Episode 614: TLP 614: Biblical Families, Part 2 | the Start

Parenting as Worship and the Biblical Family Foundation

If I make a pie using apples and no pumpkin, it'll be impossible for the end result to be a traditional pumpkin pie. And the same is true with someone who…. Parenting isn't about us. In fact, parenting isn't even about our kids.

Parenting is just one way Christian dads and moms are to worship God. So welcome to the Truth Love Parent podcast, where we train dads and moms to give God the preeminence in their parenting. Welcome back to part two of our Biblical Family series.

If you're just joining us, please stop right here and listen to the previous episode. Otherwise, I'm very glad you're back and I'm excited to get into 1 John 1, 5 -10. But don't forget that each of these sessions comes with free notes, a transcript, life work, and links to related resources, each of which is designed to help you internalize and exercise the truths we're learning together.

And I do hope your family is all together for this Bible study. We need to be doing these things together as a family so we can fulfill the roles God has for each member of the family. So let's begin.

First of all, I want to ask a couple questions just to keep you accountable. Did you do your life work this week? Did you read 1 John 1, 5 -10 two times? Did you ask God to teach you something through this study?

Did you review the gospel?

I hope you did.

The more you meditate on these truths, the easier and faster your life will be changed by them. Of course, you're more than welcome to continue this session, even if you neglected one or all of the life work assignments.

But I do hope one of the ways you'll grow in this study will be the importance you put on God's Word. None of the life work assignments are anything we shouldn't be doing. All Christians should be spending time with the Lord in His Word and in prayer, and we should all be preaching the gospel to ourselves every day.

But regardless of how much of the life work you completed, let's read 1 John 1, 5 -10 together.

Now. 1 John 1, 5 -10.

And this is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not do the truth.

But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us.

There is so much powerful, comforting, and yet also very hard truth in these six verses. But before we start picking it apart, I want to remind you of the EverMind app. Truth Love Family is part of the EverMind Ministries, and the EverMind app has resources from not only Truth Love Family, but also the year-long Celebration of God and Faith Tree Biblical Counseling and Discipleship.

Each of the resources on the app, from the United in God Family Devotional Series to my book, Quit! How to Stop Family Strife for Good, is designed to draw your family closer to God and closer to each other.

I hope you'll use the link in the description of this episode to create a free account and start taking advantage of the various online courses, curated collections, and books we have available. But before you do that, we have a study in 1 John to do, so let's begin with why I entitled this session, The Start.

God Is Light and the Meaning of Darkness

Last time we learned that the groundwork of the biblical family is God, the God who communicates himself from the beginning, who offers eternal life, and who desires for us to participate in a relationship with him and his people.

But even though he's the foundation, there is still a vital starting place. The foundation has been laid, yes, but each member of your family isn't inherently on that foundation simply because they're born into or married into your family.

There are billions of families in the world in which no member of the family is on the groundwork of God, and I believe, as did the Apostle John, that there are many people who will hear this message today who are not currently on the groundwork either.

So the last session was about the groundwork primarily, and this session is about how to be built on that groundwork. If God is the foundation of the biblical family, how does a family get founded on him and how can they know they're rooted in him?

Now in verse 4, John had just written,. And these things we are writing so that our joy may be made complete. What things? That God exists, that Jesus is God, that he is life, and that he wants us to fellowship together with and in him.

So this is why John says in verse 5,. And this is the message we have heard from him and declared to you, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. Number one, God is righteous. John is introducing a word picture here that is very important.

Just like his previous allusion to the beginning in Genesis and John 1, this imagery of light is used to describe God all throughout the Bible. James 1 .17 says,. Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

1 Timothy 6 .16, speaking of God, says,. Who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal might.

Amen.

The Old Testament frequently shows God choosing to manifest himself as light and fire. Exodus 24 .17 reads,. And the appearance of the glory of Yahweh was like a consuming fire on the mountaintop in the eyes of the sons of Israel.

And Deuteronomy 4 .24 says that Yahweh your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. And the imagery of God as light and fire continues throughout the scriptures. We don't have time right now to pick apart all the nuances of why God would refer to himself in these ways, so I want to simplify it for us.

