A.J. Sparks: The Forgotten Weapon in a Fallen World

I'd like to switch it up a bit today.

Today I'd like for you to stand as we read God's Word.

We'll stand, I will read, I will pray, and then you'll be seated.

So I asked this morning that for the reading of Scripture that if

you're able to please stand as we read the authoritative word

of God. So be in Joshua chapter 24.

Joshua 24 · chapter mention

We'll start in verse 14 here. The living and active word of

God speak now. Therefore fear the Lord, and

serve him in sincerity and truth, and put away the gods

which your father served beyond the river, and then Egypt, and

serve the Lord. If it is disagreeable in your

sight to serve the Lord, Choose for yourselves today whom you

will serve, whether the gods which your father served which

were beyond the river, or the gods, the Amorites, in whose

land you are living. But As for me, in my house, we

will serve the Lord. The people answered and said Far

be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other

gods. He has ears to hear.

Let him hear what God has said. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this day as we come before your word.

We are so thankful for the authority of Your word and the

assurance that we can have in the truthfulness. 7th We pray

that your word would be clearly preached today that Your name

would be glorified. We ask this all in your name.

Amen. Please be seated.

What a great day. People do not care how much you

know and so they know how much you care.

I read that quote last year and a greatly impacted the way that

I do things. I love what I do.

I love who I do with and I love who I do for.

My name is AJ Sparks. I am the youth pastor or the

director of youth ministries is my fourth year doing it.

I also do a couple of other things.

My main job is that I'm a speech and debate teacher at Arrowhead

Christian Academy in Redlands, which is great.

I also teach Bible there for freshmen and I also teach

health. That was an add on this year.

That was not very fun, but I thought it.

And then I'm also a coach. I coach cross country and I

coach swim, which has been a lot of fun.

So those are both seasons and during the summer and then I'm

also getting my master's online to hopefully teach college or

teach college classes for communication studies.

So I love what I do and but again, mainly the reason why I'm

here, I had the youth pastor, the director of youth ministries

here and whilst today won't be a youth update, we'll have that in

August on Wednesday night. I'd be foolish to not talk about

those amazing people in that room for just a little bit.

I love them dearly. We have 36 souls in that room.

Myself and my wife Maddie, we serve alongside 3 couples and

David Lawler. David Lawler is in college right

now. He's great.

We serve alongside Pablo and Mia Thompson and Anna and Franco

boats. And then we also serve alongside

Anna and Ignacio Vargas, who've been there since I was in youth

group, which is great. And then we have other esteemed

people that come every now and then to either do the elders

will come and they'll teach every now and then.

But I, I love it. And then we have the kids in

that roster. We have 27 souls in that roster.

And I, I love them dearly. Every Sunday and Wednesday we

have the opportunity to be able to preach them and it's

wonderful. And so on Sundays, we've been

going over John John's a great book.

I know you guys are going over here.

Hopefully none of the sermons are copied from whatever we did

in there. But John, John's a great book.

We love it. And we just went over John 5.

And in John 5, you get to see how Jesus Christ was

interruptible, and it's beautiful.

Interruption is not a bad thing. You're on a mission towards

something and there's a brief pause.

That's what the word interruption means, a brief

pause from what you're doing. Christ was very interruptible,

but no matter who he was working with, whenever he was preaching,

working on his mission, people came to him and he was

interruptible. And so we talked to the students

about interruption and how well they're able to be interrupted

in their own lives for the sake of Christ, for the sake of the

Kingdom of God, as well as the Sabbath and what it means to

truly rest on Wednesday nights. We've been doing something a

little bit different. We're going over biblical

leadership. I like to call them Worldview

Wednesdays. We basically just go over things

that challenge the worldview of the students in there.

And so we've been going over biblical leadership.

We looked at First Corinthians 11/1.

Paul says imitate me as I imitate Christ.

And so we looked at essential aspects of biblical Christian

leadership and what that means. We first looked at leadership

and commencement. Then we looked at leadership and

conversion, leadership and creed and chaos and charity and

celebration and crisis and controversy and character and

confidence and companionship and charging and confession and

contending and carrying out our mission and in Christ.

It was a wonderful series. And that we're having some guest

speakers during the summer. Then on Wednesdays, we'll start

up the Book of James. We also have events that we like

to do in youth ministry. We try to aim for three big

events each semester, and the goal is to get these kids to be

excited for youth ministry, hopefully, to be excited to

hopefully invite kids to come. That's one of the main reasons.

Second reason is for us to get to know the kids more, of

course, and just have fun with them, for them to enjoy them.

The third reason, which is probably the most important, is

a discipleship aspect. We want to make sure that the

students can see the leaders doing regular things.

How do I respond when I get beamed in the face with the

dodgeball at Sky Zone? Well, they, they can come and

find out. So we, we love our events, but

again, that's not what we'll be discussing today.

So let's discuss some semantics. What I teach, I want to try to

maximize the impact of God's word.

That's Charles Spurgeon said, the word of God is like a lion.

We don't have to defend a lion. All you have to do is let the

lion loose and the lion will defend itself.

So when I try to preach Christ, my goal is to put him on display

as clearly as possible. That is all I try to do.

So as I develop my lectures, I try to develop them based on

strict principles of validity, soundness, and logic of the

truth of God's Word. And so there was a man by the

name of Petrus van Maastricht who wrote a book called The Best

Method of Preaching, and it's a great book.

