Full House - Week 3

You know, this is a perfect segue into, uh, into

our series that we're in right now, Full House, as

we talk about family and the role of family and

what exactly uh that means. And I want to I

want to talk to you, uh just uh, just a

little bit today on what I have seen, what I've

observed in the modern family, a departure of some scriptural

values that that we see in the Bible, and we

have uh made a vast departure from a lot of

those things, uh, in the pursuit of modernity, of being modern.

You know, for for ages, new generations have always thought

that they were smarter, better, more savvy than the previous generation.

That's just the natural way things have gone. And we

often look at those old days and those old ways

of doing things, and we think, oh, wow, our world

is so much smarter because we have so much more technology.

Our world is just so much far ahead, and we

have so much more information than people used to have.

And we embrace those things and we look down on

the way things were because every time something changes in culture,

we assume that it's right because it's new. Come on, somebody,

but I want to tell you that new is not

right because it's new. New is only right because it's right,

and we have to go back to the very foundation

of living in order to know what is right.

Let's pray together.

Father, I thank you for your mercy and your grace

what I thank you for who you are and all

that we can be in you.

I'm afraid that you open.

Our ears to hear, in our hearts to receive today

that you would do miracles in our midst where we

ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen, you got a Bible.

Go to Genesis chapter forty eight, Chapter forty eight, and

we're going to start in verse fourteen. Genesis chapter forty eight,

in verse fourteen, I want to make some clarifications here

as I begin to read. When we read the word

Israel here, it's not talking about the nation of Israel.

It's talking about the man Israel.

There was a person Israel in which the tribes came

out of And you need to understand that because it

gets confusing if you think I'm talking about the nation

of Israel and it's personified in a single person. So

we're talking about the man Israel. As we begin to

read here Genesis chapter forty eight, Verse fourteen, it says,

Then Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it

on Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left

hand on Manasa's head, guiding his hands knowingly from Nasa

was the firstborn. And he blessed, and he blessed Joseph,

and said, God before whom my father's Abraham and Isaac walked,

the God who has fed me all my life long

to this today, the Angel who has redeemed me from

all evil, blessed the lads. Let my name be named

upon them, and the name of my father's Abraham and Isaac,

and let them grow into a multitude in the midst

of the earth. Now, when Joseph saw that his father

laid his right hand on the head of Ephraim, it

displeased him, so he took hold of his father's hand

to remove it from Ephraim's head to Manassa's head. And

Joseph said to his father, not so, not so, my father,

for this, for this one is the first born, put

your right hand on his head. But his father refused

to say, I know, my son, I know he shall

become a great people. He also shall be great. But

truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and

his descendants shall become a multitude of nations. So we

bless them that day, saying by you, Israel, I will bless, saying,

may God make you am and Manassa. And thus he

set Efrim before Manassa. Then Israel said to Joseph, behold,

I am dying, but God will be with you and

bring you back to the land of your fathers. Now

it's easy to not completely understand what's happening here, And

when I first read this passage of scripture, I found

it a little perplexing. And what's happened here is they

have brought the grandchildren into to the grandfather to have

the generational blessing bestowed upon them. And in that day,

the customary thing was for the oldest to get a

larger portion.

Of the birthright.

So when the birthright was if there were two children,

when the birthright was divided, the older child would get

two thirds, the younger child would get one third.

It was just that eldership.

Birthright, and that's the way that things had always been,

and it hadn't been questioned. Now he brings his children

in to his father, and his father does something that

is completely out of the norm. He takes his right hand,

which it's called the right hand of blessing. The generational

blessing was bestowed with the right hand, and he took

his right hand and he put it on the younger,

and he took his left hand and he put it

on the older, and he performed a cross blessing, a

blessing that that crossed all heritage, all all tradition, everything,

And this upset Joseph. It upset him because he didn't

understand that God was trying to do a new thing.

When we look at this passage of scripture, God is

speaking to us and he's saying that there have some

thing there have there have It's that Alaska coming out.

