Family Dinner | Genesis 18:17-19

We're gonna read from Genesis 18, starting in verse 17.

This is what the word says.

The Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?

Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed by him.

For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring Abraham to what he has promised him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray.

God in heaven, would you please illuminate your word and our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit this morning?

Teach us and mold us and shape us by the power of your word spoken and preached this morning.

God, may everything that we do be to bring you honor and glory to your name and your name alone.

Lord, we thank you for this time that we have together, and in the name of Jesus we pray.

Amen.

You can have a seat.

So I consider myself to be a manly dude.

I hope this will be received in that context.

But I have a go-to blanket that makes everything right in the world.

It's a blanket that my grandmother sewed in the 70s or 80s.

She gave it to me when I was in high school.

I've lived in nine different houses, three uh different towns, and that blanket has gone to every one of them, and I have discovered that wherever that blanket is, I'm at home, right?

Unfortunately, it's so old, and I've used it for so long that as the years have rolled on, they've taken a bit of a toll on the blanket.

My grandmother even did a refresh of it for me for one year for Christmas, and those refreshes are being worn down.

And so there's a number of places in which the threads are coming loose and the blanket is becoming frayed because the fabric in some places are basically translucent.

I mean, they're so thin and weak.

But what really bothers me and worries me probably most are the holes.

Like, I literally lament every single time that I notice a new hole, or when I can tell that an existing hole has gotten much bigger.

Like every single time I'm like, okay, like how many more washes does this thing have in it?

What else can be done to preserve it?

Because it just makes the world a better and happier place.

I honestly think, though, that our world in many ways is really just like my blanket.

You know, we tend to really notice and lament and obsess over the holes that we see, right?

Like we see teen suicide rates, we see uh astronomical anxiety stats, we see sky-high divorce rates, we see outrage on literally every single page of the internet, and we see all of the holes that are in the fabric of our society, and we fill them deeply.

We worry about them, they scare us.

But here's what I think: I think that even though we notice the holes, that we fail to recognize the small stitches that are missing, the small threads that are pulling loose one at a time.

I want to give you an example this morning.

Family dinners.

Family dinners.

I I studied some pretty interesting uh data related to family dinners this week.

Did you know that in 1975, 80% of families would have said that they eat together most nights at the dinner table?

A recent study was done in 2023 of families in California that discovered that fewer than 45% say the same thing.

That's almost half the number of families that are eating together.

There was another study of almost 100,000 adolescents that was done.

And what it found was that a top predictor of positive identity, commitment to learning, values, and social skills were frequent family dinners together.

It showed that family dinners led to a much lower likelihood of high-risk behavior, including substance abuse, sexual activity, depression, or suicide.

So we see the holes and we see the fraying, but are we paying attention to the small threads that are pulling loose around us?

I point all of that out because I believe that this highlights God's design for us.

God's design for me, God's design for you, God's design for our society.

And it leads us to what is our final foundation here at the orchard.

That because God starts with the family, our ministry must start with the family.

That it is a theological reality that leads to a sociological development driving a methodological approach for us here as a church family.

And so I want to make a really big point this morning about something that seems really, really, really small.

Here's my thesis from Genesis chapter 18.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

God's global work begins with family dinner.

God's global work begins with family dinner.

First, I want you to see that families are God's thread.

Families are God's thread.

According to the Cornell Family Estrangement Project, 27% of Americans are currently estranged from a close relative.

That means that there are quite literally millions of empty chairs available around family tables this afternoon when everybody gathers for lunch.

But estrangement leaves more than just an empty chair.

What they did is they tracked the well-being of those who were estranged, and what they found was that those who were estranged from a close relative had significantly more grief, a higher likelihood of chronic stress, more depression and anxiety, and a diminished self-worth.

You see, when one family thread breaks, what happens is it begins to pull at and weaken the fabric of the whole institution.

Genesis 18, I think, helps us begin to understand why this carries so much weight.

