Let's open up our Bibles to 1 Timothy,
chapter 3, and let's look in verse 14.
1 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 14.
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 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 glory.
But the Spirit explicitly says that in latter
times some will fall away from the faith,
paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of
demons.
By means of the hypocrisy of liars, seared
in their own conscience as with a branding
iron, men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining
from foods which God has created to be
gratefully shared in by those who believe and
know the truth.
For everything created by God is good and
nothing is to be rejected if it is
received with gratitude, for it is sanctified by
means of the word of God and prayer.
Let's go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, I come before you in the name
of your Son.
And I know that I have no part
with you apart from him.
Nothing, without hope and without God in the
world.
And even now, Lord, I would be stranded,
would have gone astray if it had not
been through your continued mercy revealed in your
Son.
Lord, I come to you not in my
own piety or in the piety of this
people, but in the piety of your great
Son, in his name, Lord.
Please, I beseech you, help us.
Help us, Lord.
You know our minds and our hearts.
You know how weak we truly are.
How much we need your grace, your active
power, your wisdom, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
And before we look at this text, I
would like to say a few things.
First of all, whenever someone like myself is
teaching on family, it's a very dangerous thing.
It's dangerous for me to try to present
myself as something I'm not.
It's dangerous for you to think that I'm
something I'm not.
I remember many years ago sitting on a
panel with very distinguished men regarding the family
and homeschooling and all sorts of things.
And there were about three, I don't know,
3,000 people in the auditorium and were
all asking us questions.
And we were waxing eloquently.
And I felt such a pinch, such a
conviction in my spirit that I just had
to raise my hand to the moderator and
say this.
Now, look, before we go on, I really
need to say something.
I can't speak for all these other men.
But I'm not a perfect man, and my
family is not a perfect family.
And I don't want anybody here thinking things,
at least about me, that simply are not
true.
I am what I am by the grace
of God.
And my most perfect day and my most
perfect moment is nothing but unrighteousness.
My only hope is Jesus Christ.
And I'm not saying that to be to
present some sort of false piety.
There's some of you men that are sitting
out there and you know how much you
fail.
And it's hard for you to sit out
there knowing how much you fail looking at
someone like me who you may think, man,
I'm sitting here listening to this guy.
My wife is listening to this guy.
This guy seems to have all the answers,
does everything right.
And then my wife must look at me
and think, oh, my goodness.
Well, my wife sees many of the same
weaknesses in me that your wife sees in
you.
And although there is progress in the gospel,
there is sanctification, there is growth in Christ.
And I have known that growth.
And I am sure that if you belong
to Jesus Christ, you have grown because it
is impossible not to grow.
But know this, we are all, the best
of us, nothing but needy, tremendously needy.
So that's the first thing I wanted to
say before I look at this text.
Now, there's another thing that I wanted to
say, and it's this.
A while back, I met a man who
basically has all but destroyed his family.
They're still together, but it is a family
that is, well, the modern term is dysfunctional,
but it goes far beyond that.
And as I was talking to that man,
he had come to understand more and more
about the gospel.
Not rules, not regulations, not some homeschooling subculture,
but the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And he looked at me with tears in
his eyes, and he said, Brother Paul, I
have nothing left.
I have no hope.
And you could see in the man's eyes
what he was saying was true.
I have no hope for my wife, my
family, my relationship, none, except the power of
the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, if you don't realize the same truth
about you, you are so blind, it's unbelievable.
If you think you've done the things right,
and you've crossed all the T's and dotted
all the I's, and you're just like a
homeschooled poster family, and you've just done it
right, you dress right, you've had 10,000
kids, you've done it all.
I want to tell you something, you are
wrong, and you are going down a path
that is deadly.
The greatest of us, mark them off, the
greatest of us, the only thing we have
is the faithfulness of God and the grace
of God revealed in the person and work
of Jesus Christ.
That is it.
That's it.
And you must know that.
