're going to explore in the sermon time today. For our part, we have to be absolutely resolute and wholehearted in the way that we follow God, because those separations are a really difficult thing that Christ was talking about. Well, one important lesson of the Feast of Tabernacles and the Kingdom of God that it represents is that God is going to fix all of that. Let's turn over to Matthew chapter 10, where I was quoting from earlier. Matthew 10, verse 34 through 36 is where Christ gave this teaching about the division that He came to bring on the earth in families.

Matthew chapter 10, verse 34 — so I'll read it again slow this time, and while you've got your eyes on it: "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34). A couple of things I'll point out here about this verse and some of the Greek words that are used. When He says that "I came to bring" something, the Greek word there actually literally means that He's going to throw or cast something.

Okay, in other words, this is not going to be an accident. It's almost the sense of it is like Christ is coming and dropping something that's going to cause a problem. It's a very active sense of what's being done. Christ is not just permitting this division — He is actively initiating it. He's bringing it. The word He uses for sword — Greeks had a lot of different words for a lot of different kinds of swords. There's a lot of words for a lot of different kinds of swords today, but I don't know a lot of them because I'm not that into it. Some people are. This type of sword in particular was not just any old sword...

It was not like a big battle sword that you go to war with, for example. They had words for that. It was something more like a short dagger or a knife. How does that make sense in the context we're talking about right here, about dividing families? Specifically, it's the kind of weapon that was for close-up combat. A dagger — “cloak and dagger” is the phrase. It's something that might even involve subterfuge in it. The point is, this was going to be about close-up combat, symbolizing how God's calling is going to create division within personal and close relationships.

Even if we just look at the syntax here in English, Christ says, "I have come." What strong language that is. It's showing that Christ is coming — this is with purpose, this is with intentionality. He didn't just arrive and cause division in families by accident, since He came precisely for this purpose, forcing people to choose between God and anything else. After all, we know in the Church, we know that God is separating out a holy people out of an unholy world. His audience at the time really didn't know that, like at all.

So, verse 35 and 36 — He's quoting from the prophet Micah, which we'll look at later on, but He's putting it maybe in a context and drawing attention to it in a way that these people had never thought about. "I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's enemies will be those of his own household."

And yeah, I'm sure every one of us — we all have friends, co-workers, acquaintances that aren't in the Church, people we interact with, that we can feel separated from, divided from, because our way of life is different than theirs. It also happens in our families, because God doesn't usually call every member of a family. Usually, maybe just one household or even just one person out of a family is called.

You know, my father-in-law here was the only one called out of his family. Just like I'm the only one called out of my family at this time so far. My mother-in-law, her parents were the only ones out of their families.

How about your family? You know, if you're second or third or later generation in the Church, do you know how your family got here? Do you know who it was that God first called in your family? That hasn't been passed down to you? This is your permission to ask. Find out. It's important. It's your story. But once God calls a person into His church, that calling, we understand, is to them and to their children. It says that in Acts 2, verse 39 — Acts 2:39, "the calling's to you and your children." And so it is. We get families in the Church, and it's beautiful.

When you have second, third generation of the Church, and you have cousins and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters that are all following the way of God, that you can connect with them over that — that is an absolutely beautiful thing. If you're in that situation, don't take it for granted. It's awesome. Of course, on the other hand, sometimes kids grow up and they leave the Church. That's heartbreaking, because then that separation is back when really we feel like they should have known better. They did know better. They were raised in this.

I think most of us understand all this. I think we understand what Christ is saying, but for that time, these words would have been absolutely shocking in that culture. I mean, they were in a patriarchal society where Israel placed an enormous value on family loyalty. Christ is saying, “You mean you're going to come here and do what to my family? No way, Jose! Who is this guy? Who does he think he is?” That's unthinkable.

Even today, the first thing you might think about if somebody starts following a new and different religion is, “Oh no, what's this about?” And if that religion starts telling them not to associate with their family — “Oh no, what's this about? Is this a cult? What's going on? You know, red flag, get out of there.”

We're not like that in the Church of God. That's not what these scriptures mean. And when we understand that God calls us to be separate from our family sometimes, we only mean that when it pertains to following God's commandment above what they would have us do. That's where the source of conflict comes.

