Reforming the Family | Douglas Wilson

the text this morning is from psalm 37 starting at verse 3 these are the words of god trust in the lord and do good so shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed delight thyself also in the lord and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart commit thy way unto the lord trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass and he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light and thy judgment is the noonday rest in the lord and wait patiently for him fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass cease from anger and forsake wrath fret not thyself in any wise to do evil for evildoers shall be cut off but those that wait upon the lord they shall inherit the earth our father gracious god we thank you for this privilege of sitting underneath your word i pray that your spirit would be active and present making sure that we sit underneath it with a true humble and a contrite disposition i pray you teach us from your word in jesus name amen i want to speak on reforming the family understanding the fam how the family is to be reformed and reformed in uh line with the word of god and there are several things that have to be held in tension and balance as we go through this we we should understand that there's no such thing as a healthy christian community without a large number of healthy christian families you can't have a healthy christian community or a healthy christian church or a healthy christian town or a healthy christian anything without healthy christian families just as you cannot have a good omelet without good eggs so also it is impossible to have a cheerful town or cheerful church or a cheerful community when all the households are just little oases of misery if everybody's unhappy at home it's not going to be good anywhere else if the eggs are all bad there's no way to make it a good omelet if if things are miserable and wretched at home which is where the center of all our lives is located that's where that's where we are jesus says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks well in the same way out of the abundance of of the families of any community that community is going to express itself and so consequently we have to we have to look for pray for long for and labor toward according to the word healthy christian families but healthy christian families have to that that phrase has to be defined by the word of god and not by our own sentimental attachments so let's consider this passage at the beginning of the passage we're told simply to trust god and do good that's verse three trust god do good now that sign that sounds kind of sunday school right but there it is trust god do good all right what's your problem the consequence of this however is that you will dwell in the land and that you will be nourished that's also verse 3. if if you trust god do good you're going to dwell in the land and you're going to be nourished also verse 3 and then in the next verse when you delight in the lord your deli your desires are thereby calibrated when you delight in god verse four your desires are going to be adjusted they're going to be calibrated so this is why jesus can say seek first the kingdom and all these other things are going to be added to you seek first the kingdom that calibrates and then all these other things are going to be added to you in a way that's helpful that in a way that is actually a blessing there's a place in the psalms where it says he gave them the desire that he gave them what they wanted and but sent leanness to their souls there's a way of getting an answer to prayer that's no good at all you want you need to be calibrated and attuned to god's purposes first so when you delight in the lord your desires are are calibrated by that delight and then having been calibrated it says they are also granted it says delight thyself also in the lord and he shall give thee the desires of thy heart so you delight in the lord that adjusts your desires and then those adjusted desires are granted this is why augustine could say something like love god and do as you please love god that calibrates and then do as you please because now what you please is going to be honoring to him love god and do as you please now the future is a big unknown and god is the only one who holds the future in the palm of his hand this is why we must commit our plans to him verse 5 and he will bring it to pass we're not permitted to say i'm going to go to this town and open this business and do that other thing and i'm gonna make a pile of money uh james tells us that that kind of boasting is evil we should say if the lord wills why because god's the one who holds our future in the palm of his hand but god is the one who says he's going to bring it to pass verse 5. so we must commit our plans to him verse 5 and he's going to bring it to pass god does want us to operate in terms of obedience leading to blessing deuteronomic obedience leading to deuteronomic blessing but you have to take care that you don't treat it like a cosmic vending machine there are all sorts of well there's a central similarity between what god promises and what a vending machine promises there is cause and effect in both instances obedience leads to blessing but a vending machine is a very simplistic cause and effect you put the money in and you get the product out and if you don't get the product out within seconds something is drastically seriously wrong right because the vending machine is misbehaving but god is not a vending machine you can't work him you can't uh you can't come to him as though he's simply your cosmic or heavenly atm machine it doesn't work like that so you have to but at the same time you you can't say well it's all up in the air there is absolutely no relationship between a life of obedience and a