REALATIONSHIPS BY DEISGN - TOGETHER BY DESIGN

REALATIONSHIPS BY DESIGN FAMILY MONTH 2015 SILICON VALLEY CHRISTIAN ASSEMBLY

REALATIONSHIPS BY DEISGN - TOGETHER BY DESIGN

Deuteronomy 6

INTRO

Last time we looked at the stunning way in which Jesus gets behind the question and

the questioner to expose the human heart and draw us to ask the right questions, the

kingdom questions that lead to truth

and life. How much can I get away with

in marriage, people were asking. Do we

have to hold to old ways or can we

redefine this? Come on, we have to be

practical, be realistic, be fair. What

you’re asking, even if it’s true, it’s too

hard. Jesus turns us back to the

beginning, to the creative order and to original design: “Have you not read that

he who created them from the beginning

made them male and female, 5 and said,

‘Therefore a man shall leave his father

and his mother and hold fast to his wife,

and the two shall become one flesh’?

Notice in the world of confusion over marriage and family, then and now, Jesus is

plain and brilliant. Have you not read that He who created them said? At the heart of

marriage, at the center of family, at the core of discipleship and at the basic ground

level of being human is really the question, “Who says so?” Who gets to decide the

design, the value, the goal, and the very purpose of our gender, our marriages, of

our families? The Federal or State governments? Corporations? Communities or

committees? Academia or pop culture’s spirit of the age? You and me? Or the

Designer Himself?

Have you not read what God spoke? Jesus takes us back to Genesis 2, to Eden where

God created—gender, marriage, sexuality, relationships, and family. We start with a

personal Creator and we start with the understanding that God speaks, that He and

His design are knowable and do not change. Notice how Jesus doesn’t have our

modern hang-up regarding all of this—He is speaking thousands of years later but

does not reduce, redefine or try to explain away what was said in the beginning. The

design has not grown outdated nor was it merely a product of Moses’ day and

limited understanding, a Bronze Age myth to explain creation and family dynamics.

Jesus isn’t embarrassed by all of this either. He doesn’t say, “Well, I know it’s old-

fashioned and simplistic to think God created roles,” or “Yes, I know what you’re

thinking but see back then they weren’t as informed as we are, the poor knuckle-

dragging chaps took it all so literally, like God really created people and defined

marriage so narrowly!” Jesus points us to original design and says it is for all people

at all times.


We started with gender because that’s where our Creator started. We started there

to understand that our maleness and femaleness has been divinely crafted and that

this design is full of meaning and purpose. Gender is binary and complementary. It

is not an obstacle to overcome or erase, or a culturally-fabricated structure in need

of more flexibility and redefinition. Neither is at an afterthought—you don’t just

happen to be male or female but were created, handmade as such, with immense

purpose for kingdom work. You relate to God not generically but through the

gender He made you with designed roles.

He who created them from the beginning made them male and female.

But then into Eden came a voice seeking to undermine that creative purpose in

distinction and union, “Who says so? Who gets to decide? Are you going to listen to

that or be bold and decide for yourself?”

When God’s blueprint is suppressed the landscape becomes a frenzied chaos of

falling dominos—gender dysphoria and usurped roles leads to the breakdown of

the complementarian harmony of male and female, that disruption of one-flesh union

in marriage in turn rips families apart, our homes becoming battlefields.

Charles Colson has written, "The family,

the most basic unit of civilized society, is

the institution that may well be under the

greatest attack in society today.” While I

agree with Colson, our current crisis, as

profoundly disturbing as it appears, is

but a new gloss on much older issues.

Just open your Bible. From the first family

on: fratricide, intrigue, lusts, betrayals,

murder, hatred, infidelity, deception,

favoritism, alienation, confusion, and

discord.

There are staggering family stats that I’ll leave you to Google. Check out the pretty

astounding out-of-wedlock birth rate in our country, the abortion rate, sky-high

divorce numbers, domestic abuse, and the Millennial decline in marriage. And then

check out other industrialized countries as birth rates fall and divorces rise.

Or skip the stats and just look around your home. Colson continued, “Unless we insist

on counseling and training before marriage and then provide a full range of services to

build and strengthen the family thereafter, the church cannot say it is making disciples and fulfilling the Great Commission." In a very real sense he is right, if we’re not

making sure Christian families flourish (long before you sitting here get married)

we’re not really making disciples.

