Covenantal Concerns and Family Legacy

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of Almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear His words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped Himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the

Father, where He sits now to make intercession for us. Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear

His words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

I obviously know of situations where the parents are so evil and destructive to the relationship that you may need to distance yourself from them.

For instance, I know of a relationship where the mom did not want the guy to get married because she almost had this sick kind of relationship with him where she just was very, very possessive of him.

As he's pursuing a spouse, she just took it as a betrayal of her. It's a very weird kind of reaction.

He would try to have her over to get to know them, and they wouldn't even talk to her the whole entire time.

They would ignore her the whole entire time and not look at her the whole entire time. At some point, you just have to say,

Hey, we're a package deal. We're married. If you can't be nice to my wife, if you're going to ignore her, then we're just not going to come around, that kind of thing.

But you're not doing that as a petulant child.

I don't deserve to be treated like this. You're doing that as a husband who's saying, Yeah, you're not going to ignore my wife.

Right, right. You need to figure out how to make the adjustments. You need to figure out at that point.

I have categories for things like that. Sure, there's exceptions to it, right?

Yeah, those are rare. Most relationships are not like that. Gloria and Amanda overlook an offense.

I think there's a lot of offenses you overlook kind of things. Just completely pretending like a person does not exist is pretty extreme.

Sure, yeah. But I do think that, yeah, if you're only going to hang out with your parents, if they never sin, then you have a pretty good excuse.

I mean, you're doing what the Pharisees did, right? They're saying, whatever profit you may receive from me, let it be

Corbin, a gift from God. I'm trying to serve the Lord, and you're disrupting me from my sanctification or something. Therefore, I need to remove myself from your presence.

Come on. There's a lot of offenses. Have some kind of category for grace and mercy, or you're not going to be shown any, right?

Yeah, I think most mother -in -laws are going to be tempted to be tyrannical in certain ways, right?

Those are just very common kind of situations where they overstep their bounds at certain points.

As a husband, you have to draw certain lines and say, hey, yeah, this isn't going to happen, that's not going to happen, and whatever else.

I mean, those kind of things happen. I don't think you just get offended and say, yeah, we don't want to have anything to do with you because you're making our life hard or whatever.

I think you win them over. You win them over slowly, and that's the way it works. So, yeah, I mean, there's obviously in -law problems that can happen and everything else.

But even if your parents weren't wonderful and they weren't great, I mean, you still need to pursue them as an act of honoring them.

So your impulse should be to, like, I want to be a part of your life. I want to be around you. That's a standard kind of thing that most people should have that kind of impulse.

Now, I mean, at the same time, I mean, yeah, serving the Lord may require you to have other priorities at times.

And so you do have to think about, well, as a man, how do I provide for my family? You may be looking and looking and looking where you're at, and there's just no opportunities there, and you have to take what you have to take.

And so there's things like that. There may be ministry opportunities where you say, hey, I need to take this ministry opportunity, and that's fine.

We have technology that makes a lot of honoring your family easier than it's ever been throughout the history of the world.

But certainly Abraham left father and mother and went to the Promised Land. So there are categories for doing that as an act of faithfulness for sure.

So you're not wholly condemning the international missionary then? Yeah. No, I mean,

I think that there are things like that.

We do have to preach gospel to the people who haven't heard it. And so, yeah, there are opportunities like that.

Well, it's good to know that Paul wasn't in sin when he was helping establish the early church.

So I guess you mentioned this earlier, and I wanted to come back to it just briefly and ask when we look back at the

Israelites and then later on the Christians that made up the early church right after Jesus had been resurrected and ascended into heaven, was it typical for the

Israelites and for the newly converted Christians to remain close to their parents?

I mean, I know there were some circumstances where that wasn't the case. Obviously, you have a couple different captivity.

The Israelites are taken into captivity. They're driven out of their own land. And so you certainly have exceptions to that.

But then in general, did they stay close to their parents? The same thing for the early

Christians. There were certain things that drove them out, mainly through persecution.

But then did they, in general, stay close to their parents? Or was that just not something that was a priority that we see exemplified among them?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of these are covenantal concerns, essentially. Meaning, so when you think about the

Abrahamic blessing, it was a blessing of a land, a particular land, right? So this is a blessing tied to the promised land.

And this blessing was passed from generation to generation. So once the Israelites went into the promised land, the land was divided by tribal divisions and family divisions.

And then that was an inheritance that's passed down. And so you have an agrarian society, a largely agrarian society where a piece of land was given to particular families that was their eternal possession.

So then you can think about the Naboth's vineyard kind of example at that point where he's making an illegitimate land grab to Naboth's property, which was his possession that he's not really allowed to surrender at that point.

So, yeah, I mean, in the old covenant economy, there was a sense in which you stay around and build your inheritance.

And part of that's because God had a plan to send his Messiah to be born of the

Jews. And there is a vested interest in verifying that he's coming from the right family line.

Right. So some of it's that. I mean, I don't think that Christians think enough about the idea of inheritance like they should.

