How the Trinity is Glorified in Family

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Good evening, everyone.

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Tonight my topic is how God is glorified in the family.

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God is a Trinity, a unity in community and a community in unity.

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God is glorified in the family in that the family reflects God's nature.

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Family, too, is a unity in community and a community in unity.

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The created order of family reflects the oneness of God and the relational nature of God.

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God is both one and many at the same time. Humanity was also created in God's image, and we are to properly reflect that image to the world around us in community.

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When the family lives in harmony, it properly reflects and points to the oneness of God and the relational nature of the love of God in community.

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Family glorifies God because family pictures Trinity. Family glorifies

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God because it pictures the gospel. Family glorifies God because it pictures

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Christ. And finally, family glorifies God because it pictures the church.

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And I hope tonight my goal is to get you to see this reality. In gathering information on the topic,

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I gleaned a lot from a guy named Tim Challies. You might know him, he puts out a blog. And he did a series on this very topic, so I owe great debt to him.

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So tonight, I'm going to tell you where we're going. First, I'm going to describe what family is, where it comes from, and who gets to define it.

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I'm also going to offer why I think God created family the way

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He did. So let me start off by defining my terms when I say the word

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Trinity. And I know that can get us on some shaky ground real quick. What I mean by Trinity is that there is one

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God who eternally exists as three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

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This God is one in essence and three in person. God is one what and three who's.

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This is basically stated in the Nicene Creed. And if you want to look up the creed, go on to thereformrookie .com

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and I got the creed right up there for you. Essence is what God is.

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Person is who God is. God is both one and three in two categories.

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One in essence, three in being or person. This is unique and stands apart from every other world religion.

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Christianity is the only religion to have a triune God. And so Christianity is the only religion that can solve the problem of the one and the many.

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Now admittedly the Trinity is a mystery to us and there's nothing else in the created order we can point to that's analogous with the

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Trinity. Many people try but every illustration falls short in some significant way because the created order cannot properly reflect the uncreated

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God. However, rather than this being a defeater or disadvantage for our position as Trinitarians, it actually demonstrates that our

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God is holy. He is other. He's beyond anything that we can see, imagine or relate to in this world.

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There is nothing else in all of creation like our God. And herein lies the creator -creature distinction.

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We are His creature. He is the creator. We are like Him but He is not like us.

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We can't explain Him in terms of the natural order because He is above everything and different than everything that we know and experience in creation.

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And our limited finite temporal language fails miserably short of capturing

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His infinite being. In fact, this one attribute alone, the triunity of God, is what differentiates the

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God of Scripture from all other false gods. And it's the one attribute that demonstrates that God is love.

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It's also the one attribute that every cult seems to attack. Whether it's Jehovah's Witnesses, when it's

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Pentecostals, Mormonism, they all try to attack the triune God.

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But it's only the triune God that can properly and truly be called love.

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The Apostle John says God is love. Love is a verb.

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Love is a term that we use in relationship. If God was singular in person,

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He could not be said to be love. This God could be loving, but He could not be love in essence because love necessitates relationship.

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So the triune God is love, which means He is the lover, He is the loved, and He is the act of loving simultaneously.

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You cannot have that with a unipersonal God. I'll go one step further in that the love that the

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Trinity displays forms the basis for the moral standard of all mankind and the foundation for family.

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Again, a unipersonal or impersonal God cannot provide this. Now I like the way

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Tim Keller explains this. I know Tim's been off on a couple of things recently, but he nails it with this.

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He says if you have an impersonal God, like an Eastern God, or like a God that's a vibration or an energy, this type of God is impersonal.

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It's a force. Therefore, it cannot be love because it's impersonal.

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How can an impersonal force all of a sudden be loving? You can't have that. And a unipersonal

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God, like the God of Islam or the God of Judaism, wouldn't be loving either until He created some other being to love because love requires two or more persons.

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Which would mean for that unipersonal God, power would have to precede love.

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A unipersonal God would have to exercise power first to create a race of people in order to experience love.

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So love would come later, second, after power. Power would precede love.

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That's a view that coincides with paganism. Basically, what life is really about is power because power leads to love.