Amen. There are some things that have happened.

That have slowly integrated into our culture of family, into

society that we have just accepted is right because they're

the new things, and they're the way things have been done.

For a long time now.

These things have been done this way pretty much since

most of us have been alive, and we just go

along with it because it seems to be the natural

cultural trend of the way families work. But it's opposite

of the way scripture has taught us. When we look

at at the course of family, the course of the

family unit, we see some alarming things happening beyond just

the absence of parenting. I want you to hear this

from me right now, when everybody look at me right now.

Kids are not worse.

Now than they used to be. Not many amens there.

Kids are not worse than they used to be.

Kids are still the same as they that Already people's

faces are already getting read.

It's okay.

Knew that I knew this was what I was coming

back to. Amen, I knew this was that message that

I was preaching when I came back. So it's why

I almost extended my trip for a week so Clay

could preach it. But we have relegated parenting to many

different organizations. We have relegated education to the school system.

We've relegated spiritual development to the church. We've relegated sexuality

to their friends and their teachers.

Who don't have the same values as we have.

And when we look at the trends, and we look

at the things that are happening in America, especially in America,

but these things are also global to some extent too.

We see some troubling things.

Do you realize that right now the birth rate is

below replacement rate. In other words, people are dying every

year faster than people are being born.

That's alarming. We also see.

A trend where people are getting married later and later

and later in age, and many people are choosing to

never be married and go through life in a single capacity. Now,

I will say that the Apostle Paul did speak about this,

and he said that that is the better way to

do it. But I want you to understand that it's

not a spiritual reason why people are doing it, Amen,

It's because we've been captivated and captured by other things,

the pursuit of money, the pursuit of wealth, the pursuit

of independence, the pursuit of those things. A pushing back

of what the world is called the patriarchy of a

society where a loving man who loves his wife leads

the family and they complete one another by being in

partnership together, not a domineering, abusive relationship that's wrong even

by Bible standards, but in a true partnership where the

man becomes the spiritual lead and the spiritual head of

his home, and.

He sets that foundation, and he sees a vision for

where his family wants to go.

That is the scriptural way of things, and it's not

it's not misogynistic in any way.

It's the divine creation.

And listen, I want you to understand that even if

I was a woman, I would want to be led

by someone who knew where they were going and that

I could come alongside and complete that destiny and that

purpose and we could do something together.

But we have come so far from.

That, and we've pushed back on those traditional values because

the enemy has developed this new way of thought that's

supposed to be better. Because it's new, it has to

be better. But it's time for us not to just

take things as they are and the way society teaches

things the way they should be. But we go back

to scripture and we begin to build our families and

form our families based on scriptural foundation, not on just

the process and the way that we think should be.

Because somebody wrote a book about it, I want to

tell you something.

The person that wrote those books, never mind, I'm not

even going to go there. They wrote now, listen, they

wrote those books to get your money.

They didn't write those books to help you if they

wrote that book to help you, they'd probably give it away.

Amen that they'd probably give it to you rather than

selling it to you for four.

I went to the bookstore the other day and a

book with.

Forty nine ninety nine fifty dollars for a book, and

I read the back of it. This the kind of

the you know, the summary and about the author, and

I thought, oh, my gosh, I already know more than that.

Maybe I should write one for sixty dollars.

When we look at at those birth rates, there's something

else that's very alarming. Did you realize that that the

birth rate among the Muslim community is two point nine

children for family the birthrate among Christian families is two

point six And you're like, oh, that's does that's half

a kid, pastor that's not a big deal. But youreize

if you take ten women, that's an additional three children

being born to Muslim families than Christian families. That the

Muslim birth rate indicates that within twenty years they will

be the largest faith group on the face.

Of the planet.