Endless books and websites point us to having better families—today we want to

turn to see what it might be to have godlier ones. Christ is the best place for

families to find not only help but ultimate meaning. God has an answer to end


the confusion and redeem and nurture the very families He created and recreates to

be the people He designed and called us to be. Let’s dig in to His design.

Let’s turn to Deuteronomy 6 as we read together, as a family.

TOGETHER UNIQUELY

The construction of the family is pre-

fall and not born out of sin or human

ingenuity. It was uniquely formed by

God with both a beautiful

independence and interdependence.

INDEPENDENCE

First, the nuclear family is created – a

man and woman are joined in

marriage—two become one in a re-

union of flesh and souls. And from this

union a new family is birthed. They

separate from the family of origin—

leaving father and mother to become

in most cases fathers and mothers themselves. The created families go forth to create.

This new family begins in covenant—the sacred promise to be one unit means it

cannot hold that same allegiance to others, even their own parents. Jesus tells us

nothing can rightfully separate this union—nothing should disturb the harmony. This

makes each family unique—distinct. It is its own unit of image-bearers creatively

living out His mission.

This family unit is also unique by its personnel. We know that God uniquely crafts

us – we are hand-knit in our mothers’ wombs the Psalmist tells us. God knows us

intimately not as mass-produced beings but as beautiful one-offs. Yet while we are

each created uniquely we are not created individualistically—meaning God didn’t

just make you special but especially created you in and for a family. Think about that.

It’s obvious but amazing—He knew how many siblings you needed, and what

gender each should be, what your parents needed, and exactly who and how many

lives needed your parents. No matter how odd or annoying, that brother is there for

a reason. A divine reason. God has assembled a dream team in your home—uniquely knitting you and uniquely knitting your family together. This week

we’ll know who exactly God designed for our family and for whom He designed us.

There is also INTERDEPENDENCE. In what we read, Moses is looking at these

brothers and sisters he loves but knows are prone to wander from the Lord. He won’t

go on with them into Canaan so he leaves ringing in their ears the most fundamental

commandment. And these are addressed to community. Hear therefore, O Israel, and


be careful to do them, …that you may multiply greatly, as the LORD, the God of your

fathers, has promised you.

Just as the marriage covenant seals the unique family, so too God makes covenant

with the family at large—His people. First Israel and then the Church, both uniquely

hand-knit and called by God to be

united together as His family.

And this is unique in Christianity—

throughout the Bible, across

testaments, God is relating to

humanity in familial terms. He talks of

being married to Israel, of Israel

being His sons and daughters. Here in

Deuteronomy, God is addressing His

children and telling them how to be

His family so that they and their sons

and grandsons can continue to live in

harmony with Him. He is the God of

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’s families.

We come to the Lord’s prayer and of

all the ways Jesus could have taught us to address God—it would have been correct

to use Master or Lord or Creator, but He starts with our Father. You might take for

granted how staggeringly bizarre this language is when compared to world

religions. We are not outside boarders trying to gain an audience with the King by

our good deeds. We are children invited into the throne room with unlimited access

to our Father.

It gets better. Isn’t it just stunning that the Son of God stepped into His creation as a

son of Joseph? Our God came into the world through family, grew up experiencing

family. He was the oldest brother to siblings. And then in the most stunning language

we learn that He came giving to those who receive Him and believe in His name the

right to become children of God (Jn. 1:12-13). This is why those sitting next to you

are your brothers and sisters.

God is a God of family. You were uniquely hand-crafted into a particular family

formed and fused together by God—both your nuclear family and God’s family. Our

Father designed and works through families, choosing to reveal and relate to

families and invites us in to His family. The Creator both designed family and relates

to us through family, uniquely.

TOGETHER IN CHRIST

And in this great commandment we see God’s purpose for families and the means by which they will be sustained and flourished. The family is God’s chief relationship

for teaching and living in the Lord.


Notice here that knowing the Lord and pursuing Him is personal but not

individualistic.

6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach

them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house,

and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

You transmit what you treasure. You are passing on something to those in your

family. You just are. Everybody is. We transmit what we treasure. We pass on what

we're passionate about – whether that is passionate love/admiration or passionate

hate/disgust. In Hye has quickly learned to love the Cowboys and hate the Eagles.

I’ve already bought my son toy motorcycles, consistently taken him to the beach,

and shared the food that I love. And I’ve naturally read Scripture and prayed with

Him.

Charles Swindoll said, "Whatever else

may be said about the home, it is the

bottom line of the life, the anvil upon

which attitudes and convictions are

hammered out. It is the place where

life's bills come due, the single most

influential force in our earthly

existence. It is at home, among

"family" members, that we come to terms with circumstances. It is here

life makes up its mind.”