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But not with the God of Scripture. If God is tripersonal, a triunity,

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He is love and community from all eternity. And it was out of that love that He decided to create other beings, to share love with them and bring

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Himself glory at the same time. He creates because He is love, not in order to love.

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That is a very important distinction that differentiates the Christian God from every other

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God, every other false God. So with the God of Scripture, love precedes power.

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Love comes first and forms the basis of power, which has enormous implications for what is actually important in our lives.

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It's like that Huey Lewis song, you know, it's the power of love. That was like the greatest single,

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I don't know, the power of love, you know what I'm talking about. If you really think that love is meaningful and central to God's nature, you have to believe in a triune

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God. If not, you would have to believe that love is peripheral. It came secondly, later on, after power.

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And again, that's a pagan notion. As J. Clinton McCann comments, in worldly terms, might makes right, but on God's terms, right makes might.

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The power of God is not in the absolute power of a dictator, but the power of committed love.

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It's only our God that can be called love. So God is love from all eternity.

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And this love relationship is described in familiar terms. He is a father.

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He is the father, which would also necessitate what? A son.

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If God is an eternal father, it would necessitate an eternal son. Again, this points to the triunity of God, a unity in community.

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These terms, father and son, provide the basis, the foundation, for what we come to understand as family.

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This is what family is. It's a relationship. God is the first and eternal parent, if you will.

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It's from God's nature that family flows and can be made sense of. So the terms father and son are terms of relationship, not terms denoting superiority or inequality.

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Again, in defining the Trinity, we say the persons of the Godhead are co -equal, co -eternal, co -powerful.

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There's not one that's more powerful than the other. They are all equal when it comes to that.

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There is order in the Godhead in terms of relationship, not in terms of inequality.

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The Godhead, the triune God, is a plurality of persons. And likewise, so is family.

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When God first creates man and woman, He says, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, in Genesis 1 .26.

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When we see family, we are peering into the inner working of the

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Godhead, because this reflects His nature, a unity in community.

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And interestingly, in Genesis 5 .2, if you look that up right now, Adam and Eve are a plurality, but are called by a singular noun.

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Male and female, He created them, and He blessed them and named them man. He called

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Adam and Eve, the couple, man. It was a singular noun, because they were unity.

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When they were created, they were named Adam. From the beginning of creation, the family was a unity of community.

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Why? Because that properly reflects the personal, the tri -personal nature of God.

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He is a relationship from all eternity. Did you ever wonder why after God created

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Adam, He said, it's not good for man to be alone? Did God, like, make a mistake or forget something?

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What was God doing? Well, He didn't make a mistake. Adam was alone at first, which did not reflect the nature of God, which is a unity in community and a community in unity.

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God was never alone, and therefore Adam shouldn't have been either. Loneliness and isolation was not

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God's plan. He created Adam and Eve as a unit to be together, to depend on one another.

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Subsequently, God brings forth Eve from the side of Adam, and then God looks at them and says, it is very good.

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Now they, that unity, reflects the nature of God. God then commands them to be fruitful and multiply, which is exactly what

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God does. He multiplies. Now, family, defined at its most basic level, is a man and woman united in a marriage covenant.

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This is what forms family. Genesis 2 .24 tells us, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

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Now, it's the first time in Scripture that the word wife is used, and this union between Adam and Eve would become the foundation of all subsequent life as God commanded them to be fruitful and multiply.

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Now, when you think about this, it's a profound truth, but with it, it brings forth profound responsibility.

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These two people were commanded to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. They would, in essence, be parents to everyone.

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Family has the relationship, family is a relationship that has the ability and carries the command to bring forth new life while also nurturing and cultivating existing life, which is a point that Eli brought up.

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As the grandparents get older, they should be sowing into their children and their grandchildren. This should be generational.

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This should not just be your children left in isolation to learn on their own. Family is a picture of the nature of God.

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God is the one who brings forth new life and nurtures existing life, and so we, too, are expected to do the same thing.

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Family was designed, created by God. Family is also defined by God and instituted to reflect the nature of God in creation.

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We, as his creatures, bear the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply, to take dominion and bring heaven to earth.