And in his book he outlines if you want to make a sermon or a

lecture or a lesson, God honoring, what do you have to do

this? First you have to read God's

Word, and then you have to exegete God's Word, and you have

to pull a doctrine from God's Word, and then you have to apply

God's Word. And at the end he has what is

called the stirring of the affection, which is basically

the charge to the congregation in some sense.

So that's my framework, but my ultimate model is Jesus Christ.

Of course, the best speech, the best sermon ever given is

Matthew 5 through 7, the Sermon on the Mount.

That is a master class and how to give a sermon.

There was no OK at your tables. You have a little notepad.

It was Jesus Christ and he taught and people listen.

I talk to my speech students all the time.

You don't need props to be interesting.

You don't need cool statistics to be interesting.

Your content needs to be good. And if your content is good,

people will listen and they'll be engaged and they'll be

changed. So again, this is my framework,

but my ultimate model is Christ. And Christ is a plethora of two

things. First was metaphors and second

was questions. People love metaphors.

And as a communication major, my job is to make sure that people

properly understand what I'm trying to say.

And so metaphors are great. We're comparing something in

some sense, which is why when I tell my speech students, the

reason why we say the word like so much in our conversations is

because you're trying to compare something.

That's all we're trying to do is make our message relatable to

the audience that we're giving it to.

But those words like, and they decrease our clarity.

But Christ used a lot of metaphors and pastors try to use

metaphors all the time. Food metaphors are very common

because everyone loves food, right?

At the common one of sports, people love sports.

The pastor will say, winning someone to salvation is like,

don't want to touchdown. And everyone's like, yeah, I get

that. I love that.

And the other half of the congregation is like, I don't

even play basketball. And if you didn't get that joke,

that one was probably for you. But so some metaphors are great

because again, they communicates for audience on a way that they

can understand. Christ obviously used a lot of

farming metaphors because they were prevalent in that time.

But the second thing that Christ uses questions.

Oh, if we could ask questions like Jesus Christ ask questions.

Just examining his conversations with people and the questions

that he asked. Zach Zender, an author, found

that Christ asked 305 questions in the Gospels.

It's astounding. Questions are so important

because they get us to think. And so I have this chart here.

Back in the early 2000s, there was two men that got together.

There was a theologian and a mathematician.

They got together and they made this chart and they found

basically what it is. It's every single line is when

the Bible references itself in some sense.

They found that the Bible references itself 63,799 times.

It is the most complex book in all of history, 1500 years, over

40 authors, 66 books, 2 testaments, all saying the same

thing about the same person, Jesus Christ.

And so when Christ asked questions, it was all just

leading back to what has been and looking forward to what will

be. And so asking questions are so

incredibly important. And our job as Christians is to

ask good questions. We're to learn how to ask

questions properly. The Gospels again are riddled

with these specifically questions that Christ as drew

people in to what he was doing. And so today I would like to ask

you all a question I think the modern church would do well in

answering effectively. The opportunity to speak before

you today has excited me. I was told that things about 2

1/2 weeks ago and I was like, great, I've already had

something on mine for a while that I'd love to share with the

church. And there's a plethora of things

I could talk about. I could talk about the

pervasiveness of the LGBTQ community and the ideology has

on campus As I could talk to you about how homeschooling in light

of the modern education system is a proper thing.

Or the importance of worship and prayer in the personal and

corporate life. The the sovereignty of God, the

doctrine of election and predestination, the imago dei,

the image of God. I could talk to you about penal

substitutionary atonement. I could talk to you about

spiritual disciplines. I could talk to you about the

cost of discipleship, biblical forgiveness, post Christian

world, living in a post Christian world, along with the

lives of post modernism to talk about spiritual warfare,

biblical manhood, and womanhood. There's Sermon on the Mount

again. It's not even including

exegetical topics like the Sermon on the Mount, Romans 5/8

looking at sin, grace, struggle and assurance, or Acts and their

early mission of the church. And why Acts as the most joyful

book and all of scripture? Because all we see is people

coming to Christ. But I found it necessary to talk

about something else today. Today I wanted to talk to you

all about the family. And as the title of the message

state suggests, the family is the forgotten weapon in a fallen

world. If you receive an outline in the

back, great. I'll go along that briefly.

Hopefully I'll talk slowly enough for you all to understand

it. I don't want to affirm you in

any way, because affirm affirmation without discipline

just breeds delusion. My job is to really get to the

heart of the matter of what family needs to be and why

everyone is involved in this. So as in all important lectures

or topics, begin with an investigation.

Let's do that. What is the family?

If you have to define family on your own, how would you define

family? Are you a part of the family or

are you not a part of the family?

Do you enjoy your family? What kind of family you a part

of? What are you doing to create a

family around you? Is everyone involved in a

family? Is it necessary to start or

create or be involved in a family?

So a couple of questions for you.

What is the current state of your family?

When was the last time that you checked the spiritual condition

of your family? Husbands, are you leading your

homes as Christ lit the church with sacrificial love?

Wives, are you submitting to and respecting your husbands as unto

the Lord? Children, are you honoring your

father and mother because the Bible commands it, or just when

it's convenient for you to get something?

How does your marriage display the gospel to your children into

a watching world? What intentional rhythms of

discipleship exist in your home right now?

What legacy of faith, or lack of it, are you actively leaving for

the people around you and your family?

