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We Are Family

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We Are Family

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We Are Family

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We come together at this Winter Family Weekend as both a physical family and a spiritual family. We are here because we have been invited to be part of God's family. Mr. McKeon discusses the past, present, and future components of God's plan for family and also several dynamics of God's family.

Transcript

[Scott McKeon] And we're here at this Winter Family Weekend for really what amounts to a family reunion. Is it not? Every time we all have the opportunity to get together, it feels like a family reunion. And we come together today as physical and spiritual family and it's appropriate at this point of Winter Family Weekend that we consider this concept in the message today entitled, "We Are Family."

In Arizona, in Phoenix, there's a property known as the Biltmore and there's a hill on that property where a mansion has been built. It's referred to as the Wrigley Mansion. And I believe that there is a Wrigley Field in Chicago. And the Wrigley name is one that's fairly commonly associated with the gum, and a fair amount of wealth has been accumulated by that family. I have a colleague that has a brother who is a pilot and he's a private pilot and he flies private jets and he flies families around. They hire him to be their pilot, to take them to these places on the family jet. And apparently there is a hierarchy, but if you are a part of the family and want to use the jet, you make your reservation and this pilot will fly them places. So we hear vicariously from time to time of ski trips in Switzerland and places where these families are going.

And when you might think for a moment, "How nice would it be to be part of a family like that?" But let's just stop and consider something for a moment. We are all here. We're in this room because we have been invited to be a part of the very family of God. God has invited us here and ultimately we might say figuratively to sit at His table, His family dinner table, as part of that family. Family is the analogy God has used to help us to understand His plan and our role in that plan.

Let's take a look at the past, present, and future component of this plan. Turn to Genesis 1:26 if you would please. This is when we first start to read about this family. Genesis 1:26 says, “'Let Us make man in our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on earth.' So God created man in His own image; in the image of God, He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them, and said, 'Be fruitful and multiply.'" So God created us in His image. So already we've been blessed among all other creatures of the earth. Already. And how awesome is that? We've been given all things on this earth to have dominion over. So regardless of our station in life, we all already incredibly blessed among all of the creation. What an amazing family to be a part as a part of the physical family, the human family.

And now let's move on to something else that occurred in the past where God specifically chose an individual to lead a family that would be very special to him. And turn over to Genesis 12 where the Lord said to Abram, ''Get out of your country, move away from your family,” your physical family, “and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you.'' So moving away from something that he had known well to something that he didn't know. "And I will make you a great nation; I will bless you. I will make your name great; and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."

We know that Abraham did respond to that call. We know that Abraham had a son, Isaac, who had a son, Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, who had 12 sons, Judah being one of those tribes, the most recognizable today, Christ came from Judah. And through the English-speaking people, which largely descended from Abraham's seed and Jesus Christ Himself, all families on earth have been blessed. God changed Abram's name. Abraham means exalted father. He changed it to Abraham, meaning father of a multitude.

Let's turn over to Mary's words in Luke 1. This is now many years later and God is fulfilling this blessing that He gave to Abraham. And Abraham did respond to that. And there are plenty of stories in between here, of course. But we're going to go to Luke 1 and we're going to read the words of Mary who was selected again, selected by God, to do something very special and have the child that would become Jesus Christ. So she's here meeting with her cousin and in verse 45 of Luke 1 we read, ''Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of these things which were told her from the Lord."

And Mary says, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For He is regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; and behold, henceforth, all generations will call me blessed. For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name. His mercy is on all of those who fear Him… He shown strength with His arm; He scattered the proud and the imagination of their hearts. And He's put down the mighty from their thrones, exalted the lowly. Filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He's sent away empty. He has helped us serve in Israel, and the remembrance of mercy, and as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his seed forever.''

What we're reading about there is Mary acknowledging the fact that God is in charge. He is in charge. He chooses whom He will and we are here because He's chosen us to reveal these truths to and what amazing an opportunity that is. We can really just let that sink into the present. We have an invitation to be part of that family regardless of our lineage, regardless of where we came from, regardless of our family history right now, we have the opportunity to be a part of God's family. God calls whom He will.

Let's turn over to Galatians 3. Galatians 3 and we'll start in verse 26. ''For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Jesus Christ. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to this promise.'' What an amazing opportunity that is. Let's really think about that. If we were to invite someone into our family, would we want to be fairly selective about who we would invite?

