Summer Session (4) Sunday School June 25

that that is where we're going to get our definitions from, and the title of the study is

Creation Family Greater Than Chaos Family. Chaos family is what is being normalized and has been increasingly normalized over the last couple of generations, even more so today, and so we want to understand what the

Bible has to say about family, how to understand it, how to value it, how to to labor profitably, to to encourage families, and to build our own families in the fear and the admonition of the

Lord, and so we start where Jesus starts.

When he was questioned about the hot topic of his day about divorce, he went straight to Genesis 127 and Genesis 224.

He said, if we're going to answer this question, we've got to go back to the beginning, to the way that God made us, and that gives us the angle that we need.

It doesn't matter if it's the same question that Jesus faced or another question, some deviation from God's good design, the answer is simply go back to the way that God made us.

Understand the principles of creation, and we began by looking at the image of God, considering how it is that God made us, is what

Jesus said. Have you not read from the beginning that God made them male and female? Genesis 127.

You'll read that context. It's all about how God made us in his image, and how uniquely we are, out of all of the creatures, at a particular intersection between God and one another, and all the created order, to love

God supremely, love each other rightly, and steward the creation responsibly, that we are made in the image of God, to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, so that the earth is filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea, and no other creature was so made, no other creature was so commissioned, only those made in his image, male and female, he made them, and he immediately made them into a family, and he brought the woman to the man, and they were married, husband and wife.

The very first human relationship was marriage, pretty significant, and the understanding of what, and we're going to think about today, the gift of children in light of marriage, and if all of human relationships began in a marriage, if all of human relationships first revealed in the context of a family, what does that mean?

We'll get through both these points today, it'll be a challenge, but I want to finish this section up today if we can, because this is really where we're getting a lot of definition, and then

I want to move forward past this, and we're going to be looking at the significance of family throughout the biblical storyline, what does it mean to be a

Christian family, and then think about the way that Jesus uses family as a metaphor to talk about his kingdom.

All right, so let's begin by thinking about the gift of children, and let's go ahead and begin with the word of prayer.

Father, I thank you for our time, I pray that you would help us as we think about your word, what you have to tell us about family, what it means, how we are to rejoice in this gift.

I pray that you would help us to amen your truth, and that we would value what you value, that we would pursue what you would have us pursue, and we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

We began our study weeks ago by considering the absurdity of our cultural moment, but it's just a cultural moment, it'll soon pass.

Drag queen story hour, pornographic teaching aides in government schools, chemical surgical castration, forcibly removing indoctrinated sons and daughters from their parents, incessant jamming of sexual perversion and television and movies rated for younger audiences, pride parades inviting all ages to view nudity and lewd acts, drag shows at bars which advertise as family affairs, all of the deceptions and politicking and gaslighting that comes with it all.

Those are the cluster of offenses that currently are being bombed by parental outrage, by based outrage, but I would have us notice that this outrage is being broadcast by the so -called underground media outfit in the caboose of the same train that the others are on.

In other words, all this outrage is being launched at the engine in the

Ford cars from the caboose of the same train, okay?

What is the complaint? You've gone too far, how dare you think of the children, right?

What's the problem? Because it's all of this would be fine if it wasn't involving children, that's what they're saying, that's what they're saying.

They say, oh this is fine as long as it doesn't involve children. Tucker Carlson, Tim Pool, Daily Wire, Blaze Media, I have a question.

Are they asking for men and women in marriage? Is that what they're pursuing?

Is that what they're advocating for? Did they call for faithful monogamy between a man and a woman by God's definitions?

If not, they're not for children. If not, they're not really for children.

Children are gifts from God to be raised in the family as he has designed it. Children do not flourish and indeed are harmed when their nurture is farmed out to the state, broken by divorce, starved by fornication, groomed by perversion.

God did not appoint the state to nurture children. God gives children to the family.

He gives family to children. Herman Bavinck was waging a cultural war similar to our own over a hundred years ago in the

Netherlands and he said, even as the family itself cannot be imitated, so too one cannot make a copy of family nurture.

