Family First?

I. Introduction
 A. The importance of the family
  1. There is no doubt that God cares about the family. He created it and in His word He frequently  honors it.
   a. There’s the beautiful description of God creating marriage when He created Eve and presented her to Adam: “She is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh...Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” – Gen.2:23–24
   b. Honor your father and mother – 5th commandment
   c. Deut.6:7 Teach [God’s laws] diligently to your sons 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 up.
   d. Psalm 127:3–5 Children are a heritage from the LORD... Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!
   e. All of the Proverbs about parenting and relating to your children (e.g. Proverbs 29:15, 13:24)   
   f. Eph.5:22-33 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ...husbands should love their wives as their own bodies...and let the wife respect her husband.
   g. Ephesians 6:1–4 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right... Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
   h. 1Timothy 5:8 If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
  2. However, that’s not all the Bible says about the family. In His word Jesus Himself tells us and shows us that there is a limit to the importance of the family. We’ll look at three such passages.
II. Luke 14:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”
 A. This is the one thing Jesus said specifically about the family: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters he cannot be my disciple.”
 B. Wouldn’t you expect a religious leader to say, “If anyone comes to me who does not love his father & mother, his wife/children, his brothers/sisters—yes, even his own life—he can’t be my disciple.”
 C. Instead, He told us we must hate our loved ones, that when it comes to the kind of love owed to God alone, we must hate our families. Our first love must be reserved for God alone.
 D. This also says it is possible to love one’s family too much.
  1. Good things like family can easily be a very subtle and powerful form of idolatry.
  2. And this is a warning from Jesus to not allow a good thing like the family to be an idol.
  3. The idols of the prodigal son are obvious, but the idols of his older son are very subtle – and therefore potentially more dangerous.
  4. Jesus loves family, but He will not tolerate anything becoming an idol.
  5. He illustrates this in the story of Abraham and Isaac (Gen,22:1-19). Abraham’s whole future was wrapped up in this miracle child, but God says, “Go slay him on the altar.” Stop: “Now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” (12)
  6. Your love for Jesus is a false love if it is not your first love.
 E. There are numerous examples of family becoming an idol in the Bible.
  1. Eli and his sons Hophni and Phinehas (1Sam.2:12-17; 22-36) “Why then do you...honor your sons above me?” – 1Samuel 2:29
  2. David & Absalom (2Sam.18-19) – mourning over his dead son Absalom while showing no regard for those who died protecting David from Absalom’s attempts to kill him and overthrow him.
 F. Even in Christian circles you sometimes hear the expression: Family is everything. No, Jesus is everything.
  1. The 1st thing about family is that it’s not the 1st thing. The 1st thing about family is its secondness.
  2. God does not tolerate anything being put before Him, even if it is a very good thing.
 G. One more thing about this. Putting Christ first is not a virtuous work which really good people are able to perform with a lot of effort. Putting Christ first is the natural result of realizing who He is.
  1. Instead of striving to put Christ first out of a sense of fear and duty, we should strive to grasp who He is and cry out for eyes to see Him as He is, we should come to His word praying to see His magnificence and His mighty power.
III. Matthew 10:34–36 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.
 A. Don’t think that Jesus came to bring peace to your family.
  1. Now obviously all of us want our families to be united in Christ. But the fact is that the family will often not be a place of peace but a place of war, and Jesus' coming made it that way.
  2. Even though we share genetic patterns, and live under the same roof, our families often contain two humanities at war with each other.
  3. And just like Paul prayed desperately for his kinsmen to come to Christ (Rom.9:1-3), we pray desperately for our loved ones to come to Christ. But they may not. And if they do not, there will be a division on account of Christ. Christianity may be hazardous to your family relationships.
  4. And if Christ destroys your relationships with people you love, you’ve got to live with that, and you’ve got to be willing to endure opposition from them, no matter how vicious/ugly/painful it is.
  5. And if family relationships are the ultimate goal of your life, you’re not worthy to follow Jesus.
 B. And just as there are examples in the Bible of those who loved their families too much, there are also examples of those who refused to love their families more than God.