life of blessing no there are too many promises of god's blessing on obedience throughout scripture from genesis to revelation to allow us to think that but we can't think of it simplistically and we have to as we go on in this psalm we have to see that we have to rest in verse seven we have to rest in the lord and rest in his timeline rest in the lord and it says notice wait patiently for him fret not thyself because if he will prosper it prospers in the way so you're you're obeying god and you're not getting the result that you prayed for you're not getting the thing that you're yearning for and then some ungodly heathen walks up and get you know gets the promotion or gets the thing whatever that thing that you were wanting and then he walks away and he but he got it because he was cutting corners he got it because he was a little bit shady he got it because he lied on the resume and it says here don't don't don't envy that guy rest in the lord and rest in his timeline back to verse six god is the one who is going to make your judgment your righteousness shine like the midday son so the wicked can seem like they're getting ahead because of how they cut corners pursuing a quick growth prosperity don't get worked up about that it says in verse 8 this is because god will cut off the evil doers god is going to grant the earth to those who wait upon him god is going to cut off the evil doers and those who wait upon the lord will be the ones who inherit the earth so we do receive what god promises we do receive what god promises but we don't always receive it the way we thought it was coming the way it was going to uh we had it all mapped out right you saw the packet of m ms in the vending machine that's what you wanted you put the two quarters in you think life is simple right well our life before god is governed by his covenantal cause and effect but it's not sim it's not simplistic it's not simplistic but it is genuine it is real so i want to go back to verse 4 and i want to uh develop what it means to delight yourself in the lord and what it means when it says he's going to give you the desires of your heart this is uh this is an important thing to get down into our bones because if we don't we're going to interpret this in a way that uh flatters ourselves so i want to talk about confession of sin in the family and in this section and the next section i want to talk about what it means to the the place in your family where you live and what your family living is supported by i want to talk about life in the living room in the covenantal living room and what the covenant is like underneath all of that for the so whenever we're tolerating sin or nurturing unconfessed sin in our lives this is this makes it impossible for us to delight in the lord you cannot delight in sin and delight in the lord at the same time it's not psychologically possible so if if we're going to obey what it says in verse 4 to delight in the lord that means we have to shun reject get rid of abhor sin we have to reject sin we have to confess our sins when whenever we're in a state of disobedience god's hand is on us for chastisement we taught that in hebrews 12 11. we see that in psalm 32 verse 4. god does know how to spank all right god spanks his own kids and god knows how to spank it says in hebrews 12 if you're not spanked if you're not disciplined if you're not chastised by the lord then you're illegitimate children your bastards and not true sons it's a sign of it's a sign of god's care for you and love for you and ownership of you that he disciplines you so when you sin and you feel wretched when you when you uh fall into sin and and you feel like the next three days someone's walking around behind you hitting you with an invisible stick and you think i did it again i did it again i did it again god is spanking you now one qualifier if you confess that sin if you address that sin in just the way the bible says you acknowledge it to god you make restitution wherever necessary when it's necessary with everyone else and you're still getting beat up with that invisible stick that's not the spirit anymore that's the devil right the the devil is the one who accuses if you have confessed your sin if you've dealt with your sin then you don't need to be suffering under condemnation you the the whole point of godly discipline is for is for god to bring you to the point where you acknowledge the sin and first john 1 9 says if we confess our sins he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and you don't have to wallow in your guilt for three days after that the the the heavy-handed suffering under the hand of the lord is what david had to do before he acknowledged his sin god puts his hand on us to get us to the point of acknowledging our sin but as soon as we do he forgives so god knows how to spank but if we walk in the light as he is to the light we have fellowship with one another that's first john 1 7. so that applies to everyone here for if we're walking in the light we have fellowship if we're if we're in fellowship with god vertically then we are going to be in fellowship horizontally with everyone else who's in fellowship with god if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship but not only does it apply at church and bible study it also applies across the breakfast table it also applies in the living room and the bedroom and the kitchen it applies in the home if you're walking in the light you have fellowship with everyone else who's walking in the light and in order to clear the way so that you can walk in that light it's necessary for us to confess our sins in any way that we've walked in darkness if if there's any degree to which we've given way to the darkness of hating our brother or hating our sister how can you love god whom you've not seen when you don't love your brother whom you have