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Everything must be brought under the lordship of Jesus. The gospel encompasses every single area of your life, and again, like Eli said with worldview, it is a network of beliefs that are held together.

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The gospel touches every area of life. When we are born again, we become the suitable helpmate to Jesus in tending and working the garden, just like Eve was to Adam.

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God brought Eve out of the side of Adam and said, she is a suitable helpmate to help you. We, too, are brought out of the side of Jesus and are suitable helpmates.

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We are his bride. What is the savior's bride to do? But to be a helpmate to help him bring the kingdom on earth.

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So the human family was created in this paradigm, in his image.

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We are called to be fruitful and multiply. We are called to raise our children, to care and shepherd them.

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And we are called to take care of the elderly. And in taking care of the elderly and your children, it reflects the self -sacrificing nature of God.

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All those things involve putting someone else before yourself. Where the

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Son willingly lays down his life for the sheep in submission to the Father, so we, too, are to lay our lives down for the sake of the other people in our family.

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Now notice, Jesus, the Son, is not inferior to the Father, but he selflessly and joyfully does what the will of the

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Father is. It is not a position of inequality or inferiority, but one of role, one of his roles, and for relationship.

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So in the Trinity, we see that God's love is a familial love, a love of family, the love of a parent to a child.

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This, too, becomes the love that believers will experience in salvation. Salvation is known as the new birth.

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God is fruitful and multiplies. Believers are born of God from above by his

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Spirit. So the creation mandate that God gives us to be fruitful and multiply is one of the very things that he does.

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God is fruitful and multiplies and births his children here on earth. And when you are born again, it's

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God's fatherly, perfect love set upon you forever, the same love that he shows to his perfect son,

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Jesus, and it never changes. Once God sets that love upon you, God is not a

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God who changes. He doesn't change his mind. The scriptures describe us as being adopted into his family, where we come to be known as children of God.

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Our fellowship with God is one of father to son, father to daughter. It is not employer to employee or sergeant to soldier.

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We are brought into what? A family. These terms are so important.

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And like the family of the triune God, his child as his child and into perfect familial love, we are brought into a family to experience what family is.

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In the same way our human families should be rooted in love, not power, because love precedes power from the triune

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God, and reflect that to the people around us. We too should sacrifice ourselves for each other.

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Although equal, people in the family, father, son, and children, although equal, we are to fulfill the

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God -defined roles that we're given. Fathers, we're priests and prophets in their homes.

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Women are helpmates. Children are to honor their parents and model love and service to the family and to the body of believers, the church.

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The family should be a unity of community in harmony. Love, not power, should be the characteristic that undergirds this relationship, this bond that we have.

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We also see that the Trinity, the Godhead, is responsible for spiritual life. In other words, life comes from the triune

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God. Likewise, the union of husband and wife bring forth physical life.

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The family, this unit, this unit has been given the power to procreate, to bring forth life, something that is reflective of God as our creator.

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Now, even more profound than this is the fact that men who procreate are given the same title that God has,

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Father. The very same title given to God to describe the relationship and affection, the closeness that God has with his children, he bestows upon us as men.

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Men, we are given a title that God himself has called, and with that title comes great responsibility.

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I'd like you to think about this for a second. Imagine a world where the terms mother or father didn't exist, where the terms brother or sister didn't exist, where the terms grandmother or grandfather didn't exist.

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What would we then be to one another? What would my offspring be called?

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What would they call me? What responsibility would we have to each other?

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We basically, just like evolution says, be cells dividing, right? There would be no relationship.

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You know, we don't call one cell father and one cell son. That relationship and that aspect would be completely foreign.

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What would we be to a God who wasn't a relationship, a unity and community? Would we be his employees?

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Would we be just soldiers to do what he commands without any love relationship?

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Can I suggest to you that the eternal bond of family that forms the basis of the Trinity and binds those three persons together relationally is the very bond that holds us together as a society?

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When that bond is properly reflected, society is strong, but when that bond is weak, neglected, or worse, redefined, disaster and ruin are imminent.

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This bond of family, properly defined, must be protected and must be promoted at all costs.

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Our society depends on it. Our society is bent on redefining what

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God has defined already and set forth. And we, as his children, in a family relationship with him, must stand up for what is biblical and right.