Our job in families is to be

transmitting Christ constantly, consistently. This means that parents are the

primary theological teachers of their children, the priests in the home. We are here

to equip you saints for ministry in your homes. Working with at-risk youth in

Hollywood, my ministry partners and I had to constantly fight off feelings of futility—

we had one to two hours a week with these children and no matter how amazing that

time was they were going back to spend the overwhelming majority of their life

absorbing lessons from broken, lost homes. The main transmission is at home.

In Hye often protests laughingly—“I’m not a teacher.” Trust me, learning Korean

from her is tough. Each mispronunciation has her laughing right in my face. But she

is a teacher—she has to be—with me and our kids she is either transmitting Christ or

something else. My parents are trained teachers but I don’t really remember lessons

or lectures from them. Growing up, the most impactful times my father taught me

about girls and relationships, Jesus, and what it means to be a Christian man were

outside throwing the football, over long dinners together and even longer drives

listening to music and talking out the secrets of kingdom life.


In God’s design, these teachers are necessarily female and male. To pretend we

don’t need both a mother and father, though every human was produced by this set,

is an attack on the design of families. We need these Gospel lessons from mothers

and fathers. I also don’t think it is a stretch to say that children are able to teach their

parents and definitely each other—though there is not the role of authority,

nonetheless children can be teaching as they daily display and share Christ.

Look how natural and consistent this should be—in your home, outside your home, throughout the day. And teaching Christ should be visible—I don’t think this

means just painting Bible verses on your wall or hanging Joshua’s declaration on your mantle—our families should be able to see Christ on us, in us. He is written

on our hands, in our eyes, and on our houses. What we do with our hands—our work,

hobbies, effort, what we do with our eyes—our vision, our goals, our desires—and

what our house is built on—should all be teaching Christ. When people enter our

homes Christ should be palpable. Is your home like this?

LIVING CHRIST

Moses tells God’s family that they are to keep His commandments all the days of your

life, and that living out God’s way of life leads to fulfillment. Verse 16 tells us You

shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God. And most importantly

in vv4-5 we have the Shema which is daily recited by faithful Jews—“Hear, O

Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all

your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

Hear means to obey – to diligently live out

what is true and right to the Lord and

consistent to His character so that we can be in communion with Him. This means to be

His people in all we do and are. As our

families teach Christ in all we do, this is

never separated from obeying and loving

God in all we are. In Christian homes there

is never simply cold obedience nor is there

emotion-driven love. But soaking and

lubricating all we do is sacrificial, joyous

Christian love that wills to love.

The formation of a Christian home then

is the fruit of a Christian heart. Your family is formed out of what has formed your

heart. Most of the time it will not, cannot, be more or less that what is in your heart.

This is why a Christian family is marked by worship—for good or ill. Notice,

Israel is moving into a hostile land—not merely physically hostile, but theologically, culturally. Israel will be surrounded by idols. 10 “And when the LORD your God brings

you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to


give you—with great and good cities that you did not build—and when you eat and are full, 12 then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of slavery. 13 It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve

and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the

peoples who are around you— 15 for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God

In family, there are voices calling us away from God in both the best of times and the

worst of times. Out of total grace, God is blessing Israel with overflowing riches that

they did not work for. They will be secure, established, they will be OK after for so,

so long not being OK, of being slaves. God is telling them, don’t go back to being

slaves, to minds and hearts locked up sin. Keep following me daily, He tells us, or

you will slowly move away.

As Ayn Rand wrote, “The uncontested

absurdities of today are the accepted

slogans of tomorrow. They come to

be accepted by degrees, by dint of

constant pressure on one side and

constant retreat on the other — until

one day when they are suddenly

declared to be the…official

ideology.”

Our families are surrounded by

absurdity that preys on our hearts and

if it has its way will destroy us. Absurd

lies of independence and

individualism, of me first, of busyness, fear, anxiety, pressure, of appearance, of

redefinition. Simply, not living Christ daily. Are these contested in your home or

silently gaining ground?

Families were designed to have one God. Does your family have more; little

functional gods? What do our children hear us talking about the most? Though we

say God first do we in actuality promote homework first? Do they hear us not loving

each other? Do they hear us worried mostly about money? Where is the best of our

families’ time, money and energy going? What do neighbors hear us complaining

about the most? What do we fear the most? What do we think our family simply can’t

live without?