How do you reflect God's hearts in the way you speak to or about

your family? Are you contributing to the

unity of the home or the division of your home?

Who is in your family that you are currently failing to forgive

or to reach out to? Are there sins in your family

that have been normalized for the sake of comfort?

If your family were the only Bible that your neighbors ever

saw or were able to read, what would they learn about Christ?

And what is 1 habit, tradition, or pattern in your family that

needs to die at the cross? I think these are all good

questions to ask about your family.

Let's get into it. The first blank is the

definition of the family. The family.

What is it? God's first institution for

discipleship, which is designed to reflect his covenant love,

transmit the truth, and picture Christ's relationship to the

church. I'll say that again, God's first

institution for discipleship, which is designed to reflect his

covenant love, transmit the truth in picture Christ's

relationship with the church. As I talked to my youth

students, I like to get them long definitions for things that

we unpacked them. My favorite one we ever did was

about 3 years ago, I gave him a definition for love and love has

God as the primary object. It is expressed in obedience

towards Him and it is sacrificial, continual, and

impartial. So I like to have three parts to

every definition which I have here.

So again, the first institution for discipleship and then again

designed to reflect his covenant love, transmit the truth and

pictures Christ's relationship to the church.

While the biological family serves as the primary context

for these responsibilities. Every believer, every believer,

whether married or single, is called to uphold, support and

live out the biblical vision of family within the household of

faith, the church. Whether you're single, married,

widowed, divorced, or still a child in your parents roof, the

topic of family is not just relevant, it is essential.

God designed the family as the primary institution, again for

forming character, for transmitting the truth and

displaying the gospel to a world that desperately needs it.

But more than that, every believer belongs to a greater

family, which of course is the household of faith in Christ.

We are brothers and sisters, spiritual fathers and mothers,

sons and daughters, not by blood but by the spirits.

So a biblical understanding of the family teaches us how to

love sacrificially, teaches us how to serve faithfully, lead

humbly, submit joyfully, forgive continually.

And these aren't just family values.

These are Kingdom values and things that we all have to take

into consideration. So even if you're not currently

raising children or sharing a home with the spouse, you are

called to strengthen and support the families around you and the

disciple, the next generation. I have countless teachers at

where I work at who are not married and they see the

responsibility as leading the next generation as spiritual

fathers or spiritual mothers to these kids.

And so this, this sermon that this passage, this lecture is

not just for people with rings on their fingers or people with

children. It is for the whole body of

Christ because when families are strong, the church is strong.

And when the church lives as God's family, the world sees a

clearer picture of Christ. So this is necessary.

Now some of you, when you hear the phrase family, I don't

really like that. We don't like that for a couple

of reasons. Number one, our culture hates

family. And maybe that dropped off on

you. I have no idea.

Since 2007, the number of births per 1000 people in the US has

dropped nearly 50% in the United States.

It's a tragedy. China back in 1979 had a one

child policy and they kept it all up to 2015.

And it was so bad that they didn't have to make it.

Now, OK, now you can have two children because the condition,

the economic state in China was not thriving.

So they changed it to 2. And then just six years later in

2021, they changed it to, OK, now you can have more.

And to go with that, an article in New York Times came out where

they found there were more adults in diapers and there were

children in diapers in China. And they live with the

consequences of what they did. Our, our culture hates family.

Secondly, we are single or we've been hurt by family in some

sense. So we think of if I, if I don't

have, if I don't have a husband or a wife or, or if I, you know,

if I've been hurt by my family, I, I'm not really a fan of this

topic. A third one then would be when

you talk about family, people think it's a certain phase of

life, right? You have a one, one son, one

daughter, a dog, white pick, a fence, nice house, all that, all

those sort of things. But that's not necessarily true.

You will always be a part of a family.

You've always been a part of a family.

For those of us who have come to salvation, this extends to all

of eternity, which is a beautiful thing because when God

talks to us about this notion of Him and his redeemed people, he

speaks to us using the metaphor of family, the bride, the

church, and the bridegroom, Christ.

When he communicates to us God the Father and God the Son, this

is family language. So when looking at what I could

speak on today, I wanted you all to walk away knowing more about

Christ than you do about me. I think any good sermon, the

congregation always walk away knowing more about Christ than

they do about whoever speaking about Christ.

And again, this this issue of family is of the utmost

importance because it applies to all of us.

So again, I want to kind of keep with the regular flow of what I

said about we read the passage. We kind of we're not going to

execute it as much. We'll look at different

passages, but we'll pull a doctrine right now.

Then we'll look at some application and we'll have a

stirring of the affections. So let's go to our our doctor

for today. Our doctor for today is that the

family is a divine institution, a divine institution.

It's typically whenever I give a doctrine to my students, there

has to be scripture that backs it up.

So please turn to Ephesians chapter 5, verse 22.

Ephesians 5:22

This is of course, a classic verse on marriage.

But again, to further drive from the point that family is a

divine institution, it's going to get better and better and

more convicting and more convicting because I haven't

even gotten to the main point yet.

The main point is going to be awesome.

And it's something that's been right under your nose forever

and we just, we just don't even know about.

So Ephesians 5, verse 22, we'll start there.

Ephesians 5:22

Those wives be subject to your own husband's ask to the Lord.

For the husband is the head of the wife.

Christ also is the head of the church, He himself being the

Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to

Christ, so also the wives ought to be subject to their husbands

and everything. Husbands love your wives.