Verse 37 says, "He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. He who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it."

That's the key. It's not about forsaking family just to be separate from them, just to be different. It's about who do we love more — that's important to God. And it has to be God above anyone or anything else. Really, it is a very vivid and very practical repackaging of the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods before Me." If you have something else that you would put before Me, God says, that's not acceptable. Not even if it's your children, not even if it's your parents — nobody. God has to be our number one.

That's true. Let's go back a little further in the chapter, verse 21. Christ said the following — this really is pertaining to the end times. "Now brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved." So here's an uncomfortable truth: whatever hostilities we might have within our human families or with other people outside of God's church, however bad that might seem at times — it's going to get much, much worse.

I mean, the end time trials will take those tensions to an absolute extreme that's going to be very dangerous for members of God's church. You know, I can live and have lived with my family not understanding why I do what I do. I really cannot imagine being outright hated for it to the extent that they would betray me. Can you imagine that? I mean, the beast system under Satan's influence is going to get very, very hard. It is going to deceive people into thinking that you and I are a problem that needs to be gotten rid of — put away, locked away, killed.

Luke 21, verse 16 — Christ reiterates this in the Sermon on the Mount in a very clearly prophetic, for the end times setting. Luke 21:16 — Christ is telling them what the end of the age is going to be like before His return because they asked.

He says, "You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends." You can just imagine them taking these words in and maybe not even able to believe it.

So Christ goes on and He says, "And they are going to put some of you to death." When I say betrayed, guys, I mean they're going to put some of you to death. "And you will be hated by all for My name's sake."

Now the word for “betrayed” here that Christ is using is exactly the word that was used when Judas betrayed Him. Literally, the word means being given over — like put into somebody else's hands. That's exactly what Judas did. He brought along a bunch of guys and Christ went with them. They were seeking His harm. Judas did this on purpose.

What a hurtful, hurtful thing to have done to you by a friend. That's part of what Christ endured, I think about sometimes. It's just that level of betrayal hurts coming from a friend, let alone a family member.

Christ telling us that we have to love God more than mother or father and siblings is nothing new to the way of God. God has always expected it. So, I want to see kind of the other side of this.

Okay, in Exodus 32, if you'd like to turn there, there's a striking example of how God has always required greater love for Him than even for family. Exodus 32 — as we turn there, so we know that in the end times, those forces of evil in the world are going to use our loyalty to God against us.

And just think about this with me if you've gotten there. So, in the end times, we — the righteous, the saints of God — are going to be rooted out of an unrighteous world. That's the situation: the righteous taken out of an unrighteous world.

By contrast, God was dealing with Israel. They were supposed to be a holy and righteous nation, and He gave them a whole lot of laws to separate out and destroy and uproot the unrighteous from among their righteous nation. Total opposite, right? But the same thing applies.

If you read through Deuteronomy, for example, you see several laws like that — someone's practicing idolatry, hand them over, we've got to stone them. If they're enticing you to go do evil, we have to get that out of here. Even if it's your mom and dad, even if it's your children — we have to get it out of this holy nation. That was the message in the law.

Here's a vivid example of not just a law about that, but when it actually did happen in Exodus 32. It takes place in the aftermath of this awful incident where the Israelites are worshiping the golden calf. Moses is up on the mountain — Mount Sinai — receiving the commandments from God. People got impatient. They got afraid. They demanded that Aaron make them an idol to worship. Complete breach of faith. Complete breach of the covenant. Complete breach of order.

They have this wild party, this unrestrained celebration. They're worshiping the golden calf, and worst of all, they are giving this thing that they just made credit for bringing them out of Egypt. "This is our God that led us out of Egypt." This golden calf that Aaron literally just made in the fire — that wasn't even there when we came out. It doesn't even make any sense. God was sure angry over that. When Moses saw it, he was really angry over that.

Let's pick it up in Exodus 32:26. "Moses stood in the entrance of the camp and said, 'Whoever's on the Lord's side, come to me.'" He gave them a command like something's about to happen. This is not just the opportunity to pay lip service to God. We are separating the righteous from the unrighteous here. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves to him. Now, you know, the Levites were a special tribe within the nation of Israel. They ministered to the holy things. They had special responsibilities within the nation as teachers. They were not given an inheritance because God said, "I am your inheritance."