No school, no boarding school, no daycare center, no government institution can replace or improve upon the family.

And schoolteachers know this better than anyone. They can tell the difference between students that are doing well and students that do very poorly.

It's based on their families. Bavinck says everything in the home contributes to nurture.

The hand of the father, the voice of the mother, the older brother, the younger sister, the infant in the bassinet, the sickly sibling, grandmother and grandchildren, prosperity and adversity, celebrations and mourning.

It is life itself that nurtures, that cultivates the rich and exhaustible multifaceted magnificent life.

The family is the school of life because it is the fountain and hearth of life. It is

God's gift. It's what he has designed and boy is it good. Now let's go back to Matthew 19.

We've been trying to do a lot of our thinking beginning from this chapter as we see that Jesus is addressing the issues of his day by pointing to Genesis.

It's an interesting chapter where he begins by dealing with the controversy of divorce.

He goes on to talk about eunuchs and then he begins to talk about children, about how to understand and think about children.

Matthew 19 verses 13 through 15. Then little children were brought to him that he might put his hands on them and pray but the disciples rebuked them and Jesus said let the little children come to me and do not forbid them for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

He laid his hands on them and departed from there. And the meaning of this text is helped by a prior incident back in chapter 18, at the beginning of chapter 18.

Jesus is not saying that little children like infants who are presented to him by the faith of the parents are thereby brought into his kingdom, brought into the new covenant.

That's not what he's saying. That doesn't fit in the context of Matthew 19 in any case. He's talking about the ubiquity of divorce, the situation of eunuchs and the devaluing of children.

He's addressing all of those things in this chapter. He's welcoming children in this moment but he's not stating that children are brought into the kingdom by the faith of someone else.

That's not what he's saying. In this we disagree with Presbyterians.

Their weakness, their lowly status, their inability and yet their inclusion into their family serves as an excellent metaphor for our humble entry by God's grace into the kingdom.

Any confusion by that is just clarified by Matthew 18, the previous lesson.

Matthew 18 verses 1 through 5, at that time the disciples came to Jesus saying who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

Sounds like they are in need of a lesson in humility. They're seeking great things for themselves and they need to learn some humility.

So Jesus calls a little child to him, set him in the midst of them and said assuredly I say to you unless you are converted and become as little children you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever receives one little child like this in my name receives me.

He goes on to continue the metaphor to talk about the the humility of coming into his kingdom. And what is he doing?

He is trading upon how a child, how an infant is welcomed into a family.

How is that child nurtured and loved? That serves as a metaphor for how we come into the kingdom of heaven.

As we are conceived and born without merit or strength. As we are cared for without our own righteousness or our own credentials.

As we are brought in by father, mother, and siblings so we enter Christ's kingdom by the grace of God alone.

That's the lesson. They want to be boastful and arrogant, time for some humility.

And boasting fails where grace prevails. Life itself is a gift from God.

Every child is acquired from God, breathed life into from God, appointed from God.

Children are gifts from the Creator to a husband and a wife. The fruit of their loving union.

The promise of new families being formed. They are the promise of new families yet to be formed for the glory of his name.

So let's look at, let's think about children in life in Genesis 1 through 4. If we were going to talk about the family,

Jesus goes back to Genesis 1 and 2. So we look at Genesis 1 through 4, the larger context, we can better understand this.

God created the world to be filled with his glory. God's special worshiping creature called man, mankind.

When mankind would rather venerate than appreciate

God's creation, that's where idolatry comes in. When man venerates God's creation, that's idolatry.

Appreciating is just fine. That gives glory to God. But when you venerate God's creation, that is the tragedy and profanity of idols.

God made his creatures to abide and abound. When he sang the universe into existence, every refrain sounded forth with bounty and order and goodness and life.

This world is not a zero -sum game. As the materialists, the

Darwinists, and the Marxists assert, we do not live in a world that is a disarray, dissipating disaster made worse by the increase of living organisms all starving on dwindling resources.

Happy bunch, this cult who is currently in charge. Consider the liveliness.

Consider the life -abundant approach when God made everything. Genesis 1, 20 through 25, then

God said, let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.