I have friends who are fathers and those fathers have daughters and there are young men who take a fancy to those daughters. And I heard a father talk about his daughter today and tell this story about something like that. And he said, ''I want to get to know this young man.'' And so they have spent some time together now and that story repeats itself. And how about the fact that God is giving us the opportunity to live eternally as part of His family? It helps us to really understand what we're doing in this life, right? We're learning about God and he's learning about us and he's learning about the choices that we will make so that he can determine who is going to be part of that eternal family.

Let's turn over to one page perhaps to Galatians 4:6. ''And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’ Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ." God's going to want to give us His name. Is the promise to you? Do you have the opportunity to partake of this promise? This is a question that we ask and answer in every young adult Bible study that we have and teen Bible study. We go to our Bibles and we read where it says we have the opportunity.

Now, John 6:44 says, ''No one comes to God unless they are called.'' The invitation comes from God. We read of an invitation from God to Abraham, and we also read of an invitation or we read at the results of an invitation that God gave Mary. God created those events and He created the events in your lives or your parents' lives or your grandparents' lives or your great grandparents' lives, to give you the opportunity to be here and hear these truths now and to receive this invitation, this awesome, amazing imitation. There is no greater invitation you could ever receive than that which we have.

Let's turn over to Acts 2. What's going on in Acts 2? Acts 2, Acts follows the Gospels. So here we have the events that occur immediately after Christ's sacrifice, and here we are on Pentecost 31 A.D. Peter's giving the sermon. He's speaking to a Jewish audience. And he's saying to them that, “Therefore let all the house of Israel know..." I'm starting in verse 36 here. ''Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified," very pointedly says to him, "you crucified, this Jesus Christ. He made Him the Lord and Christ.''

And “when they heard this, they were cut to the heart.” They felt it. It was palpable. They knew they had done wrong, and they said, ‘''Men and brethren, what do we do?' Peter said…" And by the way, I'll pause for a moment and think about the fact that in our lives we all realize the same thing at some point. Right? As we received this invitation and as we think about it, we also realize that we are culpable for Christ's death as well because of our actions and our sins, and it's when we feel that we want to read a scripture like this and ask and answer the same question. What do we do? What do we do at this point?

“Peter said to them, ‘Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord will call.’” Repent and be baptized. So change, go into that water, die to that old person, that individual that was responsible for killing Christ, come up a new person, and be different.

Verse 39 though is the important part with regard to today's message and that is, ''For the promise is to you and to your children.'' So this calling that was responded to now has implications for future generations in that all those future generations have that same opportunity as well as to all of those others that God will call. And here in this room, we have many first generation, second, third, fourth, and probably fifth, maybe sixth generations here. How exciting. We respond to that call. We can go through the whole response in Hebrews 6, those fundamental doctrines of repentance, faith, baptism, laying on of the Holy Spirit, laying on of hands, the receipt of the Holy Spirit, resurrection, eternal judgment, and then entering into that family of God.

Let's go to the future. The future, we will receive an inheritance from our father. How exciting. It's going to be exciting to see what that is, what that means entirely. Let's turn over to Romans 8. We don't know exactly what that means. We don't know what all that will entail. But we do know this, that just the knowledge and the thought and what we've considered so far changes our lives forever. We make different decisions or we make decisions from the point we really come to understand this. From that point forward, we make it based on different information than the rest of the world has or understands. Forever, we are changed by this invitation and when we do respond to that call and we do receive that Holy Spirit working with us or in us, that changes us.

Verse 14, ''As many as are led by that Spirit” as many as use that Holy Spirit to help develop judgment and wisdom and insight and knowledge and help frame our decisions based on this information that we have. As many as do that, “these are the sons of God.'' Verse 16, ''The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.'' We already read that we are different being human. We have a spirit in man. The spirit of man plus the Spirit of God equals children of God, the very children of God.

So we live in this life knowing that there's something more, and it changes everything. Let's read in verse 18. ''For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not even worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.'' Again, as members of the family of God, as sons of God, sons, and daughters, we read gender nonspecific. There's neither male nor female. We read that. So when we speak in the male gender here know that were gender nonspecific. It changes everything. It changes our whole perspective on this life, our priorities of this life. We're looking now to the future.