How did they get that way? This moment right here. He said to them, "Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Let every man put his sword on his side and go in and out from entrance to entrance throughout the camp. Let every man kill his brother, every man his companion, and every man his neighbor." 

Just one of the hardest commands I've seen in Scripture for action for a person to do. You're going to go entrance to entrance, and if your brother's there and they're still hooked on that golden calf, you're going to kill him. It would be very easy to just pledge allegiance to God. Because they were loyal to God, they had to prove it in an extremely difficult and heartbreaking way.

Exodus 32:28 — "The sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and about 3,000 men of the people fell that day." Just looking at the numbers, doing the math on the number of Levites, the number of Israelites in the camp — I would say it was… I'm going to put quotation marks here because 3,000 is a lot — but it was only 3,000. All right, it was only 3,000.

That tells me that likely this wasn't just indiscriminate going around killing everybody. They went entrance to entrance, and they probably were looking for the chief offenders — the people who understood the situation and were refusing to turn back and renounce this and try to get back to the right worship of God.

Otherwise, I think that death toll would have been a lot higher. We're just not given all the details on that. But still — anyway — it was terrible. And we can't… I cannot really grasp the emotional gravity of that situation for them, but God required complete loyalty from them. He requires complete loyalty from you and me.

So let me tell you about my first real conflict with my family over religion. It's 2004. I'm a couple of months away from graduating high school, and I've been dating a girl for several months — my first real girlfriend — and her family goes to church on Saturday, which I had never heard of. She also keeps different holidays that I had never heard of, and does other strange stuff that I'd never seen a person calling themselves a Christian do.

Okay, whatever. I'm 17 years old. I'm not that interested in religion at the time. Okay, great. But over time, it just occurs to me, wait, they're reading the same Bible. So what's up with that? Kind of naturally, spending enough time with her and her family, I started asking questions. I wanted to know — how is it that you are this way? What is this? Why are you doing this when nobody else does?

And the amazing thing was that their answers were in the Bible — the same Bible that I had had on a shelf all my life, that I had once in a while read, not very often. And so I did something that I'd never ever done before to that point: I asked to come to church. I had never done that with anybody.

I'd been to several churches. My family had kind of quit going to church by that time as a regular thing. Occasionally, friends would invite me to their church — this or that one. I'd been to several. It was all kind of the same. There were little differences — different places, different faces, a little bit different order to stuff, different music, whatever. It didn't matter. It wasn't something that mattered to me.

By this point in my life, by the way, I still don't like going to church necessarily, for a lot of the same reasons. The clothes I had for it were still uncomfortable. The topics were not something at the forefront of my mind at that time that I cared about. Whatever.

I was interested in this, and so I wanted to go. Danielle, my wife, said to me that this was not like just going to any other church. I'm 17 years old, and I don't really care about this. I'm like, well, whatever, I'm going. It's fine. She told me, no, this was a big deal. She told me, even then, up front, this could cause problems with your family.

What a bizarre concept that was. Totally shrugged it off. So I go to church, and I open my Bible to every verse, and I'm listening to every word, and I don't quite know or understand this yet, but God is revealing His truth to me at that moment. He is calling me while I'm sitting there, and He keeps doing it the next week. And the next week was really exciting.

And so here we are, about the fourth or so week I've been at this, and it's becoming routine — that every Saturday morning, I walk out the door of my parents' house, dressed up for church. You know, by that point, I really didn't care that I needed to dress up in uncomfortable clothes, clunky dress shoes. When you're excited for the truth of God, who even cares or thinks about what you need to dress in? You put on your best because that's what they do, and you go.

Different perspective already. In fact, I think that was maybe the first perspective change that I had as a result of being called into God's church. So I get my dress shirt on, the dress shoes. I even put on a jacket, get the tie right, and I start towards the door of my bedroom, and my dad is standing there. And he's holding my car keys in his hand.

It's not funny. Unlike when I was a little kid, I did not make it to church that day. And I don't need to give you a blow-by-blow, but it was hard. It was very hard. It wasn't just hard that day. It was hard for at least a couple of years.