Light and fire are sanitizing. Mold and disease cannot exist when exposed to light, and fire burns away the dross from pure gold. Light and fire are purifying. In a way, we could say that they are clean.

They detoxify. I believe that John is using this imagery of God existing in light to illustrate that God is holy. He is righteous. He is good. That is his light. There is no sin, no unrighteousness, no evil in God.

That is described as being darkness. Now I don't want to thrust onto the imagery anything that God doesn't want there, so I need to support my claim. In Isaiah 5 .20 we read,. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness.

And nowhere is this iconomy of light and darkness more clearly understood than in the Gospel of John 3 .19 -20. John says,. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world. And men love the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil.

For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light lest his deeds be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been done by God.

This is why John proclaims in 1 John that in him there is no darkness at all. My point is we don't have to guess what the light and dark are meant to communicate to.

Us.

Light is holiness and righteousness and goodness. Darkness is everything else. So, then John continues with a logical argument. Starting in verse 6 he says,. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not do the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 2. A biblical family lives righteously. If we are grounded on God, then we are in the light where he is in the light.

But if we're standing out in darkness, we can't be grounded on God. That would be impossible. You cannot stand on the surface of the sun and be surrounded by darkness. And John uses very pointed, some might even argue, quote-unquote, very aggressive words when he calls people a liar if they say they have fellowship with God, but walk in darkness.

Now first of all, this word fellowship is the same Greek word we saw before. This isn't just about liking God or knowing things about God or understanding things about.

God.

This is participating with him. This is contributing to the righteousness by our lives. In fact, the word walk in this passage doesn't have to simply to do with putting one foot in front of another. This word has to do with the choices we make as we walk through life.

If we claim to be grounded on God, to be participating with him and his people in his life and light, but when people look at our daily choices, all they can see is darkness, sinful, selfish choices, then we're lying to ourselves and everyone else when we claim to be rooted in.

God.

So let me ask you a very simple, but yet very important question. In Galatians 5, Paul gives us two lists, the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit. We could call these lists the evidences of darkness and the evidences of light.

The evidences of darkness include sexual immorality and drunkenness, but it also includes selfishness, strife, jealousy, self-worship, envy, and impurity. Of course, this list isn't exhaustive. All throughout the Bible, we're given over 600 unique commands and statements and illustrations of sinful behavior.

In Romans 1, 30 and 2 Timothy 3, 2, Paul includes being prideful and violent on the list, but he also includes being disobedient to parents on his evidences of darkness list. On the other hand, in Galatians 5, Paul also gives us evidences of light.

He includes love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Again, this list isn't comprehensive. Many other passages reveal to us the kinds of righteousness and light in which God would have us walk.

So let's say that we had a piece of paper with your name on top. Below your name were two lists, the evidences of living in the dark and the evidences of living in the light. And next to each item on each list was a checkbox.

And let's say that this list were given to everyone in your family. Which list do you think would have more check marks on it? And I need to make this scenario a little more intense. We don't get to define the items on these lists how we want to define them.

Love doesn't get to mean how I feel about someone, but instead it means what God says it means in the Bible. Love is wanting and working toward God's best interest in a person's life. By the way, we have a whole series called Family Love that would be a great resource for you.

We go through the whole Bible to make sure our families truly understand what it is to love each other. Anyway, which list do you think your family would honestly have to mark the most for you? If you told your family that you have fellowship with God, but they look at your life and see only darkness or see mostly darkness, then it would be appropriate for them, like the Apostle John, to conclude that you aren't telling the truth about being in the light.

Confession, Repentance, and the Trajectory of a Christian Life

Now before I continue, please understand, I am a born again believer. I have fellowship with God, but that doesn't mean that in my own weakness and self-worship I never sin. I do sin. It's not good, it's bad, and I shouldn't do it, but I am weak and I fail, just like all of you do.

Now I'm saying this for two reasons. The first is that I am responsible to acknowledge my sin, confess it, ask for forgiveness from everyone against whom I have sinned, and turn from that sin. But second, it would be wrong for anyone to conclude that true Christians are perfect and never sin.