We live knowing that there's something more and we look forward to that. Verse 19, ''For the earnest expectation and the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.'' That's what we're waiting for. Verse 23, ''Not only that, but we who have the firstfruits of the Spirit," those first ones who really have access to that Holy Spirit, "even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. And we look for this something that we haven't seen… But if we hope for what we do not see,” in verse 25, "we eagerly wait for it with perseverance." We look forward to this. We go to the Feast of Tabernacles and we rehearse that future every year to be reminded of what it's going to be like, and we gather as family now thinking about this family. It's appropriate that we do that.

Let's turnover to Ephesians. Now I'm going to speculate that since we're on winter break here, the word homework might be a little bit of a dirty word, right? All of you are in school or, yeah, you're wiggling a little bit when I say those words, that word homework. I'll tell you what. If you want a little homework over the break, it doesn't take long to read this, but Ephesians, reading the book of Ephesians would be great homework for you. It's such a beautifully-written book. We're only going to read parts of it today. Chapter 3 verse 14 says, ''For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory.''

God has all riches. He created everything. Everything that exists He created. There isn't any other family we could want it to be a part of and have command of more resources. God created it all. And he's saying that here. ''For the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— to know the love of Jesus Christ which passes all knowledge; that you may be filled with the fullness of God.'' That's a mouthful. And that's why you want to read it as homework and take your time as you walk through that and think about what that's saying.

Verse 20, ''Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly above… abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be the glory in the church by Jesus Christ to all generations, forever and ever.'' So we're thinking about that inheritance as we read this, about the fact that God desires to expand His family and He does it through Jesus Christ, the sacrifice of Jesus, paying the penalty for our sins so that we could become part of that family because we would not deserve it. We do not deserve it and we wouldn't be able to be there without that. That's pretty exciting, isn't it? So that's the past, present, and future.

And now we're going to consider a little bit about the dynamics of our family. So again, God is our Father. God is the Father of this family. This knowledge changes us. It's known as the process of conversion, where we go from what we were when we really came to understand this with the help of the Holy Spirit and we start to change to what God wants us to be with the help of his Holy Spirit. We start to become something different because what God has said is, "I want you to be part of my family, but not necessarily you. Maybe not you now.” But what you can be with the help of the Holy Spirit and with some time to grow and mature and develop and really come to understand these things that we're talking about now. “That's what I want. That's who I want in my family.” So this process changes us and we read about that and God does give us time. He is merciful.

You can read in Psalms 103:13-14 we read about our Father and how He is patient. Psalms 103:13 I'll back up a little bit because the scriptures before that really help us to understand the love that the Father has for us. Verse 8, ''The Lord Is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in mercy. He doesn't always strive with us, nor does He remain angry forever.'' And sometimes as kids, we wonder what do we do? “How mad are mom and dad going to be this time?” And as we grow, we make mistakes and we wonder ourselves again. How does God do this? It's saying here, He's merciful. He doesn't keep His anger forever. "He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities." He doesn't give us what we deserve. Romans 6:23 he tells us what we deserve, right? “The wages of sin are death.” That's what we deserve. He says, “No, He doesn't do that.” He gives us Jesus Christ and His sacrifice to pay those penalties.

''For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy towards those who fear Him; and as far as the east is from the west, He has removed our transgressions from us.'' Verse 13, "As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. He knows our frame; and He remembers that we are dust.'' So God gives us time in His family to mature. We know that maturity is a process. We see that in this room. We see young people growing up. We see them now up on the stage sharing their talents with us. We see the teens every year growing taller, becoming more capable. We see their musical abilities. We see their athletic abilities growing and developing. We also see them continue to mature. We see them serving in new ways. We see this over time through the generations and what a great opportunity, again, it is to come together at this family reunion on an annual basis and see all the growth and development in our family.

God gives us time. We learn the fundamentals. We talked about those in Hebrew 6. We grow and we build on that. We also consider that God has given us an elder Brother. So the next point is Christ is our elder Brother. We have a pretty awesome older Brother. Now older brothers are pretty awesome anyway. Everyone who is a younger brother already knows that, right? You all talk about how awesome your older brothers are all the time. I didn't have an older brother, but I have many older brothers. My older brother spoke last night and it was great to hear from him. And he told the story for those of you who are there and how we first met.