So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves with which the waters abounded according to their kind and every winged bird according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the sea.

Let birds multiply on the earth. Why so many pigeons? God is an abundant day.

Then God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth, each according to its kind.

And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to its kind, the cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. God made all the creatures and he made them male and female to reproduce each one after its own kind.

He made them so that they would be fruitful, so that they would multiply and fill the waters and fill the sky and fill the earth.

Pigeons, pincher bugs, and piranhas. Crows, cockroaches, and crappie.

Geese, moose, and octopi. Octopuses. Octopodes. It's the new plural for octopus, by the way.

I had to look it up. So God made man after his own kind.

God made man in his own image, male and female, so that we too would abound to his glory.

So you can hear the similarity in verses 26 through 30 of Genesis 1. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.

That God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it.

Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

And God said, see I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed.

To you it shall be for food. Also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life,

I have given every green herb for food. And it was so. So the other creatures were all made after their own kind.

They were blessed by God to be fruitful, multiply, and man as well. Mankind, made in God's image, should be fruitful, should multiply, should fill the earth, and man, unlike the rest of the creatures, man is to subdue and rule over.

God made man in his image, male and female, he created them. And God said it was not good for the man to be alone.

God gave the woman to the man that they together, as husband and wife, would beget children by the signifying marriage act, reproducing after their kind, under the same purpose, to continue this creation mandate, to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, to the glory of God.

So the very significance of marriage itself speaks to the hope of the repetition of the state of marriage amongst the children born into that family.

This is the conclusion, right? So God brings Eve to Adam, and Adam rejoices in Eve, and then here is the concluding conclusion of all of this.

Genesis 2 24. Therefore, seeing this, because of this, therefore, here's the here's the obvious conclusion, a man shall leave his father and mother.

We're talking about different relationships within the family. We look at marriage, and all of a sudden we're thinking father, mother, and children.

There's an interconnection made in the scriptures. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother, and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

So a husband is is joined to his wife, the two become one flesh, God grants them children, that's the desire, that's the hope.

From the one flesh, new life is born. Now, so the children are from that one flesh, they are not of that one flesh.

There's a distinction. The children are dependent upon the father and mother to nurture them in the fear and the admonition of the

Lord, and fear and the admonition of their Creator King. They got to know what it means to be to be made in God's image.

They need to know what it means to have this role in creation. The father and mother mediate

God's authority, God's holiness, and God's truth to their sons and daughters. What is their aim?

That God's glory would manifest abundantly in them. The marriage is designed by God to come both before and behind the child.

The marriage, as the essential condition of family, marriage is the womb in which the child is conceived, the cradle into which the infant is laid, the school into which the child is enrolled, the economy in which the child is employed, and the war bow from which the child is loosed.

So when we consider that, we recognize that the dependent nature of the child upon the parents means that his or her condition rests largely upon the nature of the relationship between husband and wife.

If the marital relationship is healthy, the parental relationship will generally be good as well.

Now the reverse is even more definite. If the marital relationship is bad, the parental relationship will certainly be bad.

Now this brings us to Malachi 2. Let's look over Malachi 2 verses 13 through 16. Just a little short jump back from Matthew.

We have that famous passage here in Malachi 2 about God's view on divorce, but interestingly enough, we read closely and meditate on the passage, we see an additional reason why

God hates divorce. God, through Malachi, convicts the people, he judges the people, he says in verse 13, and this is the second thing you do.

You cover the altar of the Lord with tears, with weeping and crying, so that he does not regard the offering anymore, nor receive it with goodwill from your hands.

Yet you say, for what reason? Because the Lord has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, with whom you have dealt treacherously.

She is your companion and your wife by covenant. But did he not make them one, having a remnant of the spirit?

And why one? He seeks godly offspring.

Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously with the wife of his youth. For the

Lord God of Israel says that he hates divorce, for it covers one's garment with violence, says the

Lord of hosts. Therefore take heed to your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.

God says divorce is violence against women, and he says he's against divorce because he is for godly offspring.