It is a slow, steady decline and erosion of the

principles of God and the family. Now I know you're

sitting there thinking, oh no, I'm counting my kids and

I didn't have enough, and now I'm old and I

can't go back. Sometimes we just miss it, amen, I

mean you know, and sometimes y'all just the first one

was so bad you didn't want to have another one, Ashley.

My wife's an only child too, so she must have

been a handful of Amen. I got a sister who

came along sixteen years later, So I guess I got

worse the older I got.

I don't know. But when we begin to look at

the shaping.

And molding of the family unit, another alarming statistic is

the devolving and the absence of family owned businesses, And

you're like, oh no, what is.

See.

It used to be that families built lineage and heritage,

that people would would create something that their children would

grow it would grow into and continue to move into

and continue to work towards and do those things. But

now we have this new mentality where we carve out

a living and then we look at our children and

we say, okay, listen, you go do whatever you want

to do.

You go be whoever you want to be. You just

go explore the world.

And find the thing that you want to do and

have your freedom and you're your own person and listen,

there is some truth to that, but at the same time,

there's a very destructive process in that, because as parents,

we should be creating an effort as a family unit

that moves us towards a goal. We should be creating

something that's so synergistic in our families that we're moving

in the same direction, and our children want to be

part of that because they have been I'm going to

use the word indoctrinated in those things that we're doing,

and that they're so hungry and so passionate about that

vision that has been created for our families that they

are quite hot passionate about completing.

The things that we start. And when we.

Look at the devolving of that particular thing, it means

that probably men are not leading the way they should.

It means that that we have become so preoccupied with just.

Simply making ends meet that we have forgotten to build.

Something that our families can all work together for and

work towards and be passionate about and shape culture rather

than being shaped by culture.

In Romans chapter two, verse twelve.

Romans Chapter twelve, verse two, it says, and do not

be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the

renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is

that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. That

we shouldn't just take society's norms and cave into society's norms,

but we should change those norms based on the scriptural

principles and the spirit of God that lives on the

inside of us.

It's time that we.

Push against these things that look normal. As a matter

of fact, the Bible says, we shouldn't look normal, that

we should look a little peculiar, that we should stand out,

That we should begin to carve out those things that

we should begin to carve our place in society, and

our families should begin to work together, moving together as a.

Unit to affect change in the world.

Did you know that the majority, the majority of last names.

You know, back when there wasn't a very high population,

people didn't need last names. There's probably only one Jeremy

in his town. But now we need last names. Do

you realize that most of your last names came from

one of two places, either your occupation or a family trait.

In other words, you know, maybe the Browns were called

the browns because of dark complexion, or the whites were

called whites because they had beautiful white hair, or the

stewards were called the stewarts were called the stewarts because

we worked in a service capacity, serving other people. Those

traits were transferred down because it was the expectation that

we would continue to pioneer and work and move in

those areas. And now we're scattered. My daughter lives in California.

I have another daughter that chose to live at home.

Not being critical of either of those things, but that's

something that just twenty thirty years ago you saw very rarely.

But it is the new culture that has created that

spreading of families, and we've stopped working together, moving as

a as a singular family unit, to do something fantastic,

to do something great, to do something.

Powerful for God.

In Joshua, chapter twenty four, verse fourteen, it says, now therefore,

fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth,

and put away the gods which your father served on

the other side of the river and in Egypt.

Serve the Lord.

And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord,

choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. I'm

getting to that famous part of the scripture. I'm getting

to the one that we like to quote in church.

But listen to what he's saying. He says, Listen, there

are some things that have devolved around us. There are

some things that are going crazy around us.

And you have to choose.

You have to choose the Lord, or you have to

choose just the status quo and the way things are going.

The status quo will keep you right where you are.

The status quo will keep you broke, busted and disgusted.

The status quo will be a prison. And you won't

realize you're in a prison until you've died and gotten

to heaven and you look back and you realize the

destiny that God has for your life and for your

children and for their lineage. And then you will wake

and you say, oh my goodness, I missed the boat.