And that's when we knew we were brothers. We met in a boathouse in Orr, Minnesota and I had gotten up early and was looking for a place to pray. And the boathouse floor was made out of plywood. So I'm thinking, "Well, how can we work this out?" I found a chair, kind of an old rusty metal chair and set that up in the corner and I found a kneeboard. The kneeboards it's like an old school wakeboard. Before they had those, they had kneeboards and that had padded knees. So I set that down and then I put the wetsuits up to divide the area and I had this perfect little prayer booth.

So I'm praying and then not too long into doing it, those wetsuits spread apart and there's Phil Aust. And he says, ''Hey, that's what I was looking to do.'' And that started a friendship, a really deep friendship that has lasted for all of these years. We have lots of older brothers. I can look around this room and see older brothers, those who have set an example for me and we continue to pass that on. Christ is our older brother and, you know, He's been through what we go through. It's exciting to know that.

Let's turn over to Hebrews 12. I probably could be faster by having these pre-printed in my notes. But I think it's good to turn to these scriptures and know that we're reading them from the pages here. Plus it's nice to have that tactile feel of the book, to have the highlights here and the pencil and the notes. I still like the book.

Hebrews 12, ''Therefore, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight,” let’s think about this race that we're on “and let us… and the sin which so easily ensnares us.” And when we leave this room, we think about the fact that we do have an adversary and we're going to talk about that in a minute. And that adversary is out there trying to get us and he's trying to get us to sin and he's trying to get us to divert our attention from these truths.

"Let us run with endurance the race that is before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith,” our older Brother “who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and now He has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. And consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. You have not yet resisted the bloodshed, striving against sin. And have forgotten the expectation which speaks to you: ‘Don't despise the chasing of the Lord, or be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for the Lord loves whom He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.''

So as we're thinking about this, we know that Christ has been there before us and that God is going to correct us as His sons. It makes sense that He would. If He's inviting us into His family, He's going to want to help shape us, right? He's going to want us to be shaped. And that means we're going to go through situations in life. We call them trials. We call them learning opportunities. We call them problems, but He's giving us those so that we can grow and develop. And He wants to know how do we react to those? What did we learn from that? So it's Jesus Christ, our elder Brother who has made that all possible.

Let's turn over to Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1 starting in verse 3. ''Blessed be God and… the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,’' We know that it's God's will to have a family and He's determined that He's going to have a family and He's invited us to be a part of that.

And He wants us to see how we respond to that and then we will be very sons, members of His family. ''To the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. And in Him we have redemption through His blood, Jesus Christ's blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, which He made abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence.'' And so that's the first part of Ephesians. That's the homework. As you continue to read that, you'll read about this theme of grace, Christ's sacrifice, Christ's role. We don't have time to read it all. It would be great if we did. It's our elder Brother that makes this possible.

The next dynamic of our family is that Satan is working hard to destroy the family. Why? He has motive. Should we read about his motive? Let's turn to Hebrews 1. He has motive because he knows how all this ends up. He can read. He knows God's plan and he knows that in the end, he does not win. But what is his victory? His victory is to take as many of us as he can with him. Let's turn to Hebrews 1:14, Verse 13, ''To which of the angels has God ever said: 'Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’? Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation?''

The angels are ministering spirits. Do you think it's possible that the one who was Lucifer occupied a very nice position in God's government at the time? At some point, he came to the realization that he never had the potential that humans have to become very members of the family of God. And upon that realization, that created bitterness and then he tried to overthrow God's plan. He didn't want this plan to work out. He gets put to this earth, and now the only opportunity that he has to disrupt God's plan is, again, to try to take as many of us with him. And we need to really take this seriously.

1 Peter 5:8 gives us some instruction on what to do from Peter here as he writes to his church area. He says in 1 Peter 5:8, ''Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.'' He wants us. He's upset about this truth, these truths that we're reviewing today. He's upset about that. Not happy. We were coming back from the Feast a couple of years ago, and we had gone up to the Feast in Canada and we're driving down through the north part of Washington, kind of the northwest part of Washington and Idaho. Beautiful areas and we pulled into this little place. The family is hungry, they're ready to eat, and we pull into this restaurant/gas station/bait shop/boat repair place. You see what I'm saying here, right? It's kind of this multipurpose facility you might say.