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Our father commands it and our society needs it. Think about what a world would look like without familial terms.

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People are trying to redefine genders. What does that mean? Who are they?

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This is an identity crisis. They have no idea who they are. They just make stuff up. Neglecting the importance of family and condoning the splitting up of family and the redefinition of family dishonors

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God. And I think the church needs to do a better job in counseling couples, in keeping families together.

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Right now, the church is on a bandwagon to fight homosexuality. Unfortunately, we've let divorce slip right through our fingers.

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We need to be counseling couples to stay together. They made a commitment and took a covenant before God.

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We need to stand up and protect that unity. Now that we know what family is and where it comes from and who defines it, let's move on to talk about why

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God creates family. Now, how do you get to know someone you've never seen before?

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Don't say Facebook. How do you get to know someone you've never seen before?

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Talk to them, okay? Let's say there's a difference, you can't. You send them a picture, right?

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You send them a picture. The God of scripture is a pictorial God. He uses pictures and images to give us a glimpse into his truth, to create an image in our minds of something words may fail to capture.

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Remember, before humanity had the written scriptures, God gave them pictures to reveal himself to them.

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Think about the whole sacrificial system, right? The temple, the outer court, the inner court, the innermost court, the priest sacrificing animals, the families placing their hands upon the heads of the sacrificial lambs, the bloodshed, the scapegoats sent into the wilderness, the blood on the lintel of the doorpost, and ultimately the

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Passover lamb. All of these things, pictorially, point us to a greater reality than they are in and of themselves.

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We're going to go from the lesser to the greater. And I think the same thing is true with the creation of family.

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Family pictures something much bigger and greater than itself. God brings forth family to help us get to know him.

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We see the union between a husband and a wife being called by a singular noun. It's a unity in community.

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And it reflects the nature of God. And like I said before, I see family glorifying

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God because family pictures Trinity. Family glorifies God because it pictures the gospel.

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Family glorifies God because it pictures Christ. And family glorifies God because it pictures the church.

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So I'm going to go through and describe how it does for each one of these. So let's begin with how the Trinity is pictured and glorified in family.

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First, again, family is a relational term and signifies a bond. If you don't understand family, a unity in community, you will have difficulty understanding

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God himself. Because in the Godhead, scripture reveals the first person of the Trinity as God the

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Father, the second person as God the Son, and the third person as the Holy Spirit.

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So we need to know that these are familial terms. This is how we're going to understand what family is. The terms father and son are couched in what we know as family.

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If the term family didn't exist, what would father and son mean? You don't use those terms outside of that context.

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So this father -son relationship is not identical to our father -son relationship.

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We're not eternal, omnipotent, without beginning or end. But this does help to understand that the

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Godhead relates and interacts as a father to a son. It's a prototype of the human family.

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And we should reflect that. Again, imagine if there was no mention of God as Father and Jesus as Son in unity.

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That would make it very difficult to explain John 3 .16, right? For God the

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Father so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should perish, not perish, but have eternal life.

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What would that mean if the terms father and son weren't relational terms? If it didn't describe an intimate bond between them?

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If we don't understand the intimate paternal love and protection of a father for his son, the closeness of that relationship, the perfect love between them, how could we understand what it cost

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God to provide His one and only Son as a sacrifice? It would become meaningless. Without the terms father and son, how could we describe the intimate relationship that they share, and subsequently the extent of the love and sacrifice shown to humanity so that we could share in that same family love?

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These terms that explain and define family carry us beyond friendship or acquaintance and into deep intimacy.

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They bring us into the interdynamic and perfect love of the Godhead. Now, I'm not saying that we become gods, trust me, but we're brought into that love relationship.

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Without God as Father, how would we understand the scripture that says He is the

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Father to the fatherless? What would that mean? What comes into your mind when you hear the word fatherless?

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I'm guessing it conveys a sense of deep loss, a lack of guidance, a lack of leadership, unity.

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Something is missing. But the only reason it has impact on us the way it is is because family pictures the

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Trinity, the three people groups that the scriptures specifically mention that the

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Church must take care of are who? Widows, orphans, and outcasts. What's the common denominator between widows, orphans, and outcasts?