Just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her,

so He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of

water, with the Word, that He might present to Himself the

Church and all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such

thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own

bodies. He who loves his own wife loves

himself. For no one ever hated his own

flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ

also does the Church. Go to Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

This is the very beginning of course in Genesis chapter 2 we

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

see in verse 22 through 24 again we get the picture of what

marriage is supposed to be, an institution by God, and more

importantly again as our doctrine stated, it is the

family being the divine institution by God.

Genesis 2 verse 22 says the Lord God fashioned into a woman the

Genesis 2:22

rib which He had taken from the man and brought her to the man.

Verse 23, the man said this is now a bone of my bones and flesh

of my flesh. She shall be called a woman

because she was taken out of a man.

For this reason, the man shall leave his father and his mother

and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

And then go to First Timothy chapter 3.

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

I know we're bouncing around a bit.

The verses are also on your outline in some sense, a couple

of the main passages we're going over.

But First Timothy chapter 3, we get a couple of good things and

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

we get to see the relationship with family to the church.

Because again, working at a school, my job is not to parent

the students that I teach. I can't discipline them, you

know, I can't spank them, I can't ground them.

I can give them attention, but that that only relates to what I

have them at school. I can't do anything else outside

of that. And so my job as a teacher is to

partner with parents and the job of the church, again, a youth

group, right, is to partner with parents because there are

certain things that have been given to the church and certain

things that have been given to the family and there has to be a

distinction. So in First Timothy chapter 3 we

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

verse 4. Is this he?

Must be one who manages Speaking of overseers and deacons,

manages his own household well, keeping his children under

control with all dignity. But if a man does not know how

to manage his own household, how will he take care of the Church

of God? So right there we get to see the

the relationship. Now we get to see the family.

If you can't manage your family well, that will relate to how

you view the church. Go just the page over if it

applies to you. First Timothy chapter 3, verse

1 Timothy 3:14–16

14 through 16, it says, I am writing these things to you,

hoping to come to you before long.

But in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how

one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is

the Church of the living God, the pillar and support, or the

pillar and buttress of the truth by common confession.

Great is the mystery of godliness.

He who was revealed in the flesh was vindicated in the spirit,

seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the

world, taken up in the glory. That is an amazing passage of

Scripture and that is a great summation of Christ's life in

the gospel. But in this I almost called the

sermon the family, the Pillar and buttress of the truth, and

how the family was to model the church.

But after a conversation with a friend of mine, we we came to

the realization that this is not the family, is not the pillar

and buttress of the truth, that is the church.

Again, there are certain things given to the Church and certain

things given to the family, and they have to know their rules.

Again, the Church is the pillar and buttress of the truth.

It is an institution that has been entrusted with the

receiving, guarding and proclaiming of the mysteries of

faith through men and women who are graced and gifted to

faithfully teach these truths. But still, the family plays a

vital role in supporting the Church.

Because the Church is made-up of families, fathers and mothers

are called to teach their children these same truths on a

daily basis as part of their duty to raise children in the

faith. The family exists by a natural

design. So that's why the issue with the

LGBTQ community is not that it's necessarily just sinful,

although it is. It's against a natural cause of

order that God created. Because the family is natural.

The church is a supernatural institution that God has given

to us. It has been established by

Christ for the purpose of God's glory, the making of disciples,

and the propagation of the truth.

This reality of family also teaches us what it means to be a

church. Bodhi Bakkam said that we don't

know what it means to be family and we don't know what it means

to be church. There is a reason we are wrong

on both. If you can't get one, you will

not get the other. It is hard to find somebody, a

strong, saved, God fearing Christian who gets it from a

biblical perspective what it means to be involved in the

local assembly through service and love, but doesn't get the

family thing. Vice versa, it's hard to find

someone who knows how to lead their family and understands

their role in the family but doesn't really get the church

thing. They are dependent upon one

another. A church is only as strong as

weakest family in it and we must understand that we are tied

together and without the strength of one another we

cannot get to places unknown to us as we currently exist.

So when looking at this, I want to drive home a singular point

today. Now we're going to get to the

main thing that I think is going to really revolutionize the way

your family is, and the main point of today is going to be

family worship. The key point to drive home

today is family worship. If the family, it's an

institution, has been given by God divinely to fight off evil

in this world, I believe the best possible way to continue to

grow your family is to partake in what is called family

worship. This idea was popularized by a

man named Joel Beak in recent years, but it's been popular

much before then. But again, it's something that I

think is necessary to bring to your attentions today, and I'll

discuss more about this in a bit.

In family worship, I'm going to emphasize 4 main points.

We're going to look at the, the reading of God's Word, the

instruction of God's Word, prayer after God's Word, and

then singing of God's Word. That that's it.

So if you came today expecting something cool from a guest

speaker or something different and profound, it's the simple

truths. Everyone has goals.

Winners have goals, losers have goals.

If you have the goal of creating a strong family, it's not just

about setting a goal that you think will hopefully one day

achieve itself. It's about the daily discipline

that separates yourself from every other family to actually

do these things. And hopefully today we'll give

you the encouragement to do so. Family worship would be a time

of devotion that you spend with your family every single day,

where the father leads his family in the worship of God.

Of course, when the father is absent, that would then be the

mother. This is a lost spiritual arts

and discipline. This is a full time job for

parents. I always tell people all the

time I have all these jobs, but my primary ministry is my wife

always has been and always will be.