You think about how this translates from the Old Covenant to the New, God's promises to Israel upon generation upon generation, and how they're fulfilled in Christ.

Christ's marriage with the church ultimately, Paul says, fulfills the mystery of marriage, correct?

Ephesians 5. And more godly offspring than man can count find

God as their father by the work of the Son and the power of the Spirit. So ultimately this is how this is fulfilled, but the metaphor of Christ and his bride rests upon the reality of God's design from Genesis 1 and 2.

Faithful marriage, the idea is faithful marriage makes for God -fearing offspring.

That's the hope, that's the desire, that's actually the instructions for parents to raise their children in the fear and the admonition of the

Lord. Consider how great are the challenges of those children whose garments are stained with the violence of their parents' divorce, and how great are the blessings of those children who are covered in the loving nurture of a faithful marriage.

There is a difference, there is a difference, and one of the things that we're told today or people want us to believe is there's no difference between one or the other.

Children who are injured and harmed by their upbringing are still made in the image of God, still to be loved, still to be used to the glory of God.

God delights in doing the impossible through the unlikely. But we don't have to therefore pretend that a prosthetic leg is just as good as a real one, or that a glass eye is just as good as a real one.

We don't have to pretend that. We get to rejoice in how God overcomes.

We need to be honest. Alright, so after considering the gift of children, and again our goal later on in the study is to talk about what does it mean to raise children when

Christ is King. Christ is King over all things. When we acknowledge that, when we give an amen to that, when we rejoice in that, what's it like to raise children in that environment?

We're on the schedule. We're just talking about definitions right now. And one of the things that we have to think about is if all of human relationship began in a marriage, began in a family, what does that mean for human society?

And this will be our last defining effort for our study. So we're gonna think about the family and society.

For the last ten years, I've performed only a handful of weddings, and each time

I give a little sermon that is drawn from a Dutch Reformed ceremony, and here's an excerpt.

Joel and Nicole, I'm sure you memorized this, you know. Nicole's here, Joel's up in the booth.

God ordained marriage in order to provide a context within which husband and wife can help and comfort each other and find companionship, a setting within which they may give loving and tender expression to the desires

God has given them, a secure environment within which their children may be born and taught to know and serve the

Lord, and a structure that enriches society and contributes to its orderly function.

I like that language because in a very short amount of time it situates marriage not in some kind of self -affirming romanticism, but it situates marriage in God's good created order.

Marriage is the essential condition of the family. Now, we have a lot of language today, a lot of enchantment of the word family.

What kind of things are called family? What kind of organizations, what kind of relationships, what kind of networks are called family today?

Yeah, and there has been a long campaign for that, to erase any kind of norm, any kind of standard, any kind of definition for family.

But marriage is the essential condition for family in God's definition, and as the family goes, so society goes.

That is nothing new. Cain's murder and Lamech's polygamy in Genesis 4, combined with whatever that horror show was in early

Genesis 6, shows us a world full of violence, right?

We see a world full of violence. The earth was filled up with violence, and so God filled up the earth with water, right?

Yeah, so he brought judgment upon that. I did a quick search.

Here's an article, some some stats from an article published in February of 2023, so this year, earlier on this year.

Detroit is the world's 19th most dangerous city. It is the, people know, a

Michiganer. Okay, just for context, a Michiganer over here. She can testify. It's the poorest city.

It has 72 percent of the city's families are single -parent families.

That's 44 ,000 plus families. 59 percent of those families total are headed by single mother.

Numbers are comparable for Cleveland, Baltimore, Memphis, all the same stuff, always in the same range, okay?

Fatherless children are three times more likely to be behind bars.

They are more likely to have, 85 percent of American children with behavioral disorders have been raised in fatherless homes.

Children raised without a father, we know they're just more likely to do drugs, head to jail. It's a huge shock, right?

Deviation from God's design for the family creates havoc in human society. Let's think about a little bit why that is.

The term society comes from the French, thank you, which comes from another, comes from a

Latin word and has the idea of companion, has the root in Latin as the idea of companion.

And what it is acknowledging is the reality that to be made in the image of God means that we're made in relationship, okay?