Fill in this sentence: If my family/parents/spouse would only ___________ then I’d be

happy. There you will find your idols.

And take it one more step—when you’ve uncovered those idols ask yourself a tough

question—What are they promising? What does having a perfect family as you’ve drawn it up give you? Notice God is promising something here: for our good

always, that he might preserve us alive, as we are this day. 25 And it will be


righteousness for us… God holds out the promise of life and life abundantly to our

families. So which promise is more appealing to your family?

God is a jealous God because like a husband fused to His wife or a Father so deeply

loving His child, God can’t stand when the ones He loves are abusing themselves in

disordered loves, filling families with functional gods. He is in covenant with us and

is righteously jealously protective for His loved ones keep their first love.

In short, is there a kingdom clash in your heart? Then there is one in your

home. A God kind of family is built on a redeemed life together in Christ and

powered and energized by the Holy Spirit in obedience to the Word of God.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all

your might.

TOGETHER IN MISSION

In the Christian family then nothing just is, but every moment is a chance to more

fully experience, teach, live out, obey, and love Jesus Christ. The tight bonds and

frequency of family give us the best means for regularly sharing, exemplifying, and

practicing Christ-likeness. They also

give us natural accountability—your

sin is on display and your blind spots

are revealed to people who see your

unglamorous, unmasked self. We are

vulnerable in our homes—we can’t

hide for too long. Your family knows

the real you—and that can be utterly

painful but it also offers immense hope.

God made families as vehicles to

know Him and follow Him, to teach

Him and live Him out. He created His

image-bearers to accomplish the

Creator’s mission on His behalf.

“Through marriage and family, God enables human beings to participate in His

creative activity and redemptive purposes.” (Stassen and Gushee)

What this means is that we are united in family for mission—there is a great

reason your family in on this earth. We are not a family who happens to all be

Christians individually working out our faith, but Christians uniquely united by God

so that together we can express and complete His purposes on the earth. That’s

pretty huge.

As I’ve thought about this over the last month it sounds like only a category

difference but it is massive. For example, is a successful team one of individual

players all working on their game or a single entity devoted to the same mission, all


working on achieving a singular goal? Is church several individuals coming together

to best work out their personal devotion to the Lord or a singular body moving

towards a unified goal of Christ-likeness? That is the difference I see—not asking

“How do I have a family in which we are all Christians pursuing the Lord, or How can

I help my child become a Christ-follower or even how can I be a better disciple of Jesus, but how can we as a family be transformed in Christ?”

Our essential question then might not be “How can I be a better Christian in my family,” but how can my family more fully live out Christ’s design for family

itself.

Pastor Yu asked you last week, “Why did you really get married?” I ask, “Why did

you start a family or plan to? What are you doing in your family now? What is the

goal and vision for your family?” Is it to be used together by God to fulfill His

redemptive plans?

Just as I was made and remade for good works Christ designed just for me, I was

united to my wife and given the family I have to personally bring forth God’s plans in

our home, in our church, and in our community. This is not just for parents, but for all

of us to carefully consider.

So suddenly how I communicate, how I forgive, how I show mercy, how I love are not

merely practical tools to sustain my family but means for my family to fulfill God’s

divine plans. My family is part of a wider, beautiful mosaic of believers in God’s kingdom—when my family suffers, so does the kingdom. When my family

flourishes so too the kingdom. Our ministry here will be built on families, nuclear

and us as brothers and sisters. This means I can’t afford to give up on or neglect my

family—they need me, and you need my family as we need yours.

Francis Chan was speaking to a Korean church pleading with parents to reorient

their goals. He said he really doesn’t care about test scores and colleges, all he

cares, all he is working on, is seeing his kids in heaven one day. I say amen and add

that I want for my family to be in mission with me, partners in God’s grand project,

today! To be a united Christ-family plowing forward for Him, with Him, in mission

today.

FAMILY OF STORY

A wonderful, crucial part of the teaching and living Christ, of being in mission

together, is being a family of story. God is telling His children that ultimately your

lessons, your living, and your mission is not abstract or impersonal, but deeply

intimate. Not only “God has rescued,” but “God has rescued me, He has saved us.”

God tells His children to tell their children of His miracles, of His mighty deeds, of

His ways and revealed character—that He has done and revealed to them.


Of course you can’t give what you don’t have—but if you have decided to follow Jesus, then we should be people of testimony who regularly share what God has

done in our lives in the generations of our family. Children, we need to see this

beautiful heritage and embrace the God who has taken care of our families—who

has intimately spoken to our fathers

and mothers and has rescued us

from slavery, brought us to a new

country and established us in

astounding grace. Remind and be

reminded by each other lest you

forget the Lord your God.