She comes before everything else she has to.

In 1677 there was a church covenant put forth by Puritan

congregation in Dorchester, MA and it included the following

statement. They said we quote, want to

commit to reform our families, engaging ourselves to the

conscientious care to step before us and to maintain the

worship of God in them and to walk in our houses with perfect

hearts and a faithful discharge of all domestic duties,

edification, instructing and charging our children in

households to keep the ways of the Lord.

Family worship has saved millions of children throughout

the years because the necessity and dependence upon God's word

and family seeing their their their necessary command to raise

children. Puritans used to do things

called soul visits back in the 1600s.

And if some families were not practicing family worship, some

pastors and and elders in the church saw it as an abdication

of their role. And what they would do is that

some church would even withhold communion from their fathers

because they did not leave their families properly.

And if you can't lead yourself properly, you definitely won't

be leading your family properly. So if they saw the family not

being LED properly, something has to be going on in your own

life. And if something going on in

your own life, communion will have to be withheld from you

this morning. So what does family worship

consist of? Basically reading, instructing,

praying and singing. If you do it twice would be

great in the morning and at night.

For some families, your schedule only a lots for 10 minutes in

the morning, maybe 20 minutes in the afternoon.

My goal is to give you all the tools and motivation for you

guys to be able to do this. Whether you are by yourself,

living by yourself with the family, just a wife, you're a

widow, you have grandchildren, whatever it is.

This is something that applies to everyone.

But consistency in this is key. So 4 things.

The first one again is daily reading of the Word of God.

Daily reading of the Word of God.

Second Timothy chapter 3, verse 14 through 17 says this.

2 Timothy 3:14–17

You however, continuing the things you have learned and

become convinced of knowing from whom you have learned them, and

that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which

were able to give you wisdom that leads to salvation through

faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by

God, profitable for teaching and reproof, for correction, for

training and righteousness, so that the man of God may be

adequate, equipped for every good work.

We love those last two verses because we use them to memorize

about the authority of God's word.

But the verse before that, Paul's instructing here in

Second Timothy chapter 3, you know these things from your

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

youth. That implies that he was taught

these things from his youth that the word of God has read to him.

You can read a Psalm a day. So, so I'm going to give you a

couple of things within each point, have a reading plan.

Again, one of you can read a Psalm a day with your children,

a proverb a day, whatever it might be.

JC Ryals said, fill their minds with Scripture.

Let the Word dwell in them richly.

Give them the Bible, the whole Bible, even while they are

young. It is so important to read God's

Word and to have a plan as you read it.

You can do the Bible in a year. You know, I, I've only read

through the Bible like twice in my whole life.

I know, I know, I'm young, but I never sat down from beginning.

Then I've had a devotion plan to read through the entirety of

God's Word. I've asked some prominent

pastors, what do you do for devotions and how do you

differentiate between preparing A sermon and doing devotions?

And some of them have told me plainly, I, I just do a couple

of Proverb verses a day and that is enough for me to then go out

and live that faithfully. I mean, whatever if you did read

this morning, whatever you read, like how much of it you actually

remember? Probably not a lot.

As soon as you go out to the world.

I no idea what I no idea what I just did whatsoever.

It's like what James says, you go and you look in the mirror

and then you walk when you instantly forget what you look

like. And so it's not you don't need

that. The issue is not more scripture

or more motivation that the issue comes down to, to

discipline and, and and application of God's Word.

Secondly, involve your family. Involve your family.

So again, in the daily reading of God's Word, have a reading

plan, Involve the family. Everyone should read as soon as

they're able to. Everyone should and you should

struggle with it. I have a student in my class,

his name is Lucas Kiros. He just graduated, he's a senior

and he has special needs. He has autism.

And so the special Ed teacher came to me and said we like to

have Lucas be in your Bible nine class.

Is that OK? Absolutely.

And by God's grace, I have a lot of students that really wanted

to help Lucas and work with Lucas.

And we sat there and had Lucas read scripture because Lucas is

a human being created in God's image and his job along with

everyone else's job in that classroom is to read God's word.

I don't care how long it takes, Lucas is going to read God's

Word, even if it takes, which it always took me whispering it

into his ear so he could say because he cannot read.

It is so important to evolve your family.

And then the third thing, be very simple in your explanation.

This doesn't need to be complex. You don't need to be a

theologian to do this. Be simple in your explanation.

So again, the first one, daily reading of God's Word.

Secondly, daily instruction of God's Word.

Again, daily instruction of God's Word.

Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 6 through 7 says this.

Deuteronomy 6:6–7

These words which I'm commanding you today shall be in your

hearts. You shall teach them diligently

to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your

houses, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down and

when you rise up. So these things should be

instructed to your kids, to your children, to those around you.

Again, if you don't have kids, this can be with a discipleship

group. You guys can do this with

weekly. So again, a couple of tips.

Encourage dialogue around God's Word.

There are multitudes of commentaries.

And again, the issue is that, well, they're expect.

Yeah, the commentaries are expensive.

I get it. John MacArthur, Matthew Henry,

they can have expensive commentaries.

John Gill has a free commentary on every single verse in the

Bible online. Everyone has Internet access,

and so you can access that online for free, and so you can

have these at your hands. Secondly, be pure in your

doctrine. So not only do you have to

encourage dialogue around God's Word, you'd have to be pure and

doctrine, as Titus 27 says, and all things showing myself a

pattern of good works and doctrine showing uncorrupted

sincerity. So where do we peer in our

doctrine as we live these things out?