It was an important time. I was setting my boundaries to follow God's law — about the Sabbath, about Christmas, about the Feast of Tabernacles, about not eating pork. And setting those boundaries became really essential for honoring God and honoring my family in the long run. But I had to live out Jesus' words: "I shall set a man against his father."

Before I knew them, I was living them. I'm not any kind of hero for that. I wasn't converted whatsoever at the time. My attitude wasn't perfect. My actions weren't perfect. They weren't even good. They weren't even commendable, honestly.

You know, the one thing I did was that I was standing up for what I knew God was leading me to do. And I did that in the limited way that I knew how to as a 17-year-old boy. And thank God that He led me through all of that. But I wish that I had done better sooner with my family in that situation.

So, if you are somebody who is struggling with that or has struggled with that, I just want you to know that you're not alone. And I want to make sure you know that God is with you and God will lead you through it.

Turn with me to Malachi 4, verse 4. Malachi 4:4 — where we start to get a little glimmer of hope.

While we're turning there, we heard earlier in the feast from "2 Timothy 3" that in the last days, men would be "lovers of themselves, lovers of money… disobedient to parents… unthankful, unholy, and unloving" (2 Timothy 3:2).

Remember, we heard that word unloving — there is astorgos, the Greek word for not having natural familial love. God is going to start fixing that in His Kingdom as one of the first orders of business, because it's important to Him.

Malachi 4:4 tells us that. It says, "Remember the law of Moses, My servant, which I commanded him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord" (Malachi 4:4–5).

In those perilous end times — where people are being betrayed over, the same times when there's disobedience to parents, the same times when there's astorgos running amok in the world, and people losing the natural love of family that ought to be there — before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, "he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse" (Malachi 4:6).

God's plan is to bring a complete restoration of family values to the world. Just like John the Baptist fulfilled these words, preparing the way for Christ by preaching repentance to a nation that needed it, the Elijah to come also preaches repentance — preparing a remnant for God in the last days just before His Kingdom, and setting the tone for what people will need spiritually in that Kingdom.

Turn with me a few books back to Micah chapter 7. Micah 7:6–7 is where Jesus Christ was quoting from in Matthew 10.

And here it reads more like a lament. It says, "For son dishonors father, daughter rises against her mother, daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own household" (Micah 7:6). Here it's really written as a, look at this awful state of affairs. Families not showing love to each other.

And then Micah says, "Therefore I will look to the Lord" — because this is a problem that needs to be solved, and it's going to be solved by God — "I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me" (Micah 7:7).

Further down in Micah 7, I'd like to read verses 18–20 — how he closes out the book:

"Who is a God like You, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in mercy" (Micah 7:18). "He will again have compassion on us, and will subdue our iniquities. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:19). "You will give truth to Jacob and mercy to Abraham, which You have sworn to our fathers from days of old" (Micah 7:20).

This is wonderful, right? This is telling us with hope that God is going to undo all those awful things that will happen — all the things that have happened for mankind, and all the things that will happen in the last days. Even these things about families being divided in one way or another, in all the different ways that can happen.

The forgiveness of sin is going to go everywhere. The passing over of transgression goes everywhere. What I really latched on to, though, is in verse 19. It says, "He will subdue our iniquities" (Micah 7:19). He will subdue our iniquities.

That's more than just forgiving them. That's more than just saying all the bad stuff is forgiven because everybody's sorry. Subduing our iniquities is about changing people. What's it mean to subdue something? You're taking control of it. You're taking hold of it. You're directing it. You're restraining it.

God is going to subdue our iniquities. You know, for those of us who are in God's Kingdom as spirit beings, we're working on subduing our iniquities right now. This is being fulfilled in us right now by God's Holy Spirit, and it's going to be complete. At that time, our iniquities are completely — not just forgiven, but subdued — and we never have to worry about sinning again because God will have perfected us.

What a blessing that is. He's going to spread that to the whole world where people will learn, with God's help, to subdue their iniquities. Sin is the root of all conflict, including that within our families. Sometimes it can be just as simple as competing ideas over what we need to do for the day that can spark a conflict. You know, the problem isn't really that we just have different priorities or want to do different things — the problem is that we let sin get in the middle of how we work that out.