You're a new father, a new mother, and
you're holding that baby in your hands, and
you're scared to death.
You ought to be.
But that fear shouldn't lead you to despair.
A repentance unto death, but a repentance unto
life.
You should look to Jesus and look to
His Word.
You're a seasoned veteran.
You may have grown, but you have not
outgrown your only hope.
And that is the gospel of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ.
And that's it.
Because you can raise a whole bunch of
really clean kids with great haircuts and long
dresses, and they'll be two full sons of
hell without the gospel of Jesus Christ.
My desire is a devotion, true evidence of
regeneration, repentance, and faith.
And I would much rather have a stumbling,
bumbling, and yet clinging life, clinging to Jesus
Christ as my only hope, than to be
a success in absolutely everything.
And that success creating me an independence from
the only mediator of the grace of God,
and that is Jesus Christ.
I'll say one last thing.
Last year, I was asked to preach a
series of sermons, 27 sermons it turned out
to be.
So I don't know what I'm going to
do in the four you've given me, but
27 sermons on marriage in Samara, Russia.
And we had gotten through probably sermon number
16, 18, somewhere along there, and I still
hadn't mentioned marriage.
And people were beginning to say, well, that's
this marriage conference.
Let me share something with you.
You already know so much that you don't
obey.
You've had some good speakers here.
I was almost intimidated to come.
My dear friend, Vodie Bauckham, Ted Tripp, others.
But let me share with you something.
You can know all the principles about marriage
and family raising and everything.
But apart from the grace of God and
the active working of the Holy Spirit, apart
from renewing your mind in the word of
God, and apart from growing in conformity to
Christ, all those principles will do you no
good whatsoever.
As a matter of fact, you give me
a person who knows very little principles about
marriage and child raising, but they're filled with
the Spirit, and their life is bearing the
fruit of the Spirit, and they're loving and
growing in love.
And I'll tell you what, they'll do all
right.
They will do all right.
Our great need sometimes is not more information.
It's a greater recognition of how weak we
are and how much we need His power.
I sometimes ask myself in prayer, Lord, why?
Why do I teach in so many things
like this about family when I know my
own self to be so weak?
Weak as a husband, weak as a father.
Why?
And maybe it's because of my weakness to
tell God's people, you're never so strong that
you can walk on your own.
I have only one hope for salvation, and
that is Jesus Christ.
Not my faith in Him, but His faithfulness
to me.
I have one hope for my wife.
It's not my family devotions.
It's not.
One hope, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and
that's it.
And that's what I want you to see,
the gospel.
And they look at me, they're not going
to see a perfect dad, and they're not
going to see a perfect father.
But here's what they're going to see, a
man desperately clinging to the person and work
of Jesus Christ.
Because that's all I have.
And that's all anybody has ever had.
I have walked with some of the big
dogs in homeschool and family teaching, and I've
seen them refuse to admit these kind of
things, and I've seen many of them fall.
Don't think about, I'm not here to create
some Christian subculture where you all dress like
pride and prejudice.
I'm here to tell you, you need the
gospel.
And your children need the gospel.
They need the gospel.
And they need to see mercy and grace
and forgiveness.
Unconditional love.
That's what my wife needs.
That's what my children need.
That's what I need.
Well, now that we've said all that, let's
look at this.
I want you to look at verse 14.
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 of the truth.
The first thing I want you to see
is that the Apostle Paul was preoccupied a
lot more with the church than he was
the family.
I have seen so many people in their
emphasis to have a great family have almost
neglected the church.
But I want to tell you something.
It's not all about the family.
There's also a church.
There is a church that God has established.
And the only way that your family and
mine can function in a way that is
Christ honoring is to also love the church
and be an intricate part of the church.
If you start separating yourselves off into little
groups because your family is so holy and
does not want to be tainted by churches
that aren't quite as perfect as you, you
are in a great deal of trouble.
I say that not because I know you,
but because I know what's going on in
this nation.