So, I mean, even a righteous man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.

We don't even think in those terms. We think in terms of you have all the boomer jokes that people make, which

I mean, I don't think you should. If you're going to make those, you need to figure out some respectful way to do it.

But they make these boomer jokes about how boomers basically have no interest whatsoever in giving an inheritance to their kids.

They're off going on vacations and wasting all their money and everything else. And I mean, some of those accusations, you know, this testimony is true, right?

In the language of Paul. Yeah. I think there's a respectful way to say it, but certainly there's some truth there to it.

But yeah, I mean, I certainly think that we should be thinking in terms of inheritance and building a legacy, so to speak.

And like to the extent to which a father could train their children in some more definite future plan that's more tied to a particular place.

I think all those things are good. So, I mean, I think Trump would be a good example of someone doing that thing to where he's thinking in terms of incorporating his family members into the family business.

Right. And I mean, you know, you look at his kids, you say whatever you want to say about the dude. But I mean, look at his kids and they are responsible people.

And he's given them a hand up in the world. Right. Yeah. I bet a lot of people would really appreciate the kind of help that his son's gotten.

Right. Yeah. But I mean, like the thing is they're not undeserving people. Like his son is not like Hunter Biden kind of situation.

Right. Who has been given a hand up by his father and is just a scoundrel. Like these are respectable by the world standard kind of people who are stepping into roles of responsibility they've been trained for.

So, I mean, I think there's that. I mean, so, yeah. I mean, I think you think about the nature of the new covenant that Jesus says, you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.

There is a missionary impulse in the new covenant that wasn't persistent to the same degree and under the old covenant.

And because it's a different covenant with different promises and different expectations, you know, as far as that goes.

So, so, yeah, I, I'm not saying that promises are diametrically opposed.

They're just, you know, they're differently applied for sure. So, so you think about the nature of the covenant.

There is a missionary impulse in the way that there's not the same Old Testament expectations of being tied to one particular land in one particular place.

But at the same time, I mean, I don't think, I mean, to the extent to which you could build like a legacy where you're at.

That's intergenerational. I think that's good. That's a good thing. You know, that may not be God's plan, but I mean, that should be,

I don't, I think it's perfectly reasonable to be working towards that. And, you know, I, I think a lot of this question hinges on, should you desire to be around your family?

I think, well, absolutely. Why not? I mean, unless you're just filled with bitterness and, you know, all this kind of a lack of forgiveness.

I mean, why wouldn't you want to repay your parents for all the sacrifice and support that they've given you over the course of their life?

Yeah. Yeah. You want, you know, one thing I think about is, um, talking,

I think there's like a, when you stay close to your parents, assuming your parents were

Christian, when you stay close to them and you're, you know, still intimately involved in each other's lives,

I do think there is sort of a, you know, a witness that's being given there, right?

To the faithfulness of the parents. I think of Doug Wilson. Um, you know, I, I, I wish

I, I've, I've probably heard this from a couple of different people talking about Doug Wilson, but, um, there's someone

I'm thinking of in particular that whose name is escaping me right now, but, um, they were, they were not big fans of Doug Wilson.

Um, but I guess Doug invited him out to, um, Moscow. And so the, the guy goes over there, you know, he, he spends like a weekend or, you know, four, four or five days maybe in Moscow, just being around their church and talking a lot to Doug Wilson and spending time with Doug Wilson's family.

And, you know, this guy said, um, that the thing, the thing that really won him over on Doug was not the one -on -one conversations with Doug.

It was not the, um, you know, seeing the way the church operates on a day to day basis.

It was, uh, him going to eat dinner with the Wilson family.

And I mean, there's, you know, there's children, his children are there, uh, his grandchildren are there.

And it's just like, the house is stuffed with people, you know, that are, that are all coming from Doug Wilson and his wife.

And, you know, he said that was the thing that really won him over on Doug, regardless of the disagreements they might've had.

You know, it's hard to look at, you know, that kind of fruit and say, there's something, there's something bad here.

There's something wrong here because how does it produce a family that is this healthy and has this much love for one another, you know?

And so, so I think it does, uh, along with all the things you're saying, it does produce, um, you know, a very, a very strong witness to the faithfulness of, um, you know, the, the heads of that family, the, the patriarch and the, and the matriarch of that family.

And, and the work that has to be put, put in, um, that is undeniable to bring about that, that kind of fruit.

And, and obviously it's enabled by God. It's not as if Doug Wilson's just this amazing person who has all this power and authority, you know, it's, it's all done by God, by the

Holy Spirit working inside of them. Um, but you know, certainly a, a very powerful testimony when you're, when your children are willing to be close to you, right?

Yeah. I mean, they have their weekly Sabbath dinners. And so, yeah, I think having a practice like that where every, every week you're hanging out with your extended family,

I think that's a, that's a good thing too. And I mean, it's not just, uh, hanging out to pursue entertainment is there's some spiritual thing happening there too.