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Good morning.
So we had our fall harvest fish yesterday. You know, janitor making a prayer this morning. I had him request for that. And there's a lot of things that people that we found out that that's needed. But families was one of the things that really keyed in on us this weekend because of the people we meet and how we approach things and how we try to reach people's lives.
A lot of this. Through family, through family actions and through family, things like that. But think about this morning. What comes to mind when you think of the word family? Everybody has a picture in their head of what you think a family is.
You think about that one? Is that is that? Is that the perfect American family?
There's a good one.
No dysfunction in that family.
There's a there's a there's a governor. But even even that family is, you know, when I put that picture up, you kind of see, Oh, do you have that feeling like, Oh, that's a good family. But was it out? Was it without dysfunction? Probably not.
I look through the Old Testament and all the all the people that we have in the Old Testament, starting from Adam and Eve, I could not find the perfect family. I could not find it.
And if it's not, if it's not written down for us in the Bible, why do we, why do we assume that we have to be the perfect family? You know,
we have those, we have those things that we can think about, you know,
now y'all know that's a dysfunctional family,
but you know, everybody, everybody has, everybody has had your family picture. You know, it's all it's all a photo shop and crops and and sometimes we take we take this head, put it on this body. You know how you like you wanted to look the perfect picture. You want the perfect picture. You want to be perfect.
But how much chaos and how much sometimes disorganized goes on before that picture is taken.
You don't have to answer. I know I've been there. It's sometimes this it's like it's like herding cats to get everybody together. You know, at one time. Stop. Let's let's take this. Let's take this. Let's take this perfect picture. We wanted. We wanted to look like this perfect picture. But family goes beyond that.
We all know that we with all the characters in the Bible, they're all dysfunctional. all of them have their issues and have their things. But in the end,
in the end, there's a lot of good that comes out of families. You take you take this church family here. The things we started a year ago in trying to reach people and trying to save souls. I know we have changed people's lives and we have changed families.
There's a story right there.
The story right there. Just
I picked up just a few verses to key in on to think about family. God instituted family early on informed Adam. He said, Let us make man in our own image. Let us
When he's to me, it sounds like that God is already a part of a family when he says, Let us because it was God that the father, the son and Holy Spirit. So there's there's already there's already a family unity type thing started before we were. We were here. That's reason family so important. Therefore, a man shall leave his father, mother and hope fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
So when the earth moment when God created Adam and Eve, he knew that they need to start replenishing earth. So that's where that family here just started to get going. So now we have we have we have we have Adam and Eve. We had the family had the nucleus going. We have things going on. We're starting to raise kids.
We're starting to do things.
I know y'all heard this this passage before train up my train up a child in the way that he should go. And when he's old, he would not depart from it. Train up the child as a family. Who's responsible for training? That child should be. It should be a parents. We should have a close enough relationship with the Lord that that we want to train up a child in the right way.
And sometimes I know that's difficult to do at times, but it's something that I think that is that is instilled in us that we have that responsibility.
If we start off in Genesis creation of the world and then families created and then through us in the Old Testament, we have the things that help that family to be more nurtured and closer to God.
You ever thought about the last verse in the Old Testament,
the last person, Old Testament, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to the Children and the hearts of the Children to the fathers. Lest I come and strike the land with the creed utter destruction. He's talking about the family there. He started off in creation, but the family Old Testament ends with family.
I really think that the key part right here is turning the hearts of the fathers to the Children that have time first. It's our responsibility as as as fathers and mothers. It's our responsibility to turn the hearts.
We have to be the ones that's responsible for that. I could just kind of find that interesting as I was doing this, this study that the last verse in the Old Testament has something to do with the family.
And then as you, as you open up, as you open up the New Testament, it's like, like from, from the time that this verse was written until Jesus comes on the scene, there's a, there's about 400 years God doesn't speak. But I find it interesting that when you open up the New Testament and turn to Matthew, the first thing you start seeing is the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
Talking about the family. Now during that time,
who your father was or who your, your, your, your ancestry or what geology was, all that was very important to you because that determined who you could or could not be. Or what you what kind of occupation you may have. You know, you're pretty much you didn't have a choice. You know, sometimes you have a choice.
You were born into that. It's kind of like sometimes sometimes when you have a choice, you know, I sometimes wonder where we would be today if we had a choice of who which family we want to be born into. We didn't have that choice.
And if I was talking about, you know, that God formed us in the moon before we were born, think about that. Think about he already had a personal
direction to you before you even born to put you in a family situation. So as we as we talk about that, and that means certainly looking at the geology of Jesus and you think about You consider and think about, man, my family is really messed up sometimes. But you read the genealogy of Jesus and you'll find everything in there.
You know, even sometimes, sometimes matching when he's writing it, he's kind of, he's kind of soft on speaking certain things,
you know, but there's a lot of things in his in his in his life where him and his family In his family tree that you wouldn't think the Savior of the Lord would come from because you had there was adulterers, there was murders, there was lives, there was teeters. I mean, all of them. You look at you always from Isaac and Jacob and saw all those people had had issues.
All of them has had some different issues that they faced. You know, Noah was a drunk.