seen john argues and so we need to confess openly acknowledge our sin to god now here's an illustration i use i use it all the time in my premarital counseling and because i'm not tired of using it not even a little bit i'm going to bring it in here imagine i want you to imagine two houses side by side five kids in each one the husbands work at the same company they attend the same church the wives are good friends they drive the same kind of van and they have the same kinds of car seats everything is the same the only difference that you can see between the two homes is that one of them is immaculate and the other one is blitzed one is immaculate and one is blitzed but this difference is not created by how many breakfast bowls are used in the morning or how many t-shirts are put on in the morning or how many shoes are put on in the morning that is all the same this is another way of saying that in the two houses things get dirty at basically the same rate of speed everything's the same number of kids cars everything is the same including how rapidly things deteriorate how rapidly things get dirty the same number of breakfast bowls in the morning same number of utensils are used the same everything's the same what's different the thing that's different is when things are picked up when things are cleaned it's not when how many bowls are taken out of the cupboard it's how many bowls are put into the dishwasher how many how many and when so in one pl in one house it's put in five minutes after you're done another house it's put in maybe a week ten days after it was taken out and that's why there's an accumulated uh this house is they're thinking of moving to switzerland starting a ministry called debris right everything's knee-deep why there's clutter everywhere clutter everywhere that's where the that's where the difference is now far too many christian homes christian evangelical households are spiritually speaking something like the closets at the crazy cat lady's house and and you have to under there's a there's a difference between uh difference between two there's two different ways to mess up your christian life one way is to backslide sort of openly shake your fist at heaven and say and i'm not going to do what you say because i'm mad at god for this period of time i'm going that's just open rebellion i'm not i'm not going to i'm going to try to go back to my pagan life i'm going to try to go back to being a non-christian if you're truly converted it's not going to work but there's that there's the way of open defiance but far more common is the way of clutter where you just don't deal with things when they ought to be dealt with it comes up you you snap it snap at the kids and then you expect time to heal it you expect time will just enable it to blow over but time doesn't fix it if time could fix sin jesus didn't have to die jesus died because time doesn't fix anything if you knock the coffee cup over and you say oh you know these things happen which they do right but then you kick it under the sofa what's happening is those things happen too and that's how you get the crazy cat lady's house that's how you get accumulated debris everywhere so what happened and everyone knows everyone in this world knows that there's a difference between the momentary temptation that causes you to spill something causes you to snap at someone or be annoyed or do something that that interferes with your relationship you're no longer walking in the light so you're no longer in fellowship with one another everyone knows what it's like to snap all right how long does it take to get annoyed nano second all right how long does it take to find yourself suddenly irritated mysteriously that that's the flesh it's sinful and we have to deal with it that's simply fleshly but when you snap it's let's say one of your kids who's trying to figure out how to balance a pee on their table knife at the dinner table and they were working assiduously at it and you decide that this is bad manners and so you bite their head off which is not bad manners you have to understand acrobatics with a knife and a pee that's that not to be tolerated at the dinner table but making life miserable for everyone in the household that's perfectly uh fine well it's obviously not perfectly fine and what you're doing is you're teaching your kids we don't care about god's word in this household we don't we don't care about loving one another at the dinner we don't care all right so that you're teaching that lesson well let's say you snap you you you snap at someone that part of it everyone gets there's a fleshly thing i yeah i get it but when you expect time to fix it you snap and then five minutes later everything's supposed to everybody's supposed to go back to normal without addressing the elephant in the room you know what that is that's not fleshly that's not fleshly annoyance that's diabolical that's why satan fell from heaven that's simply pride from top to bottom front to back side to side that's nothing but arrogance and pride in other words if you sin against one of your kids or if you sin against your husband or you're sinning against your wife you say something unkind saying say something thoughtless and you know as soon as you say it that was wrong that was wrong seek forgiveness from god and from the other person right now immediately seek it right away because if you assume okay they know they know me they know my personality they know they know that i'm not going to be mad all day yeah they also know that you're a hypocrite that's what they know they know that you're expecting time to fix what only the blood of jesus can fix now that's the first thing if you're not dealing with sin openly and honestly then you're not going to be delighting in the lord and you're not going to be here your prayers are not going to be heard delight