Sin's the problem. It's always been. Turn back with me to Micah 4:3–4. It says, "He" — that being Christ — "shall judge between many peoples and rebuke strong nations afar off; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Micah 4:3). "But everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken" (Micah 4:4). That's a beautiful image — having no more war. That's fantastic. It's also only one part of the whole picture.

How many of you have been in a war? Some have. Yeah, some have.

Okay, we don’t need to raise hands for this because it’s going to be basically everybody. How many of you have had a dysfunctional fight with your family that just never should have happened?

Yeah, I’d have mine up high, but we’re not raising them.

That happens because of iniquity, because of sin, because of human nature, because of all the things that God is working to get out of us. We still have some in us.

"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Micah 4:3).

They will war no more. That is awesome. It’s inspiring. War is awful. War is terrible. It’s egregiously bad. I’m very glad the Scriptures talk about how war is going to be no more. But I’m just as excited for how God is going to heal people at the individual and family level.

He’s going to put an end to all the many different cycles and variations of broken family relationships that exist, because people go astray in every way we can imagine.
 And yeah, families are going to hang out by the family vine and the family fig tree.

"Everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken" (Micah 4:4).

And they’re going to work together. They’re going to learn God’s way together. They’re going to live God’s way together. They’re going to overcome sin by God’s power together. One day at a time, just like us.

But in God’s Kingdom, let’s understand there is a monumental perspective shift in how God is now dealing with humanity. You ready? It’s no longer ancient Israel where God is purifying a holy nation by cutting out the unrighteous. It’s no longer calling and separating out a holy people from an unrighteous world, as we’re living out today.

No — the situation is about fulfilling this Feast of Ingathering that we’re in right now, celebrating. The new default throughout the world, world order, is God’s righteous government, His righteous rulership, His righteous system. That’s the default ruling over the world in the Kingdom.

And our work as the resurrected saints is to gather folks into God’s way all over the world, out of all peoples, out of all nations, everyone. It’s about bringing in the full harvest of mankind, as many people as are willing, and teaching them better.

"And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh" (Joel 2:28).
 We understand from the book of Acts — "And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh" (Acts 2:17) — they quote it from Joel 2:28. The fulfillment of that began when the Church was founded on Pentecost, when God began pouring out His Spirit on flesh like yours and mine — the flesh of those who repent, are baptized, have hands laid on them.

We have the firstfruits of God’s Spirit. The greatest thing about firstfruits is that they’re just the beginning. There’s a whole lot more fruit just like those coming.

That work began at that time. It’s ongoing now in the Church age. It will be ongoing in the Kingdom of God throughout the Millennium to bring in the fruits. It will be ongoing in the Eighth Day when the masses of humanity are resurrected — bring in the fruits, teach them the truth, get repentance going, get people following the way of God, get people living by it, get families reconciled, get them healed.

Because we are the firstfruits, we have a special opportunity to be cycle breakers in our families today. It’s not just an opportunity, it’s a responsibility. It’s part of God’s way.

Whatever dysfunctional mess any one of us might have inherited from generations before us — whatever addictions and vices have run in your family, my family, whatever destructive patterns — God is helping you and me clean those up in our family right now. And every one of us starts with themselves.

God’s plan is for a complete restoration of family values under Christ’s reign. And it works by changing people at the heart level as only God can do, as they learn to follow His way. But following God’s way for us here today means living by those godly values now. We prepare for the Kingdom by practicing love in our family, by practicing humility in our family, and especially by practicing forgiveness in our family as necessary.

Living by those godly values requires daily effort and intentionality on our part, even within the Church, raising our families.

So, I am — since this is my demographic — I’m a parent of small children. I’m going to speak to the parents raising little kids. We just need to put on a whole ton of humility and patience and long suffering for these kids. And I don’t think any of us, myself included, do as well as we wish we did.

But what do we do? We get up and we try every day to do our best. We try to take God’s help. We try to live by His grace. We have to fight against our own carnal nature that’s still here with us.

If you ever get down on yourself for not being the parent that you wish you were and that you wish you could be all the time, just ask yourself to give yourself a little grace. Ask yourself, how bad of a parent would I be if I didn’t even have God’s Spirit? If I wasn’t even working at this, I would have been destined to be just a terrible tyrant of a parent if I didn’t have God’s help.