And it's overlooking this beautiful lake and there was nobody else there. The person who works there, that's it. We walk into the restaurant and in the restaurant, it has kind of those wood panel walls with the grooves in it and some fish, stuffed fish, on the wall. Again, nobody else in there. So that's where we had lunch that day. There is the typical type of silverware and cutlery you would find in a restaurant such as this with maybe it was kind of porcelain with a brown stripe around it and like those red plastic cups. And that's what we ate out of. But also in that restaurant was a very elegantly-appointed table. And it was a table with a white tablecloth on it. And it had some very nice cutlery on it. And I'm going to read what later I came to learn about this table. This is called the POW-MIA table, and it's a place setting for one to remind us of those who have not come back from battle, which is approximately, if I understand correctly, 83,000 since World War II.

It's smaller than others, symbolizing the frailty of a prisoner against his oppressors. “The white tablecloth represents the purity of individuals that are lost. The empty chair depicts an unknown face representing no specific individual. The table is round to show that our concern from them for them is never-ending. There's a Bible on the table that represents faith in a higher power and the pledge to, in this case, our country founded as one nation under God. The black napkin stands for the emptiness these warriors have left in the hearts of their families and friends.”

“The red rose reminds us of their families and loved ones. The red ribbon represents the love of our country, which inspired them to answer to the nation's call. The yellow candle and yellow ribbon symbolize the everlasting hope for a joyous reunion with those yet accounted for. The slices of lemon on the plate remind us of their bitter fate. The salt upon the bread plate represents the tiers of their families. And the wine glass turned upside down reminds us that our distinguished comrades cannot be with us to drink a toast or join in the festivities of the evening.”

Satan wants that to be your chair. As we consider the fact that we are Christian soldiers, we are family. The one victory cry that Satan has left is for that to be your chair spiritually and he will never quit as a result of that. The last dynamic, well, two dynamics we have left here... How are we on time? Two more points here. Our family has problems. Our family has problems. If the family has problems, does that mean God is no longer with us? We all know that our family has a problem. Jeff Foxworthy has had a radio show for years. I don't know if he still has it, but I remember these words clearly.

As he would sign off from his radio show on Sunday mornings, there was a country station that would play his show. Jeff Foxworthy is a comedian and actor, entertainer, and he would sign off with his radio show like this on Sundays. "This is Jeff Foxworthy signing off. So hug your kids and call your mama and remember it's not just you. Everybody's family is crazy." And now you're thinking about your crazy family and feeling good about that. Everyone's family has someone or something that's just a little different and our family is no different. Does that mean God's not with us?

Let's look at famous families. We read about Abraham earlier, the one that God called specifically. Abraham's family had issues. He had the whole situation with Hagar and Ishmael and Sarah, multiple issues there. That didn't mean God was no longer with him and we've read about the fulfillment of many of those promises. Jacob and Esau, David and Absalom. David had lots of family issues. None of our relationships are perfect. It was told to me early on with regard to a specific relationship, my marital relationship, I was told very on, very early on, "Scott, your marriage or any relationship you are ever in will not be perfect because you are in it."

Thank you. What great advice. Great to know. And it helps set an expectation, right? So none of our relationships are going to be perfect and we shouldn't be surprised that that's true. Why would it appear as though our family has so many problems so consistently? Should that be true? Well, we read about the source of many of those problems. We read about why. Because Satan is constantly on the attack. He's doing what he does and he's very good at what he does. What he wants to do and what he does is try to destroy this family. Jesus said in his own words, red letter edition. You can read red letters. Matthew 5:11, ''Blessed are we when we are persecuted for our forefathers had the same problems.” From our elder Brother in John 15... We'll just go there.

John 15:18, ''If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you.'' So our brother's been there before us. "If you are of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you specifically chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also.” But they didn't. So all these things are going to happen. So we're going to experience trials and troubles and tribulations. It's going to be part of the whole human experience. That's part of it.

And we have our older Brother that went there first. Hebrews 4:15 helps remind us of that. This is a favorite scripture worth memorizing. ''Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we don't have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.'' He's been there and He's felt what we feel. ''Therefore,'' verse 16 ''let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.'' So when we need that help, we have it. Christ has been there. He understands. He can make intercession to God the Father for us and with us.

The church becomes our family. We use the term “brethren.” It's kind of church speak. You don't really hear it anywhere else, right? Brethren, where else did you hear that? What does that mean? It's plural and it stands for brothers and sisters. Brethren, let's forever think of that term differently when we hear it. Brethren, we are brothers and sisters. It's such a nice term and the implication is we're all of one family and we're all going through this together and we all have the same Father, the same older Brother. We're all looking forward to the same thing together. When we come together at opportunities like this and what a wonderful opportunity it is and I could not thank the people that have put this together enough for the efforts that they put into it year over year so that we can all be here and enjoy all the experiences that we all have this weekend.