Yes, family is extremely important.
But know this, when we come to the
New Testament, the preponderance of the teaching is
on the gospel and on the church and
on fellowship within the church and being strengthened
in the church.
And the only way to have a strong
family is to be a part of a
local body.
Now, another thing that I want you to
see here that's very important, Paul says this,
verse 15, but in case I am delayed,
I write so that you will know how
one ought to conduct himself in the household
of God.
First of all, I want you to look
at something.
Look what he look, how he describes the
church household of God, church of the living
God.
Now, once you think about something, this is
not your church.
It's not.
It's his church.
This is not about what you want.
Ultimately, it's about what he has commanded.
How can you know that what you're doing
in the church is right if it is
according to what is written?
The further you get away from what is
actually written, the less certainty and the security
you can have that you're actually doing things
right.
Do you know that?
And we see all throughout the world today,
what do we see?
We see churches being built upon models that
are so-called successes.
What are most books today on the church?
Well, they go like this.
There's a man with a great personality, has
brilliant abilities and all sorts of things.
And through a bunch of things he's done,
he's created a 20,000 member mega church.
And so he writes a book telling you
how he did it.
Now, that's wrong.
That's wrong.
This is God's church.
And he said, you're going to do it
a certain way.
And the only way we can know that
we're conformed to that is if we are
conforming to what is written.
So let's get to the scriptures alone.
Now that applies to the church.
But there's another institution that you need to
see.
And it's called the family.
It's called the family.
God created a church.
God created the family.
God ordained the church.
God ordained the family.
This same rule applies, sola scriptura.
We are not to take away from what
the scriptures teach about family.
We're not.
But my dear friend, we're not to add
to it either.
I mean, when I look at the past
15 years of this resurgence on teaching a
family, it's amazing the way the roller coaster
ride is gone, the way, you know, 15
years ago, a certain thing was important.
Now it's not even mentioned today.
Certain things are so important.
And now there's even a tendency that if
you're really spiritual and you're really about your
family, you're only going to eat organic food
and you're going to use essential oils and
all these things.
What on earth are people doing?
You know what I'm talking about, don't you?
And I'm not against organic food.
My wife makes us eat healthy.
But that's not a part of our gospel.
Sometimes I come up to the women in
the church and they're talking about all these
things.
And I told them the other day, I
said, you know what?
When I come up behind you, ladies, and
you're all in a circle like that, the
things you're talking about, I expect to find
a big pot cauldron and you're throwing like
eyes of newt and hair of dog.
And so what is happening here?
This is not about these things.
It's about the gospel.
And these other things are so trivial in
their fads and they come and they go.
But what we've got to do to be
biblical families is submit ourselves to what is
written, not what some clever exegete has pulled
out of this and made a soup with
it.
What does the Bible actually teach?
One of the men that I so admire,
and I do, I know him, I just
admire him, is John MacArthur.
His character, things about him, the kindness he's
shown me.
There's one thing that he said one time
and I thought it was so interesting.
You know, he goes, look, if you will
teach your children and your wife, your family
the Bible.
You make that the center of your home,
teach them what is written, love them unconditionally
and discipline them properly and consistently, you'll do
all right.
You'll be doing better than 95 percent of
the people who call themselves by the name
of Christ, by the name of Christian.
And so one of the things I want
you to see is that the church must
submit to sola scriptura.
It must do what is written in the
scriptures.
And when it goes out from that, either
taking away or adding to it gets in
a danger zone.
It's the same way with marriage.
It's the same way with the family.
Be very, very careful.
That you're not building your family on things
that have been added to the scriptures.
Or at least are not fundamentals, but things
that are extrapolated and pulled forth, we must
submit ourselves to the scriptures.
This is extremely, extremely important.
Now, I want us to go on.
Look what he says after he talks in
verse 15 about the church or verse 15.
Yes, he says the household of God, which
is the church of the living God, the
pillar in support of the truth.