yourself in the lord and he will give you the desires of your heart now there's something else i want to talk for a moment about covenant and family and this and give you another illustration of how these two things relate we live in the midst of covenant realities and covenants are larger than the sum of their parts covenant realities are realities which is another way of saying that your family your last name your household is a thing in the world it's an entity it's a noun and not an abstract noun either it is not simply a living arrangement home is not defined by where you hang your hat and home is not defined by the supreme court of the united states families households are created by god and it's a thing a reality in the world so if you have a young married couple let's say john and mary smith to make up the name john is an individual before god he's individually covenantally a christian mary is a christian she's individually covenantally a christian but there is a thing in the world called the smiths that's a reality that that household exists and what does god do when he wants to talk to the smiths he talks to the head he talks to the husband and the husband occupies an office he's an individual a member of the covenant but he's also an officer in the cu of the covenant he's a member of the covenant he's also an officer in the covenant and when mom and dad have kids it's the same thing mom and dad mother and father are officers of the covenant all right children of the members of the covenant mom and dad are officers of the covenant we as christians are members of the new covenant of course as the prophet jeremiah predicted that's in jeremiah 31 the the prophecy of the new covenant the church is a covenant reality we are a covenant body not only is a family a thing in the world but this congregation is a thing in the world god knows this congregation god knows christ church as an entity all right so because covenants are not just uh imaginary things they're not imaginary constructs god deals with mankind through the mechanism of a covenant so this world has covenant realities all the way down marriages are what they are by covenant for example the faithless wife in proverbs in proverbs was faithless why because she forgot the covenant of her god that's in proverbs 2 17. she's faithless because she forgot the covenant of her god the faithless husbands in malachi were faithless because they had dealt treacher treacherously with the wives of their covenant that's in malachi 2 14. now sometimes people accuse presbyterians of being you know it's everything's covenant covenant peanut butter covenant jelly covenant and it's a covenant sandwich also yes that's right not overstating it everything reality is covenantal what's needed in many households is an understood structure for your obedience in the first section i was talking about confessing your sins individually putting things right that's obedience but you have to have a structure for the obedience your family's last name is a thing it's a covenantal reality it is an entity your family is not an abstract noun and because it is an institution created by god he is the one who writes the bylaws he's the one who assigns the various offices and he's the one who gives us our respective duties he says all right since the covenant the covenant home is something i've invented i want the husband to be the head i want the wife to be the chief executive i want the children to have this office and so on and i'm going to talk about some of the responsibilities that the children have in this in a moment now here's how this this section and the previous section go together covenants are solid cold rigid and unyielding i want you to either think about going down your basement or go down your basement and pat the concrete wall the foundation wall it's straight lines cold made out of concrete and it's just there it's not going anywhere jesus says in the sermon on the mount whoever hears these words of mine puts them into practice is like the man who builds on a foundation the man who doesn't hear these words of mine put them into practice is like a man who is building on a sandy foundation or no on no foundation at all this is that illustration a covenant doesn't uh conservatives are fond of saying facts don't care about your feelings this part of the sermon is covenants don't care about your feelings the cover you go down the basement and the lines are straight just like they were yesterday and they're not going they're not going anywhere and you say but i'm i'm not feeling as nourished or as loved or i'm not feeling as fulfilled in my marriage that's why you made promises in a church all right you made promises in the church not only did you make promises in church you you made big promises in a big church you invited all your family all your friends and you invited perhaps even some enemies right you and they were all there and they said and that they they watched you say and sickness and health for richer for poor they all you know where the preacher went down and he covered the waterfront he covered the waterfront and what he said do you promise to keep these vows no matter what you feel i do do you promise to keep these vows no matter what you feel yes i do do you know that god's here yes i do do you know that we're all here yes i do all right these are covenant realities covenant promises now if you build if you try to build your marriage or your any relationship or your family relationship on the foundation of your feelings what happens your feelings let's say these are your feelings what do they do your feelings go up and down don't they they go up and down some of you goes farther up farther down but everybody's feelings go up and down what happens if you build your marriage build your family build your build your life on top of those