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No father. No father figure. There's a void in their lives.

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They need a man to lead, a father figure. Family reflects what

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God is, and when a piece is missing, the family no longer reflects the nature of God.

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It's greatly diminished. This unity in the family contrasted against the unity in the

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Godhead is a picture that something is wrong. Without the perfect picture of unity in the

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Godhead, we wouldn't recognize this unity in the family and the disastrous effects it has on humanity.

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Another reason that fatherlessness is harmful is that it removes the point of comparison between our fathers on earth and our much greater

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Father in heaven. There is one reason, this one reason alone, is why fathers who abuse their children are committing a terrible offense.

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They're giving a false picture of the way God the Father relates to God the Son. No one would ever accuse

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God of cosmic child abuse if there wasn't the reality of human child abuse here on earth.

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Additionally, this is why we need to be concerned about same -sex relationships. In a partnership where there are only two mothers, the picture of God as Father is negated.

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The picture of God as Son is completely done away with, diminished. J .I. Packer says this, Human families, by their very constitution, reflect the

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Father -Son relationship in heaven and parent -child relationships should express a love that corresponds to the mutual love of Father and Son in the

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Godhead. So, family glorifies God because it represents and reflects the

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Trinity in creation. So, let's move on to how does the family glorify and picture the

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Gospel? So, besides the family picturing a unified relationship in the Trinity, it also pictures a special relationship that is at the heart of the

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Gospel. The good news of the Gospel is that God is a family and we are invited to become a part of it.

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When we put our faith in Jesus, we're adopted by the Father and we become His children, a son or a daughter.

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We become one of the family. Ephesians 1, 4 says, In love He, the Father, predestined us to adoption, for adoption to Himself, as sons through Christ Jesus, according to the purpose of His will.

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How could we understand what it means to be welcomed as a family of a loving Father if we had no concept or understanding of family?

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Again, if you misunderstand what this term means, you're going to misunderstand what the Gospel is. Think of the practice of adoption and how that works.

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You're bringing somebody from a broken home or maybe a non -existent family. Maybe they were given up for adoption.

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Maybe they were abandoned. Maybe they were parentless due to whatever circumstances. And now you welcome them into your relationship, into your family, taking responsibility for them as if they were your own flesh and blood.

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And showing them the love you would show in your own biological children and loving them no differently.

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This adopted child will now become a part of daily family meals. They will become a part of bedtime stories.

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They'll be brought into intimate family gatherings. They'll share family holidays. They'll have memory -making times.

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There's so much wrapped up into that term family that it evokes an emotional response in me.

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The term adoption and bringing somebody into your home is bringing them into the most intimate of places between you, your wife, and your children.

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What does that child look like who's not adopted, who doesn't have a family, versus what would they look like in a family?

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What do we look like separated from God versus what do we look like in communion with God?

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This pictures the gospel, being brought out of the sin that separates people and destroys family and into a love that unites people and creates family permanently.

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Once you are born of God, that can never change. When God exercises

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His free grace and births you by His Spirit, He is adopting you into a holy and perfect family.

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He Himself is paying for the sins that you've committed against Him. The gospel is the only picture where the hero sacrifices himself for the villain.

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He gives us something we don't deserve, the righteousness of your brother Jesus who died for you.

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All this brings you into a family leading to experiencing great joy and being able to call the

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Creator of the universe Abba Father. This is good news.

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This is the gospel. Again, imagine if there was no such thing as families or worse, where perhaps the government raises the child itself.

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In a horrific scenario like that, we would struggle to explain the intimacy of the relationship we enjoy with God as His children.

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When we're saved by God, we aren't enlisted or registered into an institution by a government bureaucrat we are welcomed into a family by a loving

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Father. So I think God gave us the picture of family so that we would know what it means when

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God offers us the great honor of becoming His beloved sons and daughters. Family glorifies

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God in that it pictures the gospel. Let's move on to see how family glorifies

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God in picturing Christ. In Ephesians 5 we learn that the relationship of husband and wife has always served as a picture of the relationship between Christ and His people.

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Jesus and His church are prefigured in the family unit of husband and wife. Paul tells us to love our wives like Christ loved the church.