It's God's house.
It belongs to God and it is about
the truth, so that's the context we've got
going here when we move into verse 16
by common confession, great is the mystery of
godliness.
Now, a lot of times what people do
is think that, well, it's changed now.
He's talking about something else.
He's not.
This all goes along with everything else he's
saying, this the thing, the center in the
church and in the Christian life, the center
of it is what?
Well, this mystery of godliness.
Now, what does he mean, mystery of godliness?
Most Greek exegetes would look at it this
way, this mystery that leads to godliness, that
promotes God, that promotes true godliness.
What is it?
What is it that we can do in
our own lives?
What can we promote in our family that
truly, truly promotes genuine biblical God honoring piety?
What is the tool, the mechanism, the road,
the way?
How do we get there?
It's the gospel.
He goes on and tells us what the
mystery of godliness is.
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.
This thing that God has done in Christ,
this person that we know of, the more
we know factually, biblically, intimately, the person of
Jesus Christ and the more we understand what
God has done for us in Christ, if
we have truly been regenerated, that will work
to make us godly.
That will work to make us godly.
We look at the world today and I
want you to know, yes, there are principles
and commands in scripture with regard to the
externals, with regard to clothing and television and
all these different things that have become to
be so important.
And they are because we live in such
a fallen, wicked world and gradually the common
grace of God being retracted in this country,
being turned over to wickedness.
Yes, there must be standards.
Yes, we must see certain principles in the
scriptures as important, but none of it, none
of it will help us unless.
Our heart is continually encountered by the person
and work of Jesus Christ, the gospel is
the power of God for salvation, not just
the justification of a man, but the ongoing
sanctification of a man.
The gospel is the only thing powerful enough
to tame a wild man's heart.
And cause him to go on following the
Lord.
And this is so important.
Do you know what we've done?
And this has been this has been the
whole if you want to know what my
life is about, what my calling is about,
is this we have taken the gospel of
Jesus Christ, reduced it down to four spiritual
laws or five things that somebody ought to
know.
They don't understand the gospel at all.
And so when I come in and tell
you that the gospel is the very thing
that generates godliness and heals families and everything
else, you look at me and go, how
can four spiritual laws do that?
My greatest desire is that my children go
beyond this.
Rudimentary, basic understanding of the gospel and that
they press on to know the Lord in
the gospel of Jesus Christ, to know God
as he has revealed through Jesus.
I use this illustration a lot because it
does seem to get people's minds thinking.
You know, the Chinese say, Japanese say it,
too, is a fight over who said it
first.
That a man who would take his entire
life and do nothing but meditate, meditate upon
the beauty of an apple blossom, a man
who has done that has not wasted his
life.
Has not wasted his life.
To contemplate such beauty.
There's a lot of truth in that.
There really is.
There's enough beauty in God's creation to spend
an eternity contemplating it.
But let me lead you to something greater.
Sometimes people ask me, especially university students, like
when I'm on campus, they'll go, you know,
heaven's like long time.
Well, I said, well, be careful how you
measure time, but OK, I'll follow your train
of of logic and see what will keep
us from getting bored.
And I say, well, you're right.
You're thinking rightly.
I mean, you know, you only walk on
streets of gold so long and it's like
no big deal.
Swing on gates of Pearl, walk around doing
all that kind of thing.
But pretty soon, you know, a thinking man
would think, well, there could be madness at
the end of this eternal line.
When I've exhausted all beauty and exhausted all
new experience and there's nothing left but bland,
we see that would happen, that would happen
if all you had was a creation.
But the fact of the matter is what
you have is a God of infinite glory
and a gospel of intimate glory.
You'll know everything about the second coming of
Jesus Christ on the day he comes back.
But you'll be an eternity of eternities in
heaven and you will not even have reached
the foothills of the Everest of the glory
of God revealed in the gospel.