People will always catch more than they hear always.

And I've taught, I just got done with my school year, taught 206

students and the things they came up and talked to me are the

things that I did, not even the things that I taught.

So people will catch things more than they will hear things.

And then the third tip for that, require attention through

affection. Be passionate about God's Word.

All right, let's do God's Word again.

Let's do family worship one more time, be if you're coming to

that or coming to family worship with that attitude.

But then on Saturday or Sunday, hey, we got a football game,

let's do this. The kids are going to see where

the parents priorities are. Third points is daily prayer

before the throne of God. Colossians 4/2 says to devote

yourselves to prayer, keeping alerts in it with an attitude of

Thanksgiving. Praying without ceasing doesn't

just apply to the individual, that applies to the family.

You can use the axe formula, right?

Adoration, confession, Thanksgiving, supplication.

But communication is always a two way St.

And so if you go to God's word, reading God's word, and God

illuminates truth of His word to you through His word, you must

go back to Him in prayer. When you're reading God's Word,

Jeremiah 1025 says pour out your wrath on the nations that do not

know you and on the families that do not call your name.

If you're not praying with your family, this verse applies to

you. Sheraton Thomas Brooks said that

the home without daily prayer, it's like a house without a

roof, exposed to all the storms of heaven.

It's a tragedy. It's not pray.

So again, a couple tips in prayer.

Be brief. No lead, no, no need whatsoever

to drag this out for 1020 minutes.

Be brief in your prayer with your kids.

Secondly, be buried. Switch it up.

Hey, you're going to pray for this today.

I'm going to pray for this. Then you'll pray for this

tomorrow, we'll switch it up. You pray for this.

You pray for this. I pray for this 3rd have a list.

You need a list when you pray. I have a list with me every

morning when I pray of people that I pray for in this church,

at my work, at my school, you have to have a list that you can

go through and then you add to it.

I'm, I'm a big user of pens. I think you should commit to

your mistakes. But in my prayer journal, I use

a pencil because the needs are always changing and I always

want to make sure that I'm able to pray for people as I should

be. Give assignments again.

This week I want you to pray for this person.

This week, I want you to pray for this person when you come

back. Hey, how did you do praying for

so and so this week and then follow up would be allowed to

follow up with them throughout the week.

How's your prayer life coming? How has your prayer been for

this individual? And these are awkward, hard

conversations. I'm of course being a

communication major, all for face to face communication.

But you have phones. There is no excuse to not

communicate with people. There's no excuse to now hold

people accountable. It's discipline.

That's it. Then the last thing, daily

singing to the praises of God. Daily singing the praises of

God. Psalm 118, verse 15 is a

Psalms 118:15

beautiful verse. This is the sound of joyful

shouting. And salvation is in the tents of

the righteous. The right hand of the Lord does

valiantly. Singing is done in the

synagogues, but is also done in the tents.

So the synagogues was the places of worship, but the households

were in the tents and there was daily singing, daily joyful

shouting from the tents that was heard from the families.

Singing stays with you throughout the day.

It's memorable. You should own a good hymn book

or listen to Christian music with your kids throughout the

day. It's incredibly memorable.

So again, tip #1 you should own a own a hymn book.

Buy one online. We budget for other things.

Budget for a hymn book. Secondly, sing songs that are

doctrinally pure. We have a list here in the back.

You guys can sign up to hear the songs that we sing every week.

An e-mail gets sent out once a week.

These are the songs we're singing on Sunday, and then you

can start to sing them with your kids in the car.

We do for VBS, and those songs are annoying.

These ones are fine. We come up here, we get the sing

God's Word. You get the songs every single

week, and then you can sing those songs.

Third, sing psalms. PSALMS, Psalms.

John Calvin said that Psalms are anatomy of all parts of the soul

and other author said that they are the richest gold mine.

A deep living experiential scriptural piety available to us

today. And then forth sing heartily and

with feeling, sing with passion. Biggest thing that keeps people

from singing. My voice isn't very good.

I can't do it. We had daily sunrise worship at

our school and I sang with other guys at their teachers had to be

there. So I walked up there and there's

other teachers there and I don't sound very good.

I said, it's OK, man. I don't sound good either.

So we both belted it out together, you know, And that

encourage the other students to sing louder and then find their

own voice to sing that the father and mother don't sing.

The children are not going to sing.

You got to sing passionately. So these are essential to to

family growth. Again, these are Kingdom values.

Why are they so important? Colonel Richard Husband was the

pilot in the early 2000s of a spaceship, the Space Shuttle,

specifically Space Shuttle Columbia, which was destroyed

upon re entry in 2003. Some of you may remember it.

I was only two years old, so I don't remember it.

He died in February that year, 2003.

We lost 7 astronauts that day. It was the day of mourning.

And while he was a pilot, while he was on the space shuttle,

what you probably didn't know about him was that he was a

devoted Christian man and that before he left, he handed his

son and daughters 36 taped videos for the 18 days that he'd

be gone, one to watch in the morning and 1:00 to watch at

night. Imagine what those videos mean

to that family now. So a couple of objections,

because there always are objections.

I can't do this. And one reason is time.

Busy schedules, families, not always together all the time.

Everyone has 24 hours. People, everyone has 24 hours.