We are made in communion with one another, in fellowship with one another, with God and each other in the world around us.

Made in the image of God and we can never take off the uniform, just never, ever, ever can we ever take off that uniform.

You can shriek at it, you can try to stab at it, you can try to rebel against that uniform code, but we are made to love

God supremely, to love each other rightly and steward the creation responsibly, whether we want to or not. Wired on the most devout atheist worships, right?

The worship switch is hardwired on and no matter how much we would desire to vacate the premises and head for other places, the umbilical cord to earth is just never going to be cut.

We are always going to be stewarding something, whether our own bodies or our own yards or whatever it is, we're going to be in charge of stewarding the created order around us.

That's just how God made us. And the horizontal relationship is just always there.

As long as we're breathing, we're going to long for some kind of community. Have you noticed that all of the hermits in the deep woods have

YouTube channels now? I love those comments, right?

Hey, look at my loneliness. What? That's how God made us. Now we have explored the manner in which

God made man on the sixth day. We thought about what it means to be made in God's image as a relational mediating servant.

We have pressed into what it means to be male and female. We've examined marriage and children.

And here's some very basic observations about society. Let's begin in Genesis 1.

Let's go back again. Genesis chapter 1. And just make some very basic observations of the text.

Then God said, verse 26 of Genesis 1, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.

Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he.

Then God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

So God says, let's make man singular, and let's let them, plural, have dominion. He made man in his image, him singular, and he made them male and female, them plural.

Catching the idea there's a singularness, but there's a pluralness. That's what you call a community.

You can say it, you can talk about it in a singular, you can talk about it in the plural. And all of human society, all of human companionship is traced back to how

God made mankind, male and female, man and woman, husband and wife. So all of human relationships begin with marriage, and it's developed through the family.

In the multiplying of families, Genesis 2 24, for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother.

Family means more families. In the multiplication of families, we discern the building of society, and these families all relate to each other along differing lines of companionship.

So you read through Genesis 4 through 11, what do we discover? There are different vocations, there are different locations, there are different generations, different languages, but families everywhere.

Some of them are more closely related to each other than others, but we see human society being built out in Genesis 4 through 11.

And the factors which tend to make these connections of families distinct distinguish nations from one another.

Here's a group of families who have similar locations, similar values, similar language, and here's a group of families over here that have differing language and values and vocations and so on.

And a lot of this is very tied to the places in which they're located based on the land upon which they live.

Are they fishermen? Are they farmers? So on. And then you have all these different nations related to us in Genesis 10, the table of nations in Genesis 10, but they're just families after all, and all the families of the earth are blessed in the seed of Abraham, Genesis 12.

See? They're called families, they're called nations, all of human society is emerging out of family.

Nations are distinct from one another by economy and place and time and values, but none of those factors move on their own propulsion.

Nations transcend the basic unit of society, which is the family, but nations never achieve escape velocity from the family, no matter how many socialist experiments are tried.

Why does socialism always fail? A lot of reasons. One reason is, it's just a larping and defiance of God's good design for the only older people as live -action role -playing.

We're going to pretend like we're something else. We're going to pretend like we're monkeys, okay?

That's why socialism fails, because we're not monkeys. All of human society emerges from the family.

Bavink again writes, from the very beginning, all the relationships are embedded in seed form within that original family.

All those relationships of authority and obedience, coordination and subordination, parity and fraternity, which now in various expressions and concrete expressions, was all of those things in the past are still presently governing the social life of human beings.

Now, Bavink goes on to describe three forms of society, family, church, and state.

His contemporary, Abraham Kuyper, called them governments, okay? But in trying to describe human society,

Bavink lists these three, and they have an interaction with one another.

Family is a form of society. Church is a form of society. The state, the civil government, that's a form of society.

They have, the one is not the other, even though they have interactions with each other. This is just the way that it works.

It works this way because all of human society was created by God through a family, and God is a triune

God. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all distinct and yet one.

We're going to find this reality throughout all of created order. The family's unique role in human society is that of procreation.

You can see just from that that if the family ceases to exist, so also human society does. It's a pretty logical outcome.