I'm not saying that if you've ever disobeyed your parents or were impatient with your children that you are not saved and living in the light of God. What I am saying is this. What is the trajectory of your life?

What makes up the majority of your choices? If your life is defined by darkness, you are not a child of God. But if your life, though not perfect, is on a consistent trajectory of biblical Christ-likeness, then that is a work of God in you.

Again, we can't take as much time with each of these points as I would like. This is why I hope your family will continue studying these ideas in between each of our sessions. God justifies Christians so that He can sanctify them.

Sanctification is the process by which Christians are conformed to the image of Christ. It's the process by which Christians mature in their faith and actions. Ephesians 2 .10 says,. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Romans 8 .29 says,. Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son. Those people he's talking about are the ones fellowshipping with him in light. In 2 Corinthians 3 .18, Paul is describing what should happen to us as we study the Bible.

He says, We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror. Paul's using the image of a mirror to refer to the Scriptures. Beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit.

We have to recognize that we're not fellowshipping with God and we do not have eternal life if our lives are defined by our sin. Now again, please understand that I'm not suggesting that someone living in the darkness is only a drug addict or a murderer and a kidnapper who always says bad words.

No, the Bible is actually clear that a person can pray and read the Bible and preach and give to the poor and be a nice person and still be living in darkness. A person can do all of those things for selfish, self-worshiping reasons.

They can do them for their own glory and ambitious desires. That's why John goes on to get even more specific. He says in verse 8 that if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Sitting here and listing all of the sins I don't do isn't valuable. Instead, I should be carefully considering the sins that I actually commit. Romans 3 .23 says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

If we think that we have never sinned or don't sin now, we're lying to ourselves. We are deceived. So sin is darkness. We are all born into that sinful darkness. Only by being grounded on the God of light can we be saved from that sin and live in the light as he created us to live.

That's why this is the start of a biblical family. God exists. He always has and always will. But regardless of your current age, at some point in your life, you need to believe in Jesus Christ and submit to his will for your life.

You need to be born again and live in the light. That's why in verse 9, John writes, If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The whole point of this beginning portion of 1 John and the beginning of this series is that every person in our family can know two things. Number one, we need to know that we must be grounded in God.

We need to have a relationship with him. We need to be saved from our sins and pursuing Christlikeness. And two, we need to know how we can be grounded on God. John sums up the gospel here by talking about confession.

What is confession? The Greek word has the idea of acknowledging something, declaring something, or professing something. But it's unique because the word carries the idea of speaking the same thing. There's an agreement being made.

John is using this word to communicate that we need to agree with God about our sin. God says that I'm a sinner. His word reveals over 600 ways that I sin. He says that this sin deserves death. He says that I can't save myself.

He says that he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to die for my sin. He says that we can have a relationship with him in the light if we agree with him as he communicates himself in the Bible. Then John says that when we confess our sin, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

His righteous light is what enables him to save sinners and help them to live in the same righteous light. However, John ends this section of his letter with another very important warning. In verse 10, John writes,.

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. Not only would I or you be lying to say that we don't sin, but we're also calling God a.

Liar.

God knows we sin. His word declares that we sin. His word also identifies whether or not our righteousness is self-righteousness or God's righteousness. So why is John being so forceful here? Well, number one, John doesn't want anyone to call God a liar.

John saw and touched the light. He loved the light. He knows the light is God and deserves our worship. But number two, John wants everyone to whom he's writing to believe God's word, confess their sin, and fellowship with God in light.

Like I said earlier, John isn't calling people a liar because he doesn't like them and wants to hurt their feelings. He's revealing their deceived and deceptive hearts so that they can turn from the lie and confess the truth.

You see, John wasn't perfect, but he remembered hearing Jesus preach about a certain group of people. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter.

Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy and in your name cast out demons and in your name do many miracles? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.

Jesus, John, and I don't want people thinking they have a relationship with God when they don't. None of us want someone being separated from God for all eternity in the lake of fire because they believed a lie.

And how can we know if we're believing a lie or not? Well, the answer has been given to us. If I make a pie using apples and no pumpkin, it will be impossible for the end result to be a traditional pumpkin pie.