God designed the family not just to be for our private happiness, but he actually designed and intended the family to be an ordinary means through which he forms his people and ultimately through which he blesses the world.

In verses 18 and 19, what we have is God restating the covenant that he had made earlier with Abraham in Genesis.

In Genesis chapter 12, God had promised Abraham that he was going to become a great nation.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

And that through this nation, that God was gonna found with Abraham, all the nations of the earth were going to be blessed.

And so here he is establishing a global and an eternal plan through Abraham.

And what does he choose to start it with?

With a family.

So you can understand that from the beginning that this is how things are being established.

In fact, I think that this is established here in Genesis chapter 18.

Genesis 18 · chapter mention

The context actually shows that the plan all along was bigger than just Abraham.

It included both Sarah and Isaac.

You'll remember at the beginning of chapter 18, you have that famous scene where God approaches Sarah, and Sarah is 89 years old.

89 years old.

I had a child when I was like 35, and I felt like he was a child of my old age.

89 years old.

And do you remember what Sarah does?

She laughs at him.

She basically laughs in the face of God.

It's almost like she's saying, All right, God, obviously you're a big picture guy.

You see the holes, but you don't notice the tiny threads, because I don't know if you know this, Lord.

I'm 89 years old.

I am well past my childbearing years.

But God is here and He's establishing with this family that he is quite literally in every single thread.

That God is going to do a global work and he's starting with a family because this is how God always does.

You'll notice that he says uh in verse 18 that the nations of earth will be blessed in him.

That I think that's meant to take our minds back to the original creation in Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Do you remember in Genesis chapter 1 what happens when what God says when he creates the man and the woman?

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

It says I have it there at the bottom of your screen, and God blessed them.

God blessed them.

That God blessed them so that they would do what?

So that they would be fruitful and multiply as his image bearers, and being fruitful and multiply, so that they would proliferate his image, that is, proliferate his glory over the face of the whole earth.

And so now he comes into Genesis 18, having said it in Genesis 12 and Genesis 14, that God is blessing Abraham and Sarah so that they would do what?

So that they would produce offspring, so that that offspring would do what?

So that it would proliferate over the face of the earth and be a blessing to all nations in all places.

And so what we see is that God's plan with Abraham and Sarah is really a redemption of the plan that he initiated with Adam and with Eve.

You think about it, in both cases, a couple is involved.

In both cases, the blessing takes place through the offspring, and in both cases, it's the spread over the face of the earth.

And so we see a theme that begins in Genesis and spreads over the whole corpus of the scriptures to show us that God always starts this way.

God always starts with a family.

Now he could have chosen, when you think about it, any thread that he possibly wanted to with which to weave together society.

He could have started with a government, but he didn't.

He could have even started with a church, but he didn't.

He could have started with an angelic manifestation, but he didn't.

He started with a wedding.

He started with a family.

He has chosen the family to be at the molecular level of society.

In fact, I think not only do you trace the beginning of society, but you can trace the entire story of redemption through families.

Think about it.

When God started society, we've already established, he started with a family.

Adam and Eve were married and they had children and they were meant to spread those image bearers over the face of the earth.

Of course, we know what happens in Genesis.

Genesis 3 takes place.

Sin enters the world.

By the way, go read the curse that happens as a result of sin.

What does the curse primarily aim at?

The family.

That marriage, the relationship between husbands and wives with one another, the relationship toward child rearing, toward the family.

Well, wickedness spreads over the face of the earth, so much so that by Genesis 6, it says that God regretted that he had made man, and that man only did wickedness all of the time.

And so God sends with every drop of rain in the flood, his judgment and wrath to wipe the wickedness from the face of the earth.

So you had a situation in which creation had to now be renewed and restarted.

And how did God do it?

Well, he started with a family.

He started with Noah and with his sons and their wives.

But God doesn't just intend to renew his creation.

We find out here that he intends to redeem it.

He intends to not just renew it, but to recreate it.

So what does he do?