  1. There’s Abel (Gen.4:1-12).
   a. Abel could have made peace with Cain, if he had been willing to offer a sacrifice like Cain's.
   b. They could have been one in their religious practice, they would have been in harmony/unity.
   c. And Cain would not have killed Abel. He would have counted Abel as his friend, as his companion, as his real brother. But Abel was determined to be right with God.
   d. He sacrificed his relationship with his brother in order to maintain his relationship with his God.
   e. And so his relationship with his brother was ruined. He counted his friendship with Christ as more important than his friendship with his brother, and they were divided forever.
  2. Moses likewise turned his back on the harmony and respect that he enjoyed in the eyes of his Egyptian family, in order to walk in righteousness before God and identify with God’s people.
   a. "By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward." - Heb. 11:24-26
   b. Being a son of Pharaoh’s daughter was one of the highest privileges of Egypt. He walked away.
   c. He got it. He understood that belonging to God and being one of His people is so much more.
 C. We love our children and our spouses very deeply, more than anything else on earth.
  1. But you can survive without one or more of your children.
   a. It would be very painful but you can survive through Christ's strength.
   b. You can even survive without your husband or wife.
   c. But you cannot survive without your Savior.
   d. That is the one relationship, the one security you simply cannot do without.
   e. You can survive without your son, your daughter, your wife, your husband, your father or mother, your friends, your house, your job, your country, your arm, your eye, or even without your life, but you cannot survive without your savior.
  2. And if you feel like you can survive without the Lord, you just don’t get it yet. You don’t get Him.
  3. And if you feel like you can’t survive without your spouse/parent/child, you love them too much.
  4. We must not allow earthly relationships to be the ultimate goal, the ultimate goal must always be our relationship with the Lord, and securing our eternal home.
IV. Matthew 12:46–50 While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. 48 But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
 A. Remarkable! Jesus says, Just because you are my brothers, just because we are related to each other through Abraham, just because you are fellow Jews, it does not make you part of My real family.
 B. And instead He says to His disciples: "You are My true family."
  1. Who are the ones Jesus felt a special kinship to? His fellow Jews? The unclean Gentiles?
  2. It was whoever was open to Him, whoever believed in Him and became His follower, whether a Roman centurion or a Syrophoenician woman or a Samaritan woman or the 12 disciples.
 C. And His true family is our true family. There are people on earth you’ve never met to whom you are more closely related than your own unbelieving children, siblings or parents.
 D. You have an eternal family. Your bond with that family is stronger than with your earthly family.
V. I have one final and important thing for you to take home with you from this.
 A. Loving Christ more than you love your family is the most loving thing you can do for your family.
 B. Your family is not God. And it must not be treated as such. It cannot thrive under the weight of those expectations. Our spouse, our children: they are not our salvation, Christ is. The approval we need is God’s approval, not theirs. God’s love is our ultimate refuge, not our family’s. 
 C. Our love for our children should not be in conflict with our love for God, it should be because of our love for God. Because we love God, we love our children.
 D. We want our children to know we love them, of course. And yet we also very much want them to know that they are not first in our hearts. We want them to see and feel that the Lord is securely in first place.
 E. You see, if we love them first, we’re teaching them that they are God. And we’re teaching them that ultimate fulfillment can be found from things on earth.
 F. If we love Christ first, we proclaim Christ to your kids. We teach them that He is worth seeking above anything else in life.
 G. Jesus Christ is our real family, He is our real home. Isn’t that what we want to teach children?
 H. This is what our children need from us most of all. They need parents who love Jesus first, who trust Jesus, who rest in Jesus, who look to Jesus in the midst of trouble – and every day.
 I. Ultimately the key to parenting is not methods. It’s not a matter of spending enough time with your kids. The key to parenting is who we are deep inside before God. It’s a matter of Him being the big thing in our lives. It’s a matter of His love reigning in our hearts.
 J. The #1 thing about parenting is the #1 thing about life: to love God first.
 K. There is no greater way to love spouse, child or parents than to love Jesus with all one's heart, to be fully and absolutely devoted to Him.
 L. Recently I preached two sermons about commending the gospel by our lives. Well, there’s nothing more important in parenting than commending the gospel to our children by how we live.