And it is in that gospel message going
deeper and deeper into the person and work
of Christ that you find all the motivation
you'll ever need.
To seek to live a pious life.
But now let me step back and redefine
piety for you.
I didn't say a perfect life.
So the pious life.
And part of a pious life.
Is being a broken person.
Who knows they get it wrong, who knows
they make mistakes, who knows they sin, who
knows they are constantly 24 hours a day
needy of the grace of God, that is
a pious life, a view of God, a
view of the demands of God's law, a
view of our failed performance and a view
of the gospel of God in the person
of Christ.
It is the gospel.
Now, let's go on and we're going to
talk about the gospel tonight in the next
in the next session, verse chapter four, verse
one, but the spirit explicitly says that in
latter times some will fall away from the
faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines
of demons by means of the hypocrisy of
liars seared in their own conscience as with
a branding iron.
You would be hard pressed to find anything.
Like this in any other part of the
Bible.
I mean, I want you to look at
Paul's language, the spirit explicitly says you don't
get that anywhere else.
There's something going on here.
Paul is giving us a warning and it
is horrific.
The thing against which he is warning us,
it is horrific, the spirit didn't just mention
it, he explicitly expressed it, he drove it
home into the heart of Paul that something
was going to happen that would be monumental,
horrific, terrifying, totally destructive to the church of
God and the work of God and the
people of God, something would come, something would
happen.
Now, when we hear this, when we hear
this, when you hear this kind of language,
one of the things that you automatically think
is if you have never read this before,
well, obviously, in the next few verses, he's
going to talk about the Antichrist, the end
of the world, something.
I mean, he's going to really just talk
about some horrific thing that's going to happen.
So after hearing this, we're ready to hear
something horrifying.
Like the denial of the deity of Christ
or or something in that magnitude, but look
what he says, men who forbid marriage and
advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created
to be gratefully shared in by those who
believe and know the truth.
And honestly, we're sitting there scratching our head,
we're going, hold it.
He just gave us a warning that seemed
to prepare us for some apostasy, apocalyptic apostasy,
with demons flying everywhere and the Antichrist sitting
there ruling over the world.
And then he talks about forbidding marriage and
abstaining from food.
That just doesn't seem that horrific, does it?
And also we look at it as Americans
and go, well, this really doesn't apply to
us.
I mean, after all, most of us get
married and just by looking at us, you
can tell we don't abstain from much food.
So at least we got one thing right.
So how is this so horrific?
Well, see, what you've got to do is
you've got in order to understand this text,
you've got to make sure that you don't
separate it from chapter three.
See, those chapters were put in later.
Paul didn't put those in there and they're
good because it helps us find certain things.
But what I want you to see is
you can only understand the horrific nature of
what Paul is talking about if you understand
correctly, verses 14 through 16.
And you listen to me.
Because there's a lot of people who are
really big into family and really big into
homeschooling.
That if they're not committing this.
Heresy of heresies.
They're really close to it, and what is
it?
If you look in verse 16, he sets
forth the gospel as the.
The means of godliness, the means of salvation
sets forth the gospel as the thing in
the church, the thing in the Christian life,
in the family, and then he gives us
a warning that a horrific thing is going
to happen in which some will fall away
from having the gospel at the very center
of their church and their lives.
And what they'll do is instead of centering
on the gospel.
They'll center on minor issues so that they'll.
When they meet you and you come in
the church, they go, do you homeschool?
How many children do you have?
They'll look at you.
Well, let's see that dress.
How long is it?
Those boys, do they know how to shake
a hand?
And in our house, we just eat organic
and certain things become important.
And that are not.
As important as the gospel, what do you
mostly think about?
What do you mostly teach your wife and
your children and ladies, what do you mostly
talk to your husband about or teach your
children?
What is the emphasis teaching a girl how
to do calligraphy or teaching them the gospel
of Jesus Christ, teaching them logic.
Making sure they know American history, my dear
friend, know this, the founders of our country
were not the 12 apostles.