He starts with a family.

Abraham's faith is credited to him as righteousness, and it's through his son, through his offspring, that the nations of the earth will be blessed.

God's redemptive plan is beginning to come into view.

And how will this redemption ultimately culminate?

It will culminate with a redemptive reign by a redemptive king.

So how does God establish this redemptive throne?

He starts with a family.

Brothers and sisters, we could keep going.

But the point is, is by the time that you turn to the first page of the first gospel in Matthew chapter one, how does it start?

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the son of Abraham.

To bring the redeeming, reigning king into the world, to recreate the recreate the world and bless all nations, God starts with a family.

So it is the family that's the thread of society, and it's the family that forms the threads of redemption.

That God is doing a global work and he's accomplishing it through the family.

Now, I want you to think with me, just rationally.

If God starts with the family, where do you think Satan starts?

With the family, right?

Satan is cunning and smart.

You realize this, right?

He's not a dumb red guy with a pitchfork.

He's winsome, he's clever.

He knows how to most effectively unravel that which God intends for good.

So if God establishes the family as the molecular layer of society, where do you think he attacks?

He attacks at the molecular level.

In fact, Genesis 18 is filled with family drama.

I mean, like, it's good to know it ain't just your Thanksgiving, right?

Genesis 18, we've already established it.

It starts with Abraham's wife, Sarah, basically laughing in unbelief in the face of the living God.

And then it ends with Lot, his beloved nephew, living in Sodom and him trying to plead on behalf of Lot that God would spare him.

And so there's all kinds of family drama.

And this started with Adam and Eve, doesn't it?

You know, it's interesting.

Everyone always blames Eve, don't they?

For eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and leading to the condemnation.

I mean, how many Adam does this.

You remember what Adam says to the Lord?

This woman you gave me, right?

How many husbands have said this?

This woman you gave me, Lord.

But have you ever noticed Genesis chapter 3, verse 6, what it says?

Genesis 3:6

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was delightful to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of it and of its fruit and ate.

And she also gave some to her husband who was with her.

Who was with her?

When the serpent comes, he's not out doing some commendable, honorable work.

He's abdicating his responsibilities as the leader of his family.

What is the first thing that Satan does?

Is he usurps the created order and the family structure by usurping the husband's leadership?

And what does Adam do?

Maybe the original sin is Adam abandoning his responsibility by not keeping the garden as God had commanded and instructed.

That it was an attack and a breakdown of the family.

And then what happens next?

Brother rises up against brother.

Cain rises up against Abel and he kills his brother.

What is that?

It's an attack upon and a breakdown of the family.

This is where Satan starts.

I asked Chat GPT as I was preparing this.

I put this prompt in.

If you were Satan, tell me how you would go about destroying society as God designed it.

I copied and pasted its exact response, and I'm gonna read it to you.

If I wanted to destroy society as God designed it, I would begin where God began with the family.

I would convince people that they belong entirely to themselves, that freedom means having no obligations, authority, or covenant they did not choose.

I would make marriage primarily about personal happiness.

So that when happiness fades, commitment seems unreasonable.

I would turn husbands and wives from partners into competitors.

I would replace confession with defensiveness, forgiveness with scorekeeping, and sacrifice with the demand to be served.

I would persuade parents that forming their children is somebody else's responsibility.

Let the school educate them, the coach motivate them, the screen entertain them, and the algorithm disciple them.

I would keep families busy.

Not necessarily doing evil things, just doing so many things that they no longer have time to know one another.

I would empty the dinner table, and when I could not empty it, I would fill it with screens, interruptions, tension, and silence.

I would separate the generation so that children never receive the wisdom of their grandparents, and grandparents never experience the joy of helping shape their grandchildren.

I would make small wounds too uncomfortable to discuss, apologies too humiliating to offer, and forgiveness too costly to extend.

I would let those wounds deepen until family members could no longer remember how the separation began.

And then, after the family fractured, I would cover everyone with shame.