He say, Listen, there is a scriptural way. There is

a way the Lord does things, and the way the

Lord has always moved when we look.

At scripture is through the family unit.

That is God's design is to work through the family unit,

and then through.

The local church.

It's the family unit and then the local church the

family unit, and then the local church the family unit,

and then the local church.

That's God's plan for the earth.

You guys should be feeding the hungry as a family unit.

Come on, somebody. You guys should be evangelizing. You guys

should be doing small groups. That has nothing to do

with the church. We're just here as an aid. We're

just here's a supplement to try to help you be

everything that you are.

That's our job. But your family needs to be the sinner.

It needs to be the focal point of spirituality in

your life. Needs to be your family and your children

should get spiritual development, spiritual insight, and they should see

the vision and feel the vision that's flowing through your

family for your life and their lives. It's an empowering

thing that families in America have lost because we have

been relegated to just simply keeping our children alive until

they're eighteen and can go discover who they're supposed to be.

And I want you to know God has so much

more for you as a parent. God has so much

more for you as a.

Son or a daughter.

He has a mandate on your life to come together

as a unit and change the world around you. Parents,

Stand up and begin to parent again.

Stand up and take back control of your children's education.

Listen, I know the school sends you four hundred emails

a week.

Read them all and know what's going on in your

child's school. Know who your children's friends are. Know what

they're watching on social media, Know what they're doing on

their computer, Know who they're texting and what they're texting.

Know those things. It is not an invasion of privacy.

Now your kid's going to say it is. But their kids.

Know those things.

Because it's your job to guide them, to shape them,

to protect them, to develop them, to show them the way,

to point the way towards destiny, because you see their

gifts and their passions, You see those skills that they have.

You know those things because you're with them every day.

And reassert yourself into their lives and begin to scope

and to begin to plan a destiny so powerful with

your family that it shakes the kingdom of darkness.

Now, therefore, fear of the Lord, serve him in sincerity and.

In truth, and put away the gods which your father

served on the other side of the river and in Egypt.

Serve the Lord and if it seems evil to you

to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom

you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served

that were on the other side of the river, or

the gods of the Amorites and whose lands you dwell.

But ask for me and my house pastor glad you

guys can come and get ready, then, he says, But

as for me and my house, As for me and

my house, not not your neighbor's house. Not your neighbor's house,

Not those people down the street that get people in

and out of their driveway all hours of the night.

Not them, not your co worker's house. That's not your responsibility.

It's your responsibility to tell your story and answer the

questions when they ask questions, and lead them to Jesus.

That's he says.

As for me in my house, he says, I can't

shape who everybody else is going to serve. I can't

shape who everybody else, what they're going to do, and

what they're going to choose. I can't do those things,

he says. But as for me and my house, we will.

Serve the Lord. He says.

All these other things, all these other things that are

departures from faith, all these other things that society has

told us that matter, all of these things that society

has convinced us that if we do those things, that

we're somehow being bad parents. I'm not going to get

into discipline. I'm not going to get into all those things.

But they're a scripture about discipline. There's scripture about all

those things about how to how to lead your children

there there. You need to you need to get into that,

and you need to read those things, and you need

to know those things.

Amen. I'm not gonna have whooping classes.

I mean, I'm not gonna show you how to whoop

your kids or nothing like that. But you need to

know what the Bible says about discipline. You need to

know what it says about the proper relationship between husband

and wife and children.

You listen.

You should never you should never choose your children over

your spouse. The marriage relationship comes first. It's first, it's

the most important. Then your children. Our society is sick

with children worship. And I'm not preaching that next week,

so y'all can come back. It's okay, not going there

next week, so it's safe.

I'm not going to.

Preach about the sinister under belly of travel ball.

I'm not gonna do any of that. But what you

do have to do today is you have to decide.

Do you have to You have to decide if you're

just gonna simply go along.

And lay your right hand on the older because it's.

The way things have always been done in your left

hand on the younger, or if you're gonna stand up.