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And in that statement we see a special love, a particular, specific love that is reserved for a wife only, only for your bride.

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It is this husbandly love of Christ that we receive when we're brought into Christ's family and brought into union with Him.

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We can see this and say, you know how a husband loves his wife and sacrifices himself for his bride?

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That's how Jesus loves His people. You know how a wife responds to her husband's love as he joyfully leads them?

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That's how the church is supposed to respond to Jesus. If there was no such thing as marriage, family, we would struggle to explain how this, how much

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Jesus loves His church and how the church is to respond to His love. The marriage relationship forms the bedrock of society.

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This is how it glorifies God. It is this one relationship, husband and wife, that brings new life into the world, the next generation.

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So special is this relationship that the government recognizes it and seeks to protect it.

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This is why the redefinition of marriage to include same -sex unions is harmful. When you're in a room of people and you ask them, how many people were born from a mother and a father?

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Everybody raises their hand. You cannot say that of a same -sex union. It cannot do what the union of a man and a woman do.

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We are attacking the very foundation of society if we try to redefine what God has designed and planned for humanity.

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It will lead to chaos and collapse. It does not and it will not reflect properly the nature of God.

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Christ and His church are pictured through the complementary relationship of a husband and wife, not the uniformity of two husbands or the uniformity of two wives.

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Men and women are equally valuable in God's sight but also have specific functions and roles.

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When we try to redefine those roles or change them altogether, chaos and collapse will follow.

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The charge for Adam and Eve was to be fruitful and multiply. There is only one union on earth defined by God that can do that, a husband and a wife.

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Furthermore, real men in our society seek to find one wife. They create one union and protect that union and that wife exclusively.

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Again, this is something the church needs to step up on. We can't be lazy when it comes to counseling.

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We can't be passive when it comes to the fact that a man wants to leave his wife or a woman wants to leave her husband.

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We have to protect that relationship at all costs. Jesus reiterates the creation mandate in Matthew 19.

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He says, as it was from the beginning, one man, one wife become one flesh for one lifetime. The church has to hold to that.

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The mandate of marriage must be protected and promoted as it glorifies God and pictures

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Jesus as a faithful husband who protects his bride. This is why it's so damaging that more and more people are choosing to cohabitate instead of marry.

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Again, the church needs to enforce this. We've actually become tolerant of this sin.

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However, Christ and his church are pictured in the covenantal permanence of marriage, not the temporary convenience of cohabitation.

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God never changes. Our marriages must reflect the unchanging nature of God or risk extinction.

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The true family of one husband and one wife become one flesh for one lifetime pictures the gospel. So that union, husband and wife, marriage, pictures the gospel.

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Finally, let's look at how family pictures the church. So, so far we've seen how family pictures the trinity, the gospel, and Jesus.

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It also pictures the church. And the relationship shared between Christians. We're family, right?

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La familia. That's a different kind of family. We won't go there. The word translated church in our

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Bibles is the Greek word ekklesia. The term ekklesia denotes the New Testament community of the redeemed in its twofold aspect.

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First, all who are called by and to Christ in the fellowship of his salvation and the church worldwide for all times.

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That's Zohedi's complete word study dictionary definition.

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So the people who form this group called the church are those whose sins have been paid for, who have been adopted by God the

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Father, and are in union with Christ as their husbandmen and brother. So the church has

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God as their Abba Father and Jesus as their brother and husband. What does that signify?

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Family, right? This church is not a building. The church is the relationship between the people of God.

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It is the people. We are the stones that are being built up into the temple. The church is not a building.

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In most fellowships that I've been a part of or visited, men and women usually refer to each other as brother or sister.

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That's because when we're grafted into Jesus, our relationship changes. And we now become

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God's offspring and into a much, much larger family of other offspring.

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It's a family that stretches back a long, long time, back to Adam and Eve. When we become part of the church, we can trace our spiritual lineage back to the beginning.

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The definition of family as husband and wife includes their offspring, their children.

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And it defines those children as brothers and sisters. This is why God -defining family is so important.

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It's equally as important for the church. In 1 Timothy 5, Paul tells Timothy, do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father.

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Younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.