I would tell the wounded that restoration is impossible, the guilty that grace is unavailable, and the lonely that they no longer have a place in God's purposes.

I would not have to make family members hate one another.

I would only have to keep them distracted enough that they never truly know one another, proud enough that they never repair what breaks, and isolated enough that every thread eventually pulls apart.

These are sobering words, aren't they?

And they cut to the heart of the American Christian home today, don't they?

Now I imagine this morning that there are two groups of people that hear those words and are trying to figure out how to respond.

The first group of people that I imagine hear those words are those who look at their family.

Maybe the family that they grew up in and they think, well then what hope do I have?

What hope do I have?

Does this mean that I just pretty much am what I am and it is what it is?

I want you to hear me say something.

You are not disqualified from God's grace by the family that you came from.

I want you to hear me.

You are not responsible to repair everything that was broken before you got here.

The responsibility that you have is only to respond to God's grace and to recognize that your responsibility today is to just start a new thread with Him.

That's the responsibility that you have.

I imagine that the second group of people are those of us who are asking, well, how do I combat that in my family?

How do I fight this in my family?

How do I go in this kind of spiritual warfare and fight for the good of my family?

How is it that God could accomplish this global purpose of blessing all peoples in all places through my little old family here in Shelby County, Tennessee?

And the answer is one stitch at a time.

One thread at a time.

One day at a time, one family dinner at a time.

I said earlier that God's global work begins with family dinner, because what I want you to see is that families are God's threads and dinners are God's stitching.

Dinners are God's stitching.

You know, we we tend to want to know as human beings, especially as Americans who do big things, we tend to want to know what's the big change that I can make that's just gonna fix everything?

That's gonna make all of this better.

I I think that's why we tend to obsess over elections.

I think that's why we convince ourselves that every election cycle is the most consequential in civilized history.

I think that's why we're more prone now than ever to cut out the drama from our families rather than try to do the messy work of peacemaking and reconciling.

Because we prefer a nail gun where God prefers hand stitching.

You see, our lives and God's work in our lives is really the result of an accumulation of small, consistent moments over time rather than large, explosive moments at one time.

That it's more about family dinner every night than it is about one exotic trip every year.

And I think that this is really embedded in what we see here with Abraham.

That we've already seen that God intends to accomplish his purpose of global joy through Abraham and through his family.

And so, how would you expect God to coach Abraham up on going to accomplish this purpose of global joy?

Maybe you would expect that he would send him on some kind of international preaching circuit.

Or maybe this is Old Testament, remember?

Like maybe you would think that he would tell Abraham to go and to armor up and to recruit a great army and start conquering all these other cities with stormtroopers.

But it's none of those.

God tells Abraham to focus on family dinner.

To focus on family dinner.

Now, obviously, I'm using family dinner as a symbol of the places where families relate to each other and talk to each other and teach one another and share values and stories with one another.

But you can basically summarize God's instruction to Abraham to accomplish this grandiose, global plan into three simple steps.

First, just be a dad.

Just be a dad.

Now, he's talking to Abraham.

We call him Father Abraham for a purpose.

He's talking to Abraham specifically about his fatherhood, but it's much bigger than just fatherhood.

All of us have some responsibility.

There might be someone here this morning you're like, I don't have kids yet.

I don't know if I'm gonna have kids, I'm not married yet, I don't know what that really looks like.

Does that just leave me out in the rain?

And I would want you to see that that's clearly not the case.

In fact, the scriptures are filled with examples of aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents, brothers and sisters being used by God for his instruction.

Instructional and redemptive purposes.

In fact, I think this is increased manifold when we get to Matthew chapter 12.

Matthew 12 · chapter mention

When Jesus asks out loud, who is my mother?

Who is my brother?

Who is my sister?

But those who do the will of my father, that even in the redemptive community, we have a new covenant family.

And in that family, all of us have family roles and responsibilities.

So I love, I love how God starts with Abraham.