In the defensive posture.

And begin to fight for your family, begin to fight

for their destiny, begin to fight and carve out away

where your family is changing the culture around it, where

you don't just take the status quo as the truth,

but you stand up and say for for for me

and my house, we're gonna serve the Lord. We're gonna

do what God has called us to do. And it

may not look conventional, it may not look like everybody else.

God may not be calling you to have the biggest

house on the block, Come on, somebody. He may not

be calling you to drive the nicest cars because he's

calling you to fund missionaries all over the world.

Or he's calling you to the mission field and he's.

Given you a ten year window to get ready, and

you need to save, and you need to be disciplined

so that you can go and do those things that

God's calling.

You to do.

You need to get alone with God fathers, not godfathers.

You need to get.

Along with God.

Come a father, and you need to pray. And when

God speaks something to your heart, you get your wife

and you go in the prayer closet together and you

pray and say, is this what God wants for our family?

Is this what God is telling us, what God is asking,

what God is requiring of us? And you come together

and you say, yes, this is what God's saying. And

then you on board your children and say it doesn't

matter what you want, this is what God is calling

our family to do. And when you're doing what God

wants you to do, he'll take his des He'll put

them in your hearts. He'll put them in your children's hearts,

and he'll make his desires their desires, and they will

love what God is calling your.

Family to do and to be.

But if we keep going the way we're going, we're

going to lose the battle simply because other religions are

having more children than we're having, and because we're not

passionate We're fighting an adversary this mean and despicable. We're

fighting an adversary who pulls no punches. We're fighting an

adversary who uses good people to do bad things. We're

using an adversary who is lulling the church to sleep.

And today he's ringing the bell and he's saying the

status this quote is not good enough. We've got to

look different. We gotta be different, we gotta do different.

And that rests on your shoulders, Mom and Dad, rest

on your shoulders to decide what that is for your family,

to not just keep going, but to see who God

is and completely convey that to every generation of lineage

that you have. This is a clarion call. This is

that pivotal moment in your family right here this morning,

through this message, choose who you will serve. You can

continue to serve a picture of a modern family that

devolves into lifelessness and powerless existence. Or will you lead

a family that champions the calls of Christ where He

sets you with your family as a city on a hill,

so that other families navigate their life by what.

They see in you.

Choices yours, everybody staying with me all over the building.

You know, I believe there's some I believe there's some

parents here this morning. I believe there's some some parents

here this morning that that need to come to Christ.

But maybe.

Maybe you're saved, but your faith doesn't lead the way.

Maybe you're saved, but you've allowed addiction. You've allowed sin

to come into your life and bring a separation between

you and the Lord. And you're having a hard time

hearing from him to even know how to lead your family.

You're consumed with worry and guilt and all of those things.

And today the Lord.

Wants you to come back to him, to recommit your

life to him this morning, because the mandate on.

Your life is too important to just continue to go

through the motions. Or maybe there's some parents or children

here that you've never given your life to Jesus. You

never ask him to forgive you of your sin to

be the Lord of your life.

The greatest thing you can do for the legacy of

your family just to turn your heart over to the Lord.

Listen, young people, you already need to start thinking about

that next generation that'll come from you. Begin to live

your life for Christ right now so that you're not

trying to catch up to your children one day. But

if you're here and you want to come back to Jesus,

or you want to trust Jesus for the very first time,

you're going to count to three with every eye open,

every head looking around. I believe a revolution is coming

to the American family. I believe that that God is

speaking to husbands and fathers all over, especially this country,

about their families. God's speaking to mothers about their children parenting.

If that's you on the count of three, I want

you to step out and move. When I hit three,

you guys just start playing. We're gonna worship, then we're

gonna baptize. On the count of three. If that's you,

I want you to step out and come. Don't wait

and look around, you just come. I want to have

I want things right between me and the Lord so

that I could leave my family. On the count of three, one, two, three,

step out and come right