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None of those terms would make sense outside of a church, and the God -ordained idea of family didn't exist.

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Again, without this term family, mother, father, brother, sister, how do we describe the relationship we have to one another?

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In fact, it wouldn't be a relationship. It would just be one human and another human. Church and family are almost synonymous in that they both define children of God.

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And our bond as Christ's church is not a physical one, but a spiritual one. We're not blood brothers by birth.

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However, we are blood brothers through another means, through the cross. We are united not by our blood, but by His.

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And this bond is actually stronger than any physical bond we know. So our identity in toto, in total, is almost entirely defined in terms of a relationship to another person.

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This is how we define most people. When you meet someone, you ask, who is that? Oh, that's so -and -so's husband.

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That's so -and -so's father. Oh, that's the brother of so -and -so. Right? Our identity is fundamentally relational.

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So our being called Christian is tied to the title Christ. We are identified by our relationship to Him.

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The church is the bride of Christ. Bride signifies marriage and identifies us in a covenant union with Jesus.

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All of the terms that identify us as people are terms of relationship.

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Why? Because terms of relationship are tied to the very nature of God who is a relationship, a unity in community and a community in unity.

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If there was ever such a place where terms father, mother, child, brother or sister did not exist, how could you explain how church members are to relate to one another?

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Or if you found a place where fathers are dishonored, mothers are forsaken, brothers are resented, or sisters are taken advantage of, it would be difficult to explain.

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Our relationship to one another can only be explained by the existence of the God -given model of family, that unit.

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And because we are His children, we are to relate to one another as family.

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So God created family. God defines family. And His nature is family.

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The family unity is a picture of the Trinity. Family pictures the Gospel. Family pictures

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Christ. And finally, family pictures the church. I'd just like to close with this.

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Give me a couple more seconds. I'd like to explain something else about God that bears our attention. Our God is self -sufficient.

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He needs nothing. Acts 17, 24 tells us that the God who made the world and everything in it, being

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Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.

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When God gives birth to His people, it's not because He needs to. It's because He wants to.

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God didn't have a human -shaped hole in His heart and needed you to fill it.

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He didn't look at you with Jerry Maguire affection and say, you complete me.

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He didn't create you because He needed someone to love. The triune God is love from all eternity.

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He has no need of you or I. Our God needs nothing, yet there is nothing that does not need our

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God. Now you might be asking yourself, why are you telling us this after you just explained that God is glorified in family and God is love?

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You're scaring me. The reason I'm telling you this is because you need to know that God made you to be dependent on Him.

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Children are dependent on their parents and God's children are dependent on Him.

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Author Jen Wilkin in her book, None Like Him, says this, If God needed anything at all outside Himself, He would be capable of being controlled by that need.

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A need is a limit. And as we've seen, God has no needs and therefore no limits.

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Because He needs nothing outside Himself, He cannot be controlled or coerced, manipulated or blackmailed by another who possesses what

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He lacks. That's good news for us. It's good news for us because since He has no need of anything,

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He cannot be tempted. Once you're His child, He cannot be tempted to disown you.

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You cannot do anything to make Him or to make God better and you cannot do anything to make God worse.

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Him being God and Him being a Father is not dependent on you.

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If it was, then God could fail. Because in our humanity, somewhere along the lines, we certainly will fail.

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We're mutable, we change. He's not, He's immutable. While He is dependent on no one, everyone is dependent on Him.

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The good news is that He created you to be dependent on Him. He knows that you need

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Him. He created you that way and He's able to meet your needs, especially the need for a payment for your sin.

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Since we know that God is love from all eternity and doesn't exercise power in order to love, to lord it over you,

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He exercises love first and then creates you and I for Himself to share

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His love. He made you and I for Himself to be part of His family.

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He's not just a creator, He's a Father, an omniscient, omnipotent, loving

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Father who wants and expects our dependence to be on Him.

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Fathers take care of their children and no one does that better than our Father in Heaven. When you're born of God, you get a

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Father that needs nothing has everything and then shares that with you.

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Most importantly, your identity with God is couched in the relational term known as family.

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You become His child and He becomes your Father. Glorify God by depending on Him for everything and thereby revealing yourself as His child.