Be thankful for all that God’s done to get you where you are so far. Be thankful that God is still today helping you, helping you, working on you like He’s working on me. And even better than that, the calling is to our children. They’re going to grow up, and God is going to keep working directly with them and do all kinds of stuff that you or me couldn’t even do. Couldn’t teach them. Never could — because it’s God’s relationship with them, which is bigger than ours with them.

Also, whatever age you are, if your parents are alive, honor them the best you can. Honor your father and mother (Exodus 20:12), even if and when they don’t make it easy for you to do that — according to the flesh, that is.

When all of that conflict erupted between me and my parents, I had zero skills for dealing with it. And I mean zero. And I’ll tell you what I would have done: I would have just never spoken to them again. I would have just, out of my weakness, my insufficiency, I would have just stopped being around them. I would have stopped talking to them. I would have stopped showing up because I didn’t know how to deal with it.

Previous to that, my family — my way of coping with conflict was to just go ahead and do whatever my parents said, whether I liked it or not, because I didn’t like conflict. Well, here was a situation where I literally, my only strategy that I knew or had, wasn’t going to work for me. I couldn’t do what they said because God was a higher authority.

I was just going to avoid them. My wife — like a lot of wives — turns out to be right a lot, especially when I really don’t want her to be. Danielle told me that I couldn’t do that, that I needed to show up. And I don’t recall that she put it in these terms, but the message was very clear: If I was going to follow God, part of that was honoring my father and mother, even through a difficult situation, even though they were dead set against the way of God that I was learning and following.

Even though simple things like breakfast — when I didn’t put the sausage on my plate — became a fight, I still needed to honor them in the ways that I could. So she told me, whenever they asked you to come to dinner, you’re going to go to dinner. You’re going to be there. You’re going to be there for Thanksgiving. You’re going to go on family vacation. You don’t need to be there on Christmas morning, even though they really want you to. But you need to be there with them and for them in times that matter.

And yeah, you have to hold the boundary of following God if and when it comes down to it. But don’t write off the parts of those relationships that can still be good, if they are willing. I’m just incredibly thankful that she encouraged me to do that at that time.

There’s a lot more that I wish I could go through today from God’s Word. I’d really like to go through all the positive side of how lovingly we’re supposed to treat each other and our families, whether in the Church or out of the Church — just all the things about humility and love and service and forgiveness.

I’d love to take time to focus on that, but I don’t have time for it. I talked about something else instead. But God’s going to make sure that you hear and read all the things that you need to be equipped for that.

I will give you some homework, though — just two things to reflect on that you can do.

Number one — as we’re closing out the feast, you can ask yourself: How can I better love my family here at the feast? How can I show love to my family better here at the feast? And since we’re at the end, it’s all still fresh on your mind. You might have an immediate answer for this. Were there mistakes that I made this week? What could I have done different?

And you don’t have to overthink it or beat yourself up or find some reason to just excoriate yourself. Maybe you just needed to go with the flow better. Or maybe you didn’t even do anything negative. Maybe you could have just done something more positive that you didn’t think about. I don’t know. Figure it out. It’s your homework. I’ll do mine.

Second thing — so that’s for here and now, for the upcoming year. When we go back home, ask yourself: What can I do to show greater love to my family when I return from the feast?

And look, there’s a lot of ways you can take it. I want you to take that however God speaks to you. That might mean to you your immediate family — how you can show better love to them. Might mean your extended family.

And again, it doesn’t have to be profound or life altering. Maybe there’s just somebody that you simply need to call when you get home. And touch base with them and see how they’re doing because it’s been too long.

So that’s the homework.

And last of all, I just want to remind everyone — we’ve only got a little bit left of the feast. I just want to remind you and encourage you to rejoice, to fully rejoice in the time we have left.

Here’s some things to rejoice over: We can thank God and rejoice for His laws and His Holy Spirit in us that enable us to have a better family life today than we would have had. No matter our situation, no matter what your family is like, it can and will be better with God’s help because of His law. Let’s be thankful. Let’s rejoice over that.

Let’s also thank God and rejoice over the incredible truth that He has given us that these days represent — that the solution to family problems is in the Kingdom of God. The answers are in His Word, and the solution is coming in the Kingdom of God when all people are invited in and gathered into His family.