Time is not found. Time is made.

And you make time for the things that are essential in your life.

It is not an issue of time, it's an issue of priority.

We will do this before we go out tonight.

We will do this before we leave school.

Secondly, people say relationships.

I'm single, I'm widowed, my family's not saved.

I don't have a family of my own. Again, this relates to all

believers. This pattern of family worship

should be your pattern of daily devotion in reading,

instructing, praying and singing.

You were all called to strengthen and support the

families around you to disciple the next generation.

The third one, that would be knowledge.

People say I don't have enough knowledge.

I can't do this. I don't have the knowledge to be

able to do this properly or I'm not a teacher.

Again, there are guides to help you, which I'm going to come to

in a second, but the issue isn't knowledge.

It's it's cowardness in that sense.

Fourthly, people say I don't know where to start.

My family's in shambles. I can't do this.

My, my, my kids won't want to do this.

My wife doesn't want to do this. My husband doesn't want to do

this. No one wants to do this to my

family. Your household is not a

democracy, and it's not a dictatorship either.

Your household should be a theocracy, a house that is ruled

by God, An audience of 1. So many people are paralysed by

the fear of failure, of doing this with their family.

If you don't fail, you're not even trying.

If you want to achieve this style of family worship, you

have to do something you've never done.

If you want to achieve something you've never had, you have to do

something that you've never done.

So 2 great guides that I have for you today.

If you want to learn more about them, we'll come back to the

service for more than welcome to.

This is a great book called Raising spiritual champions been

mentioned here before. It's a great book.

This goes over children in some sense, how to raise children

properly. This is good for anyone to know.

If you're helping out VBS, these are good things to know.

Second one is the the book by Joel Peak.

It's called the family worship Bible guide.

It's about 30 bucks on Amazon and it has commentary on every

chapter in the Bible. So all you do is that you just

read the chapter and then you read what he says.

There's sometimes there's one question at the end, 2

questions, three questions. You can sing the songs we have

here in church and then pray with your family.

The resources are there. The discipline is what we need

and the discipline is hopefully brought by the stirring of the

affection, the motivation. So there's a couple of last

minute applications I think are important for your family.

Number one, you have to have sacred time for family worship,

a time in your day where nothing interrupts this portion of my

day. My wife and I, we like to do

something on Saturdays where between 12:00 and 5:00 we cannot

be interrupted. We are together.

We read God's Word, we read it separately, we read it together.

Then we read a book that we have and then we pray together and

that there's time where that is sacred time.

If something urgent comes up, then we do it in the morning.

But there has to be sacred time again.

It's not found. It has to be made.

Secondly, you have to establish a family mission.

My wife and I did this back before we got married.

And we wanted to come to the cross stick of my family name.

Jessica Lovos in our church graciously gave us a nice framed

portrait of it. But we wanted the Sparks

household to consist of six things that when our children

are raised, they know these six things.

We have to be submissive to the Lord.

We have to be practitioners of truth.

We have to be all things to all people.

We have to radiate with the joy of Christ.

We have to be keepers of God's beauty.

We have to safeguard the family. Those six things are what I want

people to know, that our family, that our kids have values as

they grow up. Even if you don't have a family,

have a personal mission statement for yourself.

Jim, Ron once said that you are the average sum of the five

people you spend the most time with.

Those five people, if you're not in the family, you're not

married, are your family. The five people you spend the

most time with are your family, especially if they are

Christians, because that is a spiritual unity and a spiritual

bond. Victor Frankel said that when a

man can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract

themselves with pleasure. Don't be distracted with

pleasure. Fight deep meaning that is

rooted in God's Word. To have a family mission.

This is what we do and this is how we act.

Third thing, make family a hallmark of your life, a

benchmark of your life. Be obsessed with the idea of

family. The benefits of course, if in

your marriage, marital smoothness, drawing in love,

sharpening one another. And then if you're single

benefits in this or a widow drawing in maturity, increasing

and brotherly love and increasing and accountability

for those around you. And lastly, the 4th point, 4th

application, teach your family to fear the Lord.

Teach your family to fear the Lord.

George Barna has a great book where he outlines 7 things that

kids need to know. He says they need to know

there's one supreme being revealed in the Bible.

All human beings are sinful by nature.

The consequence that verse think could be forgiven and eliminated

through Jesus Christ. The 4th. 1.

The entire Bible is true and is the best moral guide for every

person in all situations. 5th. The absolute truth, absolute

moral truth exists and those truths are defined by God. 6th

The ultimate purpose of human life is to know, love and serve

God with all your heart, soul, might and strength.

And then 7th. Success on earth is best

understood as consistent obedience to God and he then he

walks through all the statistics.

If how many kids do not believe this anymore and how it is

decreased because the family doesn't value these things you

have to teach your family to fear the Lord in closing Psalm

Psalms 11 · chapter mention

Chapter 11 verse one through 3 and the Lord I take refuge.

How again, How then can you say my soul flee as a bird to your

mountain? For behold the wicked bend the

bone. They make ready their arrow upon

the string to shoot in darkness at the upright in heart.

So the the evil world is ready. They're ready to attack the

family. And then verse three, if the

foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

The foundation that has been given to you clearly is the

family, both in the physical, biological and the spiritual

supernatural sense has been given to you by God.