We've already enjoyed the music. We've enjoyed Bible studies. We've enjoyed seminars. More seminars are to come as are games and the dance and opportunities to spend time together. Basketball, volleyball games. We come here and we realize that we're not alone. We value this time together. Some have made a lot of sacrifice to come here because we value this time together to get our batteries charged. It's like a family reunion. It should be a safe place as should every church area that we go to. It's a place to learn, a place to grow, a place to teach, a place to be mentored. And we could dig into every one of these little sub-points.

We have responsibilities to each other as a family. We have responsibilities to love one another. You can read about that in John 13:35 love your brother, 1 John. That would be another little piece of homework if you want some more homework, 1 John, where we read about if we're going to be Christians, then we walk as Christ walked. We keep His Commandments. We look to that example about our elder Brother. We love each other. We show that brotherly love. When God returns and establishes Christ as the ruler of all things, He wants us to find us so doing these things, loving each other, caring for each other, paying attention to each other's needs, really functioning as a family. And He says we're going to be judged actually on how well we do that.

So I'm going to read in conclusion an article that was printed in the 2010 United News. But in many ways, it encompasses this whole notion of family and with a great result. This article is written by Linda Hansen. It says, "There was an old African proverb that states, 'It takes a village to raise a child.’ With the graduation of our oldest child from high school this year, I've been thinking about all of the help and support that we have had from our Church village [or family] in raising him. While I firmly believe that it is a parents’ job to raise a child, the Church family provides help and support that is extremely beneficial and can greatly enrich the life of a child!

Over the years, my husband and I have experienced that support in so many ways. For instance, neither my husband or I have any special mechanical or technological abilities.'' Now, they are very talented, I might say. She's a little self-effacing here, but she's saying that they didn't have technical abilities. “Yet a man in our congregation noticed that our son had a keen interest in these things and spent time answering questions and chatting with him about computers, technologies and building things like a hovercraft.

When Luke was about 12, this man asked me if he could give Luke an old computer to take apart, along with a book, which would give him a chance to learn how to build it. We would have never thought of this ourselves, but readily agreed. Who could know that all of these little strange pieces in plastic bags would produce a computer? Luke was fascinated by the challenge. It took him only a week during summer vacation to put together this working computer. And he's gone on to learn much more about microelectronics and technology at school and on his own, and we have all benefited from the skills learned and the interest started from that project. You may never know what a difference getting to know a young person and sharing an interest of yours could make in the life of that youth.''

A little fun fast forward fact. I went to this individual's LinkedIn and saw that he volunteers for a local nonprofit his time to help them with their computers and their infrastructure. So he's paying this forward with the skills that he had developed. “Brethren have been extremely kind in making it possible for him to travel with various school groups and still keep the Sabbath." So it talks about a time in New York City where people brought them in and showed him around the city and another trip to San Francisco where they kept the Sabbath even on this trip, and she brought him into their family.

"What a wonderful gift of support and encouragement to our family and a chance for the Body of Christ to become more closely bonded together… They may not have known what a difference their kindness made in the life of a teenager, but God's Spirit was evident in the way that they interacted with our son.” So as he now heads into college and adulthood, they “would like to thank the many people that were instrumental in helping him grow into a young man. And we encourage all of you to continue to be involved with the youth that you encountered services. It truly is a way to fulfill John 13:35 in the lives of our children. As you get to know the youth and build a friendship and relationship, you might have the opportunity to have a profound impact on a future member of the God family!”

So as we come together on this Winter Family Weekend, let's think about these things. Let's think about the fact that our Father is going to give us a new name. And until that time that we received that new name, a family name, in His eternal family, let's be thankful and value our opportunity to be part of this family. Remember that we have a responsibility, multiple responsibilities towards our family, towards each other. We have a work to be doing for all of those others that God may bring into His family for those that He may call because we do know that He's continuing to call people, continuing to call more and more, expose them to the gospel, the good news that we're talking about right now. Let's not allow Satan to accomplish his task of distracting us from these truths and causing that empty table to be our seat. As we spend time together in this Winter Family Weekend, let's remember that we are all family.