You know, the target, but Abraham, you know, He had he had his first born was out of wedlock from the from the mistress of his of his wife. You have lots of family living in a place that's full of homosexuals and all kinds of sin going on.
And then Isaac when they swindled Esau out of the birthright, you got you got a lot of shenanigans going on there.
And then, you know, Jacob, he had, you know, a hundred and twelve sons. And I kind of, I threw this in, I was kind of reading that through. And you talk about the, you know, when he gave him the coat of many colors. It's almost like, it's almost like he gave him a designer jacket. And I just wonder, you know, how much, how much dysfunction that caused.
I'm sure it caused some, some dysfunction in that family because, you know, he was picked out as a favorite. And just that itself created some jealousy. among the family.
But the list goes on. I mean, there's all kinds of of characters that that's in the, in the in the family bloodline of Jesus. It's in the family bloodline of Jesus. All those, all that is part of Jesus's human life being on here. He's part of that type of stuff that came from him. And you can imagine the Savior, the Lord, that he would come from a family like this.
It gives me hope. It gives me hope because of a family side that we that we deal with from time to time that are struggling with real problems. Struggling with real problems. I'm not talking about just something like a like a like a little water bill. That's that's that's easy. I talk about the things that it causes pain.
It causes people to be angry, to be resentful.
Some of those things that really tears a family apart. And those are some of the things that we've been working with in the last year or so in reaching these families, trying to find out, you know, what's really going on trying to help you break that cycle that you don't have to push on your geology of a continuing in a dysfunction.
We don't have to do that. We can change that. We can change that, but our family Jesus is bloodline. You know what? I think I'm not there. Now I'm talking about now the family that we have here in this church, the bonds that we that we that we that we have when we meet in times like this when we made it to fellowship hall for for a game or something or for me to to sometimes just meeting at the grocery store or at the coffee shop sitting and talking.
Those are the real times that we would learn to be a family because not everybody that comes to Westside, you know, if you look at it as a whole, sometimes the church is dysfunctional. Sometimes we're dysfunctional because we have so many different ideas and And feelings and things we want to do. This is our favorite.
We want to do this. We want to do that. Everybody has had their different different things they want to do. So sometimes we have to learn to overcome those things. And even in a family, as we're going on into New Testament, there's certain certain passage in there that I think that it really helps in a in a family.
If we really need,
you know what I'm talking about? Just being the chapter of love. But
just take it. Just take a moment. Look at that before we read it out loud. Just just look at that for yourself. Just for a minute.
I think these are things that that every family needs. Even even our our
family bloodline. We need these things. Our spiritual family, we need this.
Love is patient. Don't
you need, don't you need patience with a family? And kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with truth. Yeah, this is the first seven. It's all is the whole thing. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.
You think a family doesn't have to endure things
but getting, but it starts, it starts with love. It starts with love,
true love, being patient and kind. All those things. I think a family must possess in some form or fashion that you've got. You've got to have those things in order to keep a strong family in order to raise up that child, nurture that child to break the cycle that we sometimes find families in. It is changing.
It's difficult sometimes to change, to know how to love, to know how to know how to love or know how to to perceive. Love without expecting something in return.
This is a, I think this is a thing that's desperately needed in families today. And I think what we're trying to do here at Westside now is we're trying to reach people with the love of Jesus. We have our bloodline family, which is great, but there's something even greater than that. When you become a Christian, a child of God, you join The most important family that you'll ever join in your whole life The family you're born into You don't have a choice but here This is the time that you have a choice you have a choice to join the family of God What better family could you have by joining that particular family?
Regardless of of where you go in this world. I'm talking about waking I went to Honduras and many of times before we've gone to Mexico and people we've gone to to Europe.
We have always found family. We've always found God's family there. And it's when you when you make that connection that you're both the child of God. They don't ask what kind of car did you drive or all this kind of stuff. It's like I'm glad you're here. Glad to see you. I'm glad you're here. It's like it breaks being a child of God breaks down a lot of barriers.
It gives us opportunity to communicate with one another to get to know one another, to help each other, to edify one another, to do, you know, Bible says to come together to edify one another. So those are things that help us to grow stronger. It's kind of like, you know, Our Monday night group, we come together every week, you know, and it's kind of like, it's kind of like becomes his own little family.
And I think same thing. But, you know, maybe once a year you have a family reunion, just kind of come back together and kind of rekindle old loves and friendships and stuff. Sometimes it's all what age sometimes it's even dysfunctional learning. It was like, well, what's gonna happen? Anyway, but but you think about it, but joining you have the choice.
You have the choice to join God's family. You have that choice.
The family that that meets here is joined by the blood of Christ,
the most precious blood that would ever be It would ever bring so much togetherness to provide so much love, so much forgiveness. So many things overcome is through the blood of Jesus Christ.
Yeah, I don't know where you're at in your walk with the Lord.
I don't know what you need,
but you know what you need. And
there's number of people. It's in this congregation that have gone through a lot of different things.
If you need help, if you need to respond, imitations Lord this morning, there's there's a family here that will love you, that will help you in any way possible day or night. If you need to respond, imitation, we do this. It's even stands to think now.