The church is the pillar and ground of the truth must preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. The state, as the deacon of Christ, Romans 13, is to punish evildoers.

It's their job. The family educates the children in cooperation with the church to various levels of degree.

Some families do most of their education at home, but they're also going to be depending upon the church. Some families will cooperate with the church and other families at large from other churches, such as CHA.

But there's a cooperation between church and family for education. This is the way we find it in the scriptures.

Not only are parents to educate children, but the church itself is directly addressing children and who they are and how they're supposed to live.

The state has a claim on some of the family's economy. Taxes. Why do we pay taxes?

Jesus said to pay taxes for a particular reason. And of course, the state has an interest in the welfare of the family to protect them from evildoers who would destroy them.

Whether on domestic evildoers or foreign evildoers, the state has a job to punish evildoers.

The state is instructed in scripture to praise doers of righteousness. Did you know that? The state is to praise doers of righteousness.

Not fund them, but praise them. How do they know who's doing the right thing, by the way?

The church is to tell them that. The church is to exhort them about what is right from wrong so the state will know who to praise and who to punish.

Makes sense, doesn't it? So while interpenetrating to a point, these three, family, church, society, and family is still the essential form of human society.

So all of human society is drawn from the fountain of the family. The fountain goes bad, the whole society goes bad.

Hierarchy, authority, punishment, teaching, religion, worship, all of it began in the family. From the family, the nation is assembled, and by the family the nation persists.

A husband does not have the power of the sword over his wife and children.

The family is not the same as civil government that God instituted in Genesis chapter 9. Worship and religion are first taught in the home, but the father is not the end -all for the family, so we're called to gather together in Christ's body to be blessed in ways not available to the family by itself.

The family is not the church. These distinctions having been made, if the state and the church were lost, their incipient structures would remain in the family ready to emerge again for the rebounding of human society through the creation mandate.

So example, when the state becomes the punisher of the righteous and the defender of evil, fathers direct their families in godly resistance, precedent, right?

When the church becomes corrupt, fathers take it upon themselves to lead their families in the worship of Christ through his word until such time as a proper church can be established, right?

Not to say that the family is the state, not to say that the family can replace the state, not mafia, right?

The family cannot replace the church, but you see which one is prior in the case of needing to take these measures.

Now not all men and women and children live in families or in whole families, right?

It doesn't make them less human, less unworthy of society. God has made each one of us to love others rightly, to be in community, right?

Baving observes no person is merely an individual, right?

No person is merely an individual. It sounds kind of weird, kind of counter assumption in our day, but no person is merely an individual and a single individual is not a person.

A single individual is not a person. I thought it was an interesting point because the prelude to suicide involves several steps towards non -personhood, and each one of those steps is increasingly the assertion of the individual.

I am this, I am this, I am this, no one else can understand it, no one else can know it, no one else can relate to it, right?

It paves the way to self -murder, which is why we have such high suicide rates for those identifying themselves by the alphabet.

It's not because people are hunting them, it's because they are very much harmed and believing demonic lies and Satan destroys.

Satan destroys. So, no person is merely an individual, a single individual is not a person.

Baving says, above the entrance to the history of humanity stands written this saying, it is not good that the man should be alone.

It's true for Adam individually, particularly true in generally the norm, but also true of all of humanity.

He says, from conception onward a human being is a product of fellowship. Every person is born from and in fellowship.

Persons are cared for and nurtured in the context of fellowship and continue in some kind of fellowship throughout life all the way to one's final breath.

That's the way God made us. Now, some persons are without family or part of a broken family.

Sometimes their sins that directly brought that about, sometimes not. Whoever they are, whether a neighbor or an enemy,

God, Jesus calls us to love them rightly, and he's the one who expresses the image of God perfectly.

So, society is always going to have the poor. He said you're always going to have the poor with you. Society is always going to have the poor, the broken, the lost.

Society, however, depends on the health of families and is derived from God's design for the family, which means what?

It means that unmarried men and women, widows and orphans, are blessed by a society in which they are not normative.