These stories serve as markers—

when your family is being crushed

and devastating times are upon

you—with health, finances,

disappointment, heartache, tears,

tragedy—we look back and say to

each other, “Remember that

time…?” That time God came

through. The time you first believed.

When you were baptized. When it was all so real. When He did that miracle. When

He provided. When He answered. When He came through in amazing love. The time

He delivered us out of sin and put our lives back together.

That’s why we named our son what we did. Actually I wanted Ethan but my wife said

our kid absolutely couldn’t be named after a furniture store. We were looking for a

name that didn’t just sound good but was full of meaning not just in definition but as a

marker. Ye Jin—Jesus is True or the Truth—marks forever with us a time when we lost

about everything for proclaiming the truth of Christ but Christ was still true no

matter what and He came through and radically took care of our family in such dark

days.

That is a story I don’t want our family to forget no matter how secure we seemingly

become. It is the story I want our family to recount when new dark days are upon us

too. Remember that time when Ye Jin was born and we had nothing but we had each

other and the Lord had us? Our next child will be named to reflect the story of this

past year.

Share your stories with each other. Go and make stories together today. Share

deliverance. Share God’s mighty signs in your life.

Look at each and every day with your family as potential. From birth to 18, you have

6,570 practices with your child. By the age of 10 there are 3,650 of those practices

gone. You have 2,500 practices left. So seize this moment. Seize these opportunities.

Seize what God has put before you. Brothers, sisters, children, you too have this

many chances to learn and grow– in Christ by obeying, by listening & teaching.


If your family does not know Christ, there is enormous potential and hope in how you

share, teach, live out Christ in your home. —you have got so much influence left in

that house. Use each minute wisely to put Christ first in all you say and do.

APPLICATION

Our culture is overrun with questions

on the foundational issues we’ve

covered. How will we help expose the

questioner’s heart and lovingly reveal

Christ as the answer to gender,

marriage and family? And will He be

the answer for our own hearts?

UPHOLD the vision and purpose of

God’s design for family - working

together to teach and live out family for

all it should be in Christ, reflecting His

perfect harmonious design. It means

our families are living, moving

billboards displaying Christ and

helping others to do the same.

ANSWER the confusion of our culture that pretends family is insignificant, is

whatever we design or it is an idol. There is a hurting world living upside down in

both homosexual and heterosexual unions. Truly loving our neighbors means we are

peacemakers who seek shalom and this involves prayer, intervention, care, and love

which all seek to return our neighbors to His plans for their lives.

MISSION – our families for His kingdom (and not ours). This means my family is not

about my personal happiness or goals, but His. This means that simultaneously

everything in our family is of amazing significance and consequence—nothing just is,

everything supremely matters because each detail is part of God’s ministry through

my family—and we must be kingdom focused with no time for petty disputes or

selfish pursuits.

When people see our families do they see Christ?

Are our families attracting people to marriage and family and the larger

Church family or stumbling them?

Are our families blessing others as vehicles for His kingdom work?

And as a church we should be asking: How shall we participate alongside God in

creating, nurturing, and preserving families that reflect God’s intent for this holy unit?

This leads to two other questions:

What are some of the attitudes and behaviors that destroy family?


What concrete practices must we develop as spouses, siblings, children and parents,

as well as a church to help deliver us from family discord and alienation, and

strengthen and preserve marriages

and families to help advance God’s

kingdom?

People will ask you what the key to

your marriage is or what is the

secret to your family? There is no

magic; there is no formula, no

gimmicks. It’s simply a question

that starts in your heart—are you

committed to the design and

purpose of your Creator? Am I

committed to obedience to the

Spirit of God? Am I committed to

the controlling influences of the

Word of God? Are we going to live

out a Christian life in all we do and

are as a family?

There’s a story that the famed evangelist D.L. Moody held up a glass to an audience

and asked them how to get the air out of it. People put forth all kinds of ideas. Finally,

Moody picked up a pitcher and filled the glass with water, saying, “There, all the air

is out.” Our families are full of all kinds of hot air that needs to go—filled up with our

cultures, our ideals, our selfishness, and our sins. The answer is to be filled with

living water, to be overflowing in the Holy Spirit. When He fills you so completely,

there is no room left for anything else.

So what is filling your family? Let’s pray.

REALATIONSHIPS BY DEISGN - TOGETHER BY DESIGN

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