So many people fall in love with the idea of the biblical family,

but they don't fall in love with the habits that create for the

biblical family. Don't fall in love with the idea

of it, fall in love with the habits that create for that

family. Use whatever it takes to get

your family to wherever it needs to be.

In an age where the family, the fact that church is weak, where

do you stand? Your job husbands, your job

mother's is to stand the gap for your family to intercede for

your family on their behalf. Again, using whatever it takes

to bring them to where it needs to be.

And family worship is key to this.

It is what creates the ripples that fuels the tidal waves to

destroy false ideologies and hatred towards the biblical

family. I had a student come up to me

and ask me one time why I teach. I teach speech and debate.

That's the main class, but another class that teaches the

Bible nine class. And so she came to me and said,

why do you teach Bible nine class?

And how did you begin to do it? I said, well, I just applied and

they accepted me. Oh, what?

What are you like your qualifications?

I don't have a teacher credential.

Never been to seminary. I I don't have any.

You've never been to seminary? No, I haven't.

That was a surprise to him from a freshman student.

And she said, so how did you get this job?

By the grace of God, I have no idea.

But I know that I got this job because when I sat down in the

interview, I looked at the principal that in the eyes and I

said my job is to teach the whole student to practice truth.

And that that's why I do what I do, to teach the entire student

to practice truth. And in speech I tell my students

again and again, you never have any idea how powerful your words

are to your family and to those around you.

That same student came up later and asked then, then why?

Why do you do this job? Now I know how you got it, but

why do you do this job? Because I believe that truth

will save the world. The truth of Christ will save

this world. It is the only thing that can

save loss sinners like it did for me.

It is life, and if you think I'm wrong, then you are too

protected and too naive to have any idea for how this world is

even constituted and constructed.

There is suffering in this world and that can be ameliorated or

done away with through the words that we use in our personal and

our corporate life and our family worship that we do.

I think if a student, a different one, that came to me

and said, Mr. Sparks, could you help me write a speech?

She was my Bible nine student. I said yeah, I can do that.

So I asked some questions, what is the purpose?

And she said I'm speaking at my parents divorce hearing.

I need you to help me write a speech for that.

That was the hardest speech I've ever written and helped a

student through. To think the pain that can have

been done away with if this family did worship together, if

the father grabbed his daughter and said let's sit down, let's

read God's word, let's be instructed by God's word, let's

pray after God's word, let's sing praises to God in His Word.

These words that we use are not vain, useless things.

They are who we are. As Luke 645 says, what comes out

of us are these words. So yes, I believe that truth

will save the world and it's our job and everyone's job to

support that. Especially in our families.

We have to speak the truth. A lot of men shout boldly, I

will die for my family and that's great.

But will you change your habits for your family?

Will you do family worship for your family?

Will you change your unhealthy habits for your family?

Start to live for your family. Your greatest challenge is in

anything else other than to believe in Jesus Christ and the

gospel, to believe that Jesus Christ is God.

Could it be that there is a God that died for your sins and your

job is to communicate that with your family?

You must teach this to your children and there is no

formula. Your own discipline, your own

devotion, your own good works will not save your life will not

save your marriage, will not set you free.

There's only one, and it's Jesus Christ.

It's the one who took your place.

He's the one who stood silently on that platform as Barabbas

walked down and he died for your sins.

We are that Barabbas that walks down.

Barabbas never thanked Christ for doing that.

We are saved by the blood of Christ.

He is the one that we live and the one who we do it for.

There's only one. It is still Jesus.

It'll always be Jesus. It'll never stop being the power

of Jesus. His blood is sufficient to save

you, and His power is great enough to sustain you through

every trial, through every storm, and through every

tribulation. So pursue the truth, have an

adventure, stand up straight, articulate yourself, love with

your whole soul, forgive as your Savior has forgiven you.

Understand your calling. Live with exuberant passion,

fear the Lord, keep His commandments.

Do family worship, for this is the whole end of man.

And for this we labor for the glory of our Savior, Jesus

Christ. Let's pray.

God, we thank you for this morning.

We thank you for the opportunity we had to be able to come before

you and discuss the importance in matter of family worship.

You are such a good God and we are so thankful for this

institution of family that you've given to us for us to

understand what we need to do and how we need to live and how

we need to act good. I thank you for the families

that we have in this church. I thank you for those that are

single in this church, for those that are widowed in this church,

for the children of parents and families in this church.

God, I pray that every individual in here would see the

necessity of family and why this goes beyond a physical family.

It's because we have a spiritual family, Father, that that is how

you communicate to us as Father and Son, as Bride and

bridegroom. But I pray that we'd be able to

picture this each and every day to a world, to the picture, that

the family is a divine institution and that the daily

reading of Your Word, the daily instruction of Your Word, daily

prayer before Your throne, and the daily singing to the praises

of Your glorious name would be something that is forever on our

mind. I pray that as a day drawn draws

near of your virtue, Lord, that we'd be found faithful.

That is, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

Lord, I pray that each and every family in here would be bowing

the knee and confessing daily before the throne of grace.

God, we pray that this would be a daily habit of our families,

the OR the daily habits of ordinary households.

God, we pray that this would be some that would transform the

family. They would see the necessity of

doing something that has been here all along, that the

motivation has been given that what lies next is a discipline

to do it properly each and every day.

We pray that You give us grace to do that to God our Creator

and Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, by the power of the

Holy Spirit, be all glory, majesty, demeaning, and

authority before all time, now and forever.

Amen.