feelings when they go up and down everything goes up and down you're building in an earthquake zone you are doing something really really stupid all right jesus says it's foolish to to do it that way what you want to do is make a covenant you want to pour the concrete where it's going to be and it's going to stay there and you put the covenant there these are the terms this is what i'm going to do this is what i'm going to not do this is it and then the feelings go on top of that and they can go up and down as they please knock yourself out now because the the house isn't going anywhere here's the next thing suppose up in the living room all the uh fellowship that i was talking about in the first section restored felt it restored um fellowship with one another confessing your sins think of all that as the as the cushions and the curtains and the sofa and the rugs and everything that makes the living room the kind of place you want to be and then make a big mound out of all that wonderful stuff all those soft yielding things make a big pile out of it and try to put a stud wall on top of it it's not going to work you can't you can't build you can't build a bearing wall on a mound of cushions right it's going to be wobbly everything's going to fall apart and this is why relationships fall apart then at the same time you can't go the other way and say and we're all going to live in this bunker of a basement and we're not going to you know we're going to covenant covenant covenant covenant cold concrete that's what we want that's our we're of norwegian stock people say people say that scandinavians aren't emotional but you know anger is an emotion so what do we want we want form and content together we want form and content together we want to love god delight in him obey his word confess our sins that's all living room stuff but the only way it can be secure the only way you can keep it that way is if you have something that is rigid immovable unyielding that you build on that's the covenant that's in god's term god doesn't say no wait let me alter it no wait let me change the terms god's covenantal promises are forever so do you want to dwell in the land do you want god's blessing to rest on you psalm 37 11 do you want to inherit the earth do you want to inherit the earth what is the first promise what is the first commandment with a promise then children obey your parents in the lord for this is right honor thy father and mother which is the first commandment with the promise that it may be well with thee and thou mayest live long on the earth that's ephesians 6 1-3 so this required honor takes two forms the first is the obedience that children should render to their parents covenantal obedience that you render to your parents that means when you're a child a dependent child at home that means you do what they say it means you obey you do what they say whether you feel like doing what they say if they say make your bed and and they have failed to take into account you don't feel like making your bed you make your bed you simply go do what you're told that's what children in the home should do that's how you honor god you honor god by honoring your parents the second is the financial support that grown children should render to their parents jesus talks about this in mark 7 but ye say if a man shall say to his father or mother it is corbin that is to say a gift by whatsoever thou might just be profited by me he shall be free and you suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother making the word of god of none effect through your tradition which you've delivered and many such like things do ye jesus is saying that the the rabbis of his day had cooked up a a workaround where if children grown children with financial resources we're going to be taking care of their parents they could get around it by donating to the building fund if you donate this is dedicated to god and jesus says if you try to get away from honoring your parents by giving the the donation to god he jesus said god doesn't want it you are you're behaving wickedly when you do that so children have covenantal responsibilities and they're assigned to us by the word dependent children obey independent children honor financially support financially so what does it mean to call something christian christ is the second person of the trinity and is therefore omnipresent he is everywhere present but he's not present everywhere covenantally so he's present here with us with regard to his omnipresence but he's also present with regard to his omnipresence at an out-of-control nightclub everybody's misbehaving everybody's sinning everybody's sending up a storm god's there god is present god is um present in his crea in his capacity as creator and sustainer of all but god is present here with us today covenantally it's his covenantal presence that brings us his blessing god is not present everywhere covenantally for blessing so what do we mean when we say something like our household is christian or our my business i want my business to be a christian business or i want my town to become a christian town or i want my nation to be a christian nation what does that mean we should mean that we want christ to be present covenantally for blessing that means we want christ to deal with us as an entity deal with our town as a town deal with our neighborhood as a neighborhood deal with our business as a business deal with these entities these corporate entities entities that we form before him in his presence and we want to ask him to bless it in acts 3 19 it says repent ye therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the lord acts 3 19 times of refreshing come from the presence of the lord and only from the presence of the lord and you want to make sure that you have form and content married together you want the form structure