What is the most important thing?
It is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
We should be about the gospel.
Our whole concern, everything we think about, even
though there is there are practical rules, there
are things on clothing, there are ways we
should eat.
There are all sorts of things.
There's the blessing of children, all these things.
But they are simply minor things that flow
out of the greater thing.
And that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And if your conversation, because don't you sit
there and say, I'm all about the gospel.
I can tell you, if you're all about
the gospel, what's your conversation about?
Ladies, when you get together, what's your conversation
about?
Men, when you get together, what's your conversation
about making a stand against culture?
Political conservatism.
Learning how to dress a certain way or
is the primary thing what God has done
for us in the person of Christ, the
person of Christ, the person of Christ, the
person of Christ, and then our piety flowing
out of that.
Jesus, Jesus.
You look at those hymns.
That we sing, the ones that are most
enduring, why are they most enduring?
Because the ones that are most enduring have
Jesus at the very center of them, at
the beginning of them and at the end
of them, the lives, the preachers that have
had the greatest impact upon this world have
not been moralist.
They have been proclaimers of the gospel of
Jesus Christ, because Christianity is not primarily a
moral or ethical religion.
Even though it has a morality and an
ethic, Christianity is about Christ and about his
gospel.
About his gospel.
And that's what we see here, Paul saying
that people will depart.
I had a preacher call me years ago.
I'll never forget this.
And we were we were well, we were
parents.
We wouldn't call this young parents because we
were old even when we started.
So we were parents and we had set
our mind to homeschool and everything and we
were and we do.
But this preacher called me in Texas.
He said, Brother Paul, I need you to
come to my church.
I need you to preach.
I said, why?
He says, I feel like just a great
number of people in my church are lost.
And I said, what makes you think that,
brother?
He said, they're homeschoolers.
And I said, brother, you homeschool.
He goes, yes, I do.
Because I've got people that if I stand
up and say it's a testimony night, would
you like give your testimony?
I have people, he said, that stand up
and say, I was just wandering through this
earth without any kind of compass or anything.
And five years ago, I discovered homeschooling for
my family.
My dear friend, that's not right.
It's Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ.
It is he.
Now, I don't know you and everything I
may be saying may have nothing to do
with you whatsoever.
I hope so.
But I've realized now as I travel over
this nation and I see the wonderful resurgence
of people and men, women wanting to be
biblical, wanting to do things right, wanting to
homeschool their children, wanting to protect them from
the evils that is growing like weeds around
us.
I applaud all that, but I see so
many.
Who have given themselves to moralism, who have
defined a certain time in American history that
they call the Golden Age, and they've gone
back to it even to the point of
dressing like it, that's not Christianity.
What is Christianity?
It is a clinging to the person of
Jesus Christ.
And it is seeking to be conformed to
him in every way.
Now, we have standards in our home, we
have standards with regard to what we watch,
we have standards with regard to what we
wear, we have standards with regard to a
lot of things.
But the center of our home, what I
most want to communicate to my wife.
To my children is Jesus, and that's more
than a cliche, it's taking them deeper and
deeper into understanding what God has done for
us in his son.
And if you say to me, well, we've
done all that already.
I'll just have to laugh because even after
an eternity of eternities, you will not have
done that.
You will not have done that if you
think that you have taught your children the
gospel and they understand it well and that's
all they need, then you do not understand
the gospel.
Now.
Let's sum this up.
Look very carefully again at verse one.
But the spirit explicitly says that in latter
times some will fall away from the faith
when you study the first even even the
first five centuries of Christian history.
And you see so many things that are
wrong, you see, you see what I believe
was you see this external thing called the
church that was no longer the church that
was apostate.
You believe that there's this sense of a
hiddenness of the true church.
But even in all that, even in the
two groups, one of the things that no
one can escape.
Even in the dungeons of prisons and catacombs
and other places, the one thing that you
see.