It's important for us to say that. Unmarried men and women, widows and orphans, will have the best community and the most support in a society where families are the norm.

It is the Marxist and pagan concept of justice. It is that misconception of a right and fair society in which every single status is affirmed as family, celebrated as normative.

The Marxist pagan worldview assumes that if a state of human sexuality exists, it's normal.

It ought to be simply because it is. This kind of thinking leaks into the church, where there's been a huge push in recent years.

It's like, we need to celebrate singleness ever as much as we celebrate family, a married state. Every single state that anybody is in ought to be as celebrated as the next one, because that's what

Jesus would do. Jesus would say, have you never read? And we're not saying that, listen,

Jesus would not be the one to say, the scripture would not be the one to say, that somebody who is not living in the norm of family life is to be is to be devalued or ostracized or so on, quite the opposite.

But this is simply to say that if we try to normalize every single relational state, not only are we defying

God and being anti -biblical, but that also brings harm to the people, and doesn't bring health to the people who are outside of the normal family construct.

God's design for marriage is the only sacred space for sexual expression.

God's design for marriage is the normative relationship for the human existence, the best relationship for nurturing children, and the essential binding for families upon which the health of society rests.

So, some children lose their parents, some men and women lose their spouses, some never marry, others are on their own for other reasons, but all made in God's image and blessed to live in societies where families flourish in a robust fear of God.

All right, so I'm done five minutes early, so for the very first time we can have questions. So, wherever this pops up, this is part of the long march through the institutions of cultural

Marxism, and basically wanting to say that you have to normalize diversity so that you chose everything that's out there is legitimate.

Everything that's out there needs to be brought in, and everything that's out there should have absolutely the same kinds of inputs and outputs as everything else.

All right, so you just put all those three together. Everything out there is legitimate, everything that's out there should be brought in, and everything that's out there should be equal in inputs and outputs.

Why is that? Because of paganism. Remember, paganism can only count to one. There's not two.

There's not a creator and the rules for his creation. It's just everything's one big blob.

The state will take the form of protecting you so you don't need a gun, and the state will take the form of giving you food, that sort of thing.

Well, it's interesting when you study the history of Marxism, the eschatology of Marxism is that the state will cease to exist because everybody will be hunky -dory with each other.

However, the reality of Marxism is that the state is the best engine for bringing everything into oneness, because they have a monopoly on force.

So the state begins to grab all of the economy. I just saw

Joe Salatin testifying before Congress about pushing family operators out of butchering their meat, and so on and so forth.

Why? Because the state regulates things to be more and more and more big. The state takes over education.

The state wants to determine what's going to be preached.

Just ask the Canadians and others. And then the state wants to redefine family, with Lyndon Johnson's work to destroy families, paying women to not get married but have lots of kids.

And now in California they want to take over procreation itself and provide insurance benefits for those who suffer from sterileness, meaning any kind of bringing together of anybody in the alphabet soup, they can't have children.

Oh, well, that's because they're sterile and they need benefits from the government to have children. So the state wants to take over the procreation.

Barrenness is the judgment of God on homosexuality.

But the state wants to save everybody, so they're going to take over procreation and they're going to make babies from test tubes for them.

Notice that as they take over all of this, into this bucket are put the people that disagree with.

If the state is the savior, those who disagree with the state are now the evildoers and they get put in that bucket.

Now that's not unique to our current cultural revolution. That's been happening over and over again throughout history and you can watch it happen.

So that's why there's such an attack on the family. If you can remove the family erase the family, then you're much more successful in bringing revolution.

But we see how robust God has made the family. We see the blessings of family.

We're going to start next time, we're going to look through God's covenant with Noah and Abraham and Israel and David and see how family plays a central role in all those things, and then that will lead us up to what is it like to live as a family under the reign of Christ?

What is it like to live as a family in the new covenant? Okay, so that'll be our goal starting next week.

Let's close with the word of prayer. Father, I thank you for the time you've given to us. I pray that you would bless us and give us joy as we think about your truth today.

I pray that you would bless our communion together and that you really would help us to love one another as you have loved us.