the covenantal structure that god wants you to have you want to you want to understand your life as a christian as a covenantal life you want to understand your life as a businessman as a covenantal one you want to understand your marriage as a covenantal reality you want you want to have the structure there but you could have the structure there and the doctrine right and yet be proud and haughty and refusing to humble yourself refusing to seek forgiveness you could also not know anything about covenants and not know anything about these structures and be a very tender hearted person but without the structure that tenderheartedness is almost certain to devolve into sentimentalism and that means you're going to have just a puddle so you don't want you don't want a puddle of sentiment sentimentality on the one hand and you don't want rigid cold concrete bunker and nothing and no curtains no rug no you don't don't want that either you want the two together you want the two together so is your home a christian one is your marriage a christian one have times of refreshing arrived there from the presence of the lord living like a christian in the very i'll conclude with this christ is lord and christ is lord over not just the individuals not not over every individual here only but christ is also lord over all the relationships between all the individuals here christ is lord of you and you and you but christ is lord of all the in-betweens he's lord he's lord of the relationship he's lord of the different kinds of relationships there's a married relationship there's a parental relationship there's a business partner relationship there's a co-worker relationship there's a friend's relationship christ is lord over the nodes in bet you know the individuals and he's the lord of all the relationship between those individuals and we need to be studying the scriptures to to come to an understanding of how we can live in such a way is to please him to walk worthy of him where we are inviting him to send times of refreshing for all these entities all these relationships from his presence our father and god we thank you for your kindness to us i thank you for your word i thank you for what you have given to us in your son jesus christ i pray that as we meditate on these things as we look for places to apply that your spirit would be active pointing things out for us to do father i pray that you'd be convicting anyone who needs to put anything right with a brother put anything right with a son or a daughter put anything right with a husband or a wife i pray that your holy spirit would be at work and i pray that this would be the thing that you do accomplishing in our midst so that we may enjoy times of refreshing father as we pray this we would lift up the words that jesus taught us to pray saying this table isn't sturdy enough to hold what's on it nor is this room big enough to contain it this bread and wine isn't potent enough to localize it seemingly as solomon once asked but will god in very deed dwell with men on the earth behold heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee how much lest this house which i have built the answer to solomon's question depends on whether or not god himself determines to dwell in that house when we try to do the math of such mysteries we often start at the wrong end we think the duty rests on us to climb up to heaven to get a grip on the infinite god we ought to start as always with god himself the greater must come down to the lesser the creator must reveal himself to the creature and if we start there only then can we begin to see clearly calvin helps us here the son of god descended miraculously from heaven yet without abandoning heaven was pleased to be conceived miraculously in the virgin's womb to live on the earth and hang upon the cross and yet always filled the world as from the beginning a meal of bread and wine is too small a thing to signify the risen christ unless the eternal yet incarnate christ makes it so as queen lucy once observed in the chronicles of narnia in our world too a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world this table is laden with the weight of eternal glory it's only possible to see this marriage of transcendence with imminence when we look at the signs which god incarnate gave to to assist our faith baptized saints partaking together of broken bread and poured wine so come in faith and welcome to jesus christ let's give thanks father we thank you that by your word through the word made flesh our lord jesus through his body broken through his blood spilled we are united with god through christ and by the spirit you apply that to our hearts and in faith we see and behold the great wonder the great glory the great eternal wonders that lay upon this table it's in christ holy and most precious name we pray and amen the charge is this seek to remember always remember the necessity of form and content together skeletal structure and the flesh the truth is the skeletal structure the covenant is the skeletal structure and your life is the flesh that encases it if it's all bones it's just a skeleton if it's all flesh it's just a beanbag chair it's just you don't want either you want the two things together life and structure together so with believing hearts receive the benediction of your lord now our lord jesus christ himself and god even our father which hath loved us and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work and amen

Channel: Christ Church

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Keywords: Christ Church, ChristKirk, Doug Wilson, Douglas Wilson, Canon Press, CrossPolitic, Toby Sumpter, Moscow Idaho, Moscow, Psalm Singing, Reformed, Calvinist, Reformed theology, CREC, Blog and Mablog

Id: wcMSTbI89UU

Length: 37min 47sec (2267 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 24 2021