Is that the person of Christ and the
cross of Christ was center.
And those martyrs died.
They stood their ground against an ungodly world,
not because they wanted to do the right
thing or because they thought that morality was
the greater end of all things.
No.
They had allegiance to a person and they
loved him and they proclaimed that person.
To everyone.
I spend a great deal of my time
working with the church in China, I have
several reasons for doing that.
I've spent the last couple of years just
preaching and preaching and preaching and preaching to
the church in China, and I've met so
many wonderful Chinese believers and some that never
had the opportunity to study theology and their
theology was so minimal.
They knew literally they had they didn't fully
understand justification as they ought to understand it
to express it, even though they were justified
because they were believing.
But the amazing thing that I see in
those who have suffered the most, that their
lack of knowledge was filled up by one
thing, a spirit created spirit driven love for
a singular person that would cause them to
walk into hell with a water pistol.
That would cause them to do anything.
To be pleasing to that singular person, there's
a thing online where you can see me
teaching two young, a young Chinese couple, it's
in black and white, and they've got their
back to the camera so no one can
see it.
And I spent two weeks with them just
day and night, just teaching, teaching, teaching.
But the girl showed me she had a
picture in her billfold.
And I asked her, I said, what what
is that?
I mean, you're standing there kind of on
a rock now, take this any way you
want to take it.
It's not to teach some theology, but it's
just to show you her devotion.
She said, well, this is the place.
Where I'm going to die one day.
And I said, what do you mean?
OK, she said, I was there, her husband
and she they studied in a cave for
three months and didn't come out.
That's where they were taught.
Some Christians gathered together in a cave and
they would have these three month seminars in
a cave.
And she said, in prayer, God showed me
this is where I would give my life
for his son, that this is where I
would die for him.
You see, here's what I want you to
say.
If my children know they don't they don't
know all the stuff, even though I seek
to teach them theology, everything ethics.
But you see, that's not it.
I would rather them know nothing.
But yet have this heart, this devotion for
a person, when I pray for my children,
my main prayer is simply this, Lord, I
don't care.
That there's some sort of success or that
they look good or that they achieve anything
or there's some shining example to a dark
culture.
I don't care about any of that.
Just please, Lord, grant them a heart that
is devoted to your son.
That is devoted to him and then everything
else, everything else would be OK.
Now, to close.
Let's back up and not have any extremes.
I've come down pretty hard on just teaching
principles and rules and wisdom and everything, even
when it's biblical.
But it's I've come down hard and said
it's wrong only when.
The center point is absent and the center
point is Jesus.
It's all about Jesus and it's all about
the gospel.
And so I don't want you to walk
out of here going, well, it's all about
Jesus.
I'm throwing everything else to the wind.
No, no, don't do that.
But I don't want you walking out of
here and saying, I've crossed every T, dotted
every I looked at all the homeschool manuals,
I'm pretty much checking everything off, I'm doing
good.
Looked at how to be a good husband
manual.
Yep, I'm pretty much going right down the
line with that.
All that's rot, there's not the devotion to
Christ.
Do you know that having a good family,
having a good marriage can be an idol,
did you know that?
Be a terrible idol, having a good family
can be a terrible idol, having these perfect
kids can be a terrible, terrible idol.
There's only one thing and it's not a
thing that belongs at the center of our
heart, and that is the person of Jesus,
the person of Jesus.
Let's pray.
Father, I pray.
I pray.
Lord, I'm always such a need to be
driven.
Back.
By your compass to the feet of Christ.
Oh, Lord.
That every sin.
Is a horrific thing, not because it brings
the downfall of culture.
But because it's committed against your son.
Oh, Lord, help us, help us, Lord, that
Jesus would be the very center of everything.
And Lord, I thank you for those men
and women and children here in whom you
have worked.
That are growing, that they know.
This truth that the gospel.
The gospel is that great mystery.
That leads to true piety, in Jesus name,
Amen.