And the same is true with someone who has fellowship with God. That person will not be perfect until God glorifies him in heaven, but he will be identified as someone striving by the power of God to consistently glorify the Lord.

He will be living righteously more than he's living unrighteously. He'll be living in the light. He'll be doing the will of the Father. His life will not be characterized by what the Bible defines as lawlessness.

The start of a biblical family is salvation into the light of God through Jesus Christ. You can have Christians in your family. Each of those people should be biblical disciples of Christ. But it's not until everyone in the family has submitted to God and is walking in the light that your family can be considered a biblical family, a family who confesses and follows the God of the Bible together unanimously.

Life Work, Resources, and Closing Exhortation

Now, after participating in today's study, you might fall into one of three categories. Letter A, you might be deceived into thinking that you don't sin. If that's the case, I would challenge you to stop calling God a liar, read the scriptures and recognize that you actually do sin every single day in many ways.

Ask your family to help you biblically identify the things that you do that are sinful. Trust me, they see them. Letter B, you might be deceived into thinking that your good choices are the evidence of your salvation.

If this is the case, I would challenge you to study the scriptures and recognize that by the common grace of God, anyone can do things that look good on the outside, but they're rotten on the inside. The people in Matthew 7 claim to have prophesied, cast out demons, done many miracles in Jesus's name, and yet Jesus will tell them that they were not ever truly born again.

Ask your family to help you identify the sinful reasons you do the seemingly good things you.

Do.

If my motivation is wrong, it doesn't matter that I'm doing the right things in the right ways. And letter C, you might be living righteously by faith in Christ. Notice that I didn't say perfectly. You and I and every Christian still needs to mature in our relationship with God.

We need to participate more and do the works He created us to do and submit better to the will of God. What's interesting is that the people who get the most defensive and angry when their salvation is questioned are usually the people who aren't born again at all or who are very, very spiritually immature.

If someone ever questioned the salvation of a true believer, most of them respond in humility and conviction and speak biblically about the issue. So if you're feeling defensive after participating in this study, if you get angry when your parents or spouse or children come to you with a genuine concern about whether or not you're living in the light, that may be the evidence you need to recognize that you are not responding in a way that pleases the Lord.

Now we need to be done today, so here are some life work assignments and some recommendations. Number one, in preparation for our time together next week, read 1 John 2, 1 through 6 at least two times.

Number two, ask God to help you know for sure that you are a Christian. We have a number of resources that can help with this. The first is a podcast episode called The Second Most Important Question You Need to Ask Your Kids.

We also have a series at The Celebration of God called The Evidence of Spiritual Life. Both of these resources should be able to help anyone who truly wants to know if they're living in the light of God to be certain about it.

I'll also say that our Mearest Christianity series is probably one of the most important series we've ever done and should help us all better understand if we're truly believing God as we should or just doing good things for our own glory.

Number three, if you're certain that you're a genuine Christian, ask God to help you know where you need to grow. We have two resources for you as well. One of them is called The Discipleship Spiral Series.

This is designed for people who are mature enough to want to follow Christ and be a better disciple of His. The other has much of the same information, but it's called The Circle of Learning. This series helps parents prepare their children to know God more and be more mature to pursue following Him as His disciple.

Number four, if you're certain that you're not a Christian, please ask yourself, why.

Not?

If God is right, you don't really have any good reasons to not confess your sins and believe in Him. I encourage you to go back and look at the tract that I linked for you in our last session. Here are some other recommendations.

You could also share this family devotional with your friends so that everyone we know and love can be part of a biblical family. And never hesitate to email us at counselor at truthloveparent .com or leave a voicemail at 828 -423 -0894 if we can offer you any personalized biblical counsel.

And with that, I'll see you next week. When we build on the groundwork and the start by discussing the continuation of biblical families. I'll see you then.

Truth.

Love.

Parent is part of the Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you worship.

God through your parenting.

So join us next time as we study God's Word to learn how to parent our children for life.

And godliness.

And remember that TLP is a listener supported ministry. You can visit truthloveparent .com forward slash donate to learn more.