He promises him that he's gonna be a nation, an entire nation of people, and then he says, So I want you to go be a great dad.

Go be a great dad.

That's the strategy that God commands Abraham, or tells Abraham, to command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord.

This word command, it carries with it more than just information, more than just instruction.

It is certainly to teach them what is true, but it also carries with it the need to show them what is true.

And then to insist accountably, lovingly, that they apply what is true in their lives.

And I want you to notice that what it says, for I have chosen him.

The Hebrew word is actually the word, I have known him.

Yada.

I have known him.

It's a covenant language.

It's the a way for God to explain that he has set his love upon Abraham.

He knows him.

So what we're getting here is a picture of the kind of responsibility that comes with grace.

That Abraham is known by God.

He is chosen by God.

He has received great grace from God, so much so that what God is explaining is I know Abraham as a friend.

I know him as a friend.

And so the responsibility now that Abraham has is to enjoy, understand this friendship that he has with the Lord, and then to pay it forward and to pass along that friendship to his children.

This is how God intends to perpetuate the promises that he's made to Abraham.

Abraham knows God as friend, and now he's going to instruct and train up his children so that his children know God as friend too.

My little dude, Josiah, he's at a time in his life in which he thinks pretty highly of his old man, right?

And a couple of weeks ago, we had the opportunity, he and I, we love to watch golf, and our favorite golfer is Scotty Scheffler.

And so Scotty Scheffler came to town, and man, when he was winning, when we got out of church during the St.

Jude a couple of weeks ago, I was like, all right, dude, we're going.

We're gonna make this happen.

And so we got to go and watch Scotty, and uh Scotty ends up winning in a landslide.

I mean, it was it was a it was a great day.

And so we were actually there at the awards ceremony when Scotty's getting his trophy, and we're so close that it just feels like he's just right there.

And so Josiah looked and he said, Dad, is Scotty your first name basis with Scotty Scheffler, by the way.

Is Scotty your friend?

And I said, No, you know, I don't actually know him.

I just like watching him or whatever.

And so he looks at me and he tells to me the exact same thing that Megan and I often say to him when he's on a on a playground with new kids.

Well, go make him your friend.

Go make him your friend.

And I can tell, I can tell that my little dude was pretty disappointed that I wouldn't just walk up and go hang out with Scotty Scheffler for a little while.

But you know what I thought about that?

You know, my responsibility to my son is not to be able to introduce him to impressive people.

My responsibility to my son is not to make sure that he gets to meet every celebrity that he wants to meet.

My responsibility is not even to have a great professional network that I can connect him into that's gonna enable him to prosper in all the ways that all the people want to prosper.

Those things are awesome if you can pull them off, but those are not the things that I'm going to be held eternally accountable for.

What I'm going to be held accountable for was did I establish a deep and meaningful friendship with Jesus?

And did I teach him how to do the same thing?

Did I teach him what it means to live as a friend of the living God so that it is perpetuated down my family line?

That our responsibility is not to focus on changing the world.

Our responsibility is to focus on being a dad.

One day at a time, one meal at a time, one stitch at a time.

That he looks to Abraham and says, be a dad and keep the way.

Keep the way.

That when God makes the man and he places him in the garden, do you remember that he gives the man, this is Genesis chapter two, he gives the man two mandates.

He tells him that he is to go and to work the garden and keep it.

To work the garden and keep it.

So it's really interesting, isn't it?

That when he says keep the word, this is the same word from Genesis chapter two.

And the word keep there, it means more than just look after it.

It actually is often translated to be guard or to protect.

That it's getting to that fatherly role that we're all dads are meant to have, all parents are meant to have in the home to be protectors of their life, of their offspring, of their children, of those that are meant to be in trouble.

And so what we see here is you'll remember that Adam's first failure and the serpent's first temptation was that Adam did not keep, he did not protect, he did not guard.

And so what's he doing with Abraham?

He's redeeming his redemptive purposes by having Abraham come to succeed, calling him to succeed, where Adam, his further other earlier father, had failed.

So how does Abraham do that?

How does Abraham guard his family from the chaos and the threats that hover over him?

Well, he tells him, by doing righteousness and justice.

Righteousness and justice, as they're translated, if you trace the way they're used throughout the Bible, these really refer to how we relate to other people.

That righteousness here is living generously and doing good to the poor and to the oppressed and to the vulnerable.

To do justice here is to mean that I never cause harm to another person, that I treat other image bearers with the dignity that they're owed for being image bearers.

I deal honestly and uprightly and above reproach with the other people when I'm dealing with them.

So I want you to think about this.

So how do our children learn how to bless others?

That's what, that's the promise, isn't it?

That we're gonna be a blessing to all other nations?

That's what Abraham is here responsible to pay forward.

So how is it that Abraham is to train his children to bless others?

How are we to train our children to walk in the ways of the Lord?

By doing righteousness and justice.

That is, by observing how we treat others, by experiencing how we treat them.

They observe us and the way that we relate to the people around us, whether we relate to them righteously and justly.

They observe the way that we treat the server at lunch, even when the server isn't maybe doing the greatest job on earth.

They observe how we speak to their mother or to their father.

They observe how we talk about someone who's hurt us, they observe about how quickly and willingly we are to speak about, to speak up when we've brought hurt or harm to them.

That before our children can define righteousness, they observe it or the lack thereof.

Where?

At our dinner tables, at their kitchen table, in their relationships with their mom and their dad.

This is how the way of the Lord is passed down through honesty and love, kindness and generosity, patience and gentleness, person after person, stitch after stitch, day after day, dinner after dinner.

That the call is that you would be a dad and keep the way.

And if you'll be a dad and keep the way, what you'll find is ultimately you will bless the world, the world.

It's important that we notice the order of what God is saying here to Abraham, because what I don't want is I don't want you to leave this morning thinking that every single evening you're literally gonna make or break your family.

That's not the picture.

That's too much pressure.

I think there's a way that I can overpreach this, and I'm I'm apt to overstate some things sometimes.

There's a way for me to overpreach this that you leave here feeling completely overwhelmed.

But you'll notice that God charges Abraham with a cosmic under uh undertaking to bless all nations, but then what does he say?

The weight of it resides upon whom?

So that who?

The Lord may bring what he has promised him to Abraham.

Do you notice this?

So that the Lord may accomplish that.

Isn't that good news?

Isn't that good news?

The weight of the world, the weight of your own children is not all on your shoulders.

The weight of the world and the weight of your family and the weight of your children is upon the shoulders of the Lord.

Can I just tell you what happens?

Abraham fails.

Sarah laughs in the face of God, and yet they still receive the blessing of God.

David, David famously fails, and yet what happens?

He still has the promise of God.

It is still through his lineage that the person of Christ comes.

That these are covenants of works that lead to good works, not covenants of works for the purpose, covenants of grace that lead to good works, not covenants of works that lead to grace.

That's the picture.

So, what I'm not picturing here is a bunch of perfectly, you know, mannered children sitting around a dinner table with matching plates, all quoting Leviticus and singing holy, holy, holy tonight.

Okay?

Man, if you pull that off, praise God.

Like I'm impressed, I want to observe and hang out with you, right?

No, what I'm imagining is Taco Tuesday, where everybody kind of comes in on a wing and a prayer, and it feels like the whole house is held together with bubblegum and a band-aid.

And you're giving them your undivided attention between all of the spilled drinks.

I'm picturing a place where a new stitch can be placed with an intentional question or an insight from your quiet time in the scripture that morning that you can share with your kids.

I'm picturing a place where they can tell you about something that happened in their day or something that they observed at school that you can reframe with the gospel.

I'm picturing a place where you can begin to repair the tear in the fabric with a confession or an apology.

I'm picturing a real place with real kids and real families gathered together, having real conversations and expressing real interest and bonding with each other and figuring out ways to take those everyday moments and leveraging them for spiritual good.

And this is where I want us to step in as a church.

This is where I feel responsible for us to step in as a church.

Beginning in January, one of the things that we're gonna do is implement something that we're calling the seven family milestones.

They're not you they're not uh unique to us.

We didn't invent this, but we're going to tailor it specifically to the needs of the orchard and orchard families.

And what they'll do is they'll focus on key moments throughout your child's life through seven major milestones so that we can come in alongside you and equip you on how you can disciple and be prepared for the conversations that happen in those seasons of life.

You know, it's one thing, there's a whole set of challenges when you become a new parent.

There's a whole new set of responsibilities when your child is coming of age and can hear the faith, and when then when they respond to the faith, and then when they reach puberty and hit into adolescence, and then when they get their car and when they graduate from high school, these are all major milestones.

And if you're like me, they're terrifying.

This is scary.

I have a 14-year-old in my house, y'all.

She's talking about homecoming, and it scares the daylights out of me.

Like, I need how to process homecoming for my little girl, right?

Like, what are you talking about?

So, you know what we need to do as churches, as a church?

We get you one day a week, maybe.

Maybe twice a week if your kids are able to be a part of OSM or something like that.

The highest leverage move for us is to take the one day a week that we have and figure out how to leverage that at your dinner table.

How can we equip you to come alongside you so that you feel competent and able to be able to answer difficult questions and to be able to teach your children in a way that's understandable to them and understandable to you in a way that's sustainable for your family?

That's what we want to do is be able to come in and ever as your child moves from one season to the next to help you move from one season to the next as a family.

Because your responsibility, your responsibility is not to change the world, it's to disciple your child and then deploy them into the world.

And as you disciple your child and to deploy them into the world, guess what?

The good news spreads.

The kingdom spreads.

Man, I want you to dream with me about this.

Can you imagine what this could look like at the orchard church if we started taking seriously walks in the evening, dinners with our families?

Can you imagine what it would be like for children all across our church to grow up in homes where they knew that their questions were welcomed?

Can you imagine what it would be like to have families here at the orchard where praying with your 14-year-old isn't awkward but normal?

Can you imagine what it would feel like to equip, to give the talk in a way that points them toward Jesus or to do discipline in a way that actually trains and teaches them the gospel in a way that doesn't crush their soul but breathes life into them?

Can you imagine being able to face every major transition in their lives and be met with biblical wisdom and offering a joyful presence?

Imagine parents who don't feel alone and grandparents, singles, and older saints helping younger families make it through this whole fraying fabric of society that scares us so much.

That I want you to imagine what it would be like if just hundreds of ordinary tables that are represented this morning at the Orchard Church became the place where the next generation learns to enjoy Jesus.

It's not a complicated dream, but it's not an easy one either.

That's the dream.

I think it's worth it.

That hundreds of ordinary tables become small outposts of Christ's kingdom in Germantown and in Collierville and in the Mid-South with a butterfly effect that affects the entire world.

Can I pray for us and offer him this?

Heavenly Father, I pray this morning that you would open up our hearts and open up our minds and open up our lives, Lord.

That God, we wouldn't just go through the motion that, Lord, we won't look back on the two decades that we have our children in our home and realize that we've we took them for granted and that they flew past us.

But that Lord, all of us, married and unmarried, all of us, young and old, all of us, with kids at home and with kids that have already been deployed, that all of us would come together to partner with one another, that we would establish the family as the starting ground, Lord, that as the battleground with our enemy, and that we would stand shoulder to shoulder in the fullness of Christ with all of the spiritual armor that you have given, and we would fight for our children and fight for our families and fight for our marriages.

Lord, I pray that you would weave together a strong and lasting church here at the orchard.

And that you would start it by weaving together at the molecular level with strong and healthy marriages and families.

We ask